Someone at Steve’s Walgreens knows that marketing table tennis balls to beer pong users is smart business. The little suckers have a way of getting lost amid the drunken mayhem of late-night competitions, so beer pong players make excellent repeat customers.
Steve took a look at yesterday’s post about ping pong balls sitting next to beer at a super market and sent the picture in with the text “I can beat that beer pong photo” in the subject line.
The competition is on for the most egregious example of beer pong marketing out there. Can anyone top Steve’s offering?
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Ha, was this in a college city or something? i can’t imagine one of those displays at a Walgreens around here.
I wonder where they got that sign… corporate?
I know that Walgreens! Corner of Union Squar.e.
One of the employees probably got it at a bar or something.
Pretty smart marketing…until their district manager comes in unexpectedly one of these days.
I work at a Home Depot near two college big college towns… I’ve always said we should set up a beer bong endcap in plumbing…
You should stock funnels next to the plastic tubing section.
Its nothing new in the in the college town I live in. Pretty much if the store has beer on sale they have ping pong balls near by. I think Sheetz has a beer pong display set up.
Everyone knows that people from [Redacted] are just a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing lushes.
are those balls regulation-size? they look enormous, though its hard to establish a size perspective with that girl there, she could be a teeny Walgreen’s fairy for all I know
I thought the same thing! GIANT BALLS!
However, on closer inspection, the display is much closer than the tiny dancer back there, and the perspective is screwy.
Article says tennis balls, so there ya go
I always learned the name of this game is Beirut, that is what my friends and I still call it. Maybe that is just a northern thing, but Beer Pong was a different game you played that involved ping pong paddles very similar to “Ship”.
Same thing here. Our “beer pong” actually included paddles, and was just a gentlemanly game of ping pong, only that the players centered a beer cup on each half of the table. If you hit the ball into your opponent’s cup, he had to down it. This was also a community game, because spectators could also place their cups on the table, and “risk” getting the ball in their cup. This newfangled beer pong that all the crazy youngsters play is just a glorified carnival game!
Out here the “BEER PONG” most people call it is what we actually know as BEER BASKETBALL.
BEER PONG indeed does use paddles, but who the heck actually has a ping pong table willing to slosh beer on? not me.
If you really want an involved game of excessive cheap-beer drinking combined with sports, try Beer Baseball. Mind you someone sober has to be the ump and keep score- but yeah, lotsa fun.
they do this at my local kroger, stacks of bud light and ping pong balls and cups right on top of them…
I’ve never been to a walgreens that sells beer. Even in New Orleans.
“There were several major events for Walgreen in 1933. The company paid a dividend on its stock for the first time, its concessions at Chicago’s Century of Progress exposition helped boost sales, and Charles Walgreen, Jr., became a vice-president of the company. With the repeal of Prohibition late that year, Walgreen Co. acquired liquor licenses and soon was selling whisky and wine in 60 percent of its stores.”
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Walgreen-Co-Company-History.html
All my local Walgreens sell alcohol. I’m sure the ones that don’t are due to state laws prohibiting alcohol sales at non-liquor stores or if the liquor licenses are too expensive.
I’ll admit I gave up a few years ago trying to find alcohol there after never seeing it while living in Virginia, St. Louis, and New Orleans. St. Louis and New Orleans are surprising considering you can get liquor at any store.
Florida and here in Tennessee do.
Massachusetts blows and you have to go to a liquor store (which have crappy hours) to buy anything with alcohol in it.
I think they recently changed their policy. I use to work at Walgreen’s here in Texas years ago, none of them sold beer, but within the last couple of months they started carrying beer, wine, and champaign. Of course it also carries a hefty markup, but hey… gotta make money somehow.
I bet this is less an encouragement to play beer pong/beirut and more a result of automatic correlations. Stores spend a lot of effort maximizing how much you spend (candy at the register, milk at the back of the store, etc) and probably some computer had flagged these items as having an above normal ‘bought together’ percentage.
I have absolutely no problem with this. However, I would like to see a store policy that if they market them as “beer pong balls”, then they should limit sales to 21+over
Why? what’s wrong with buying “beer pong balls” and then using them for whatever? Does the marketing change the nature of the product?
I’ve seen local 7-Elevens sell beer pong kits (generic solo cups and ping pong balls in one convenient package). I have no photographic evidence but a quick google search revealed at least one other person beside me who has seen them.
I’ve seen (and purchased) these
This one wins my vote. The “Connah Store” in the North End in Boston (from April 2010).
The photo:
http://yfrog.com/5cl2xj
Original link:
https://www.universalhub.com/2010/apparently-theres-been-run-ping-pong-balls-connah
Things like this make me miss Boston.
Anyway, you should email that to consumerist. It tops this picture.!
Yes!! Definitely email it; it’s way better!
I’m sure that Walgreens just wants you to buy Beer Pong balls, and doesn’t care if you actually play.
There is a jar of individual ping pong balls for sale at the checkout counter of the liquor store at the beach I go to.
This is noteworthy? Come on… Another hard hitting Phil story…
I will momentarily agree with you- Phil isn’t my favorite writer.
But still… it’s BEER PONG!
you can’t hate on that.
There’s a gas station near me that sells ping pong balls for $1 each. What a scam.
I have always wanted to know, how can beer pong be in any way sanitary?