As the manager of Ames’ own Campustown Liquor, I feel the need to respond to the Daily’s Monday Editorial.

This was not an article on “the evils of drink,” and you stated that early in your piece. With that said, there were some points of interest in your article.

First off, you never saw the “fan cans” on Budweiser cans — only Bud Light cans were chosen for this promotion, which may not sound like a big difference, but it is. Anheuser-Busch chose one package to run with this and it was the 24-pack of Bud Light in cans.

The two quotes you have from me in your article were given to the Des Moines Register during an over-the-phone interview. The journalist asked questions and I answered them truthfully. I wasn’t “boasting.”

The promotion was a great idea, and evidently the A-B legal department didn’t do their homework in regards to school and university reaction.

It just appears funny that Iowa State has a current contract with Doll Distributing — which allows Doll to use the ISU logo on signage, pennants and other various forms of store point of sale — but then all of a sudden, red and yellow cans come out and the world is coming to an end. You could find the ISU logo and Budweiser together, living in perfect harmony, helping sell beer to legal age customers throughout Ames. Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t think you can copyright colors. If a contract was drawn up to sell these cans, with the university getting a payback on cases sold, would they have turned the other way?

These promotional cans do not encourage students to drink more and faster, as I stated it was a great idea for a fall promotion to run across the USA. Just another way of showing team support at tailgates across parking lots this fall. This promotion was going to run for maybe a couple of months, all I was hoping for was to have “fan cans” of both colors in stock for the big game on Sept. 12th, then honestly, wouldn’t care if I saw them again or not.

We are also selling Old Style 24–pack bottles with Chicago Cubs logos all over the package. When these are sold, do you think students want to eat some “peanuts and cracker jacks” all of a sudden, or road trip to Chicago to sit in the bleachers? Probably not. They will drink them, watching or not watching the Cubs.

All this promotion intended to do was give customers and football fans across the US something to get excited about while enjoying college football, and, of course, to sell more of a very popular A-B package.

Campustown Liquor was not selling more beer, or to a different demographic when these cans were released, any customer who walks through our cooler doors is coming out with beer 99 percent of the time. The fan cans got the attention of customers and were bought at a very quick rate, hence the “hotcakes” quote, but only a handful of times did a customer come in and request the fan cans.

Campustown Liquor does its very best to make sure every paying customer is of legal age when purchasing, and to not be able to offer my customers something they want pretty much sucks.

Unfortunately there are many, many things out there in the world which encourage underage drinking and binge drinking, a heck of a lot more than colored cans.

Iowa State has the right to question the fan cans, and I was under the impression they had been contacted prior to the release. Iowa State’s logo is plastered all over Hy-Vee and Kum and Go with the Budweiser logo on the same sign, but when a clever idea such as a gold can with red trim appears, it’s attacked by the Daily as evil.

So students, hide those red and yellow bean bag boards and do not buy red or gold beer pong balls without the written consent of everyone.

—Rich Parizek

Manager, Campustown Liquor