Vintage 1996 USA Olympics Budweiser Sewing Kits 🧵 Two Unopened

Remember Budweiser's 1996 Olympics Promos? Vintage Budweiser 1996 USA Olympics Promotional Sewing Kits

Size: 2 1/4" x 2"

🧵 Two unopened promotional sewing kits from the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, and you receive both, each 2¼ inches by 2 inches. Each little white pillow box is printed in Budweiser red: the Know When 2 Say When™ logo up top, an Olympic flame rising out of the Budweiser bowtie, then USA over the Olympic rings and Proud Sponsor of the 1996 U.S. Olympic Team. On the back flap: Swingster, Kansas City, MO, Made in China. One is shown opened in the pictures so you can see what's inside: bands of thread in orange, gray, green, black, white and yellow, a needle, a safety pin and two clear buttons, the kind of kit you'd tuck in a suitcase or a glove box.

🔥 The Centennial Games

The Atlanta Games ran from July 19 to August 4, 1996, and they were the Centennial Olympics, a hundred years after the first modern Games in Athens in 1896. More than 10,000 athletes from 197 nations came, the torch traveled some 16,699 miles across the United States in the hands of over 12,000 torchbearers, and Muhammad Ali lit the flame at the opening ceremony. Atlanta leaned on corporate sponsors like no Games before or since, 111 domestic partners, and Budweiser was right there, which is why a beer company's sewing kit carries the Olympic rings.

🍺 "Know When to Say When"

That slogan on the top of the box has a story of its own. Know When to Say When was Anheuser-Busch's responsible-drinking message from 1982, and in 1985 it made Anheuser-Busch the first brewer to put a responsible-drinking message on network television. It was the work of Michael Roarty, the company's marketing chief, the same man behind "This Bud's for you" and "Head for the mountains," and it was such a part of the brand that it turns up even on a promotional sewing kit. Budweiser itself goes back to 1876 in St. Louis, Missouri, and "The King of Beers" has been part of American celebrations ever since. The name on the back flap comes from the other end of the state: Swingster was a Kansas City apparel company, one of the popular bowling-shirt makers back in the day, and in the '90s it was supplying logo goods like these for companies to hand out. It later became part of American Identity, the corporate-merchandise outfit Staples bought in 2007. I like that this little kit is Missouri at both ends, a St. Louis beer on the front and a Kansas City company on the back.

A fun little piece of '96 Olympics and Budweiser memorabilia for a breweriana collection, an Olympics collector, or anybody who remembers that summer.

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