The Heineken Cassette

A poster and some of the beer cans

In 1986 EMI Parlophone in the UK put together a promotion with Heineken, unusual for the fact that the Beatles have rarely lent their name to brands for advertising purposes.

Specially printed cans of Heineken beer were made, featuring a red triangular banner across the top that said “The Beatles – A Unique Cassette”, in white, bold capitals. Around the bottom, the Beatles’ first names, in capitals, in white on a red background, repeatedly circled the entire can. The cans came in two sizes : 275ml and 440ml of beer. The can was available only in Great Britain.

By sending in four special ring pulls from the cans and a crossed postal order or cheque for £2.99 (£2.49 + 50p P&H) made payable to “Heineken Beatles Offer”, consumers received a special copy of a unique EMI compilation cassette titled “Only The Beatles…” (Parlophone/Stiletto SMMC 151). You could apply as many times as you liked. The offer ended on June 30th 1986 and production started on July 1st.

The cassette claimed to include two tracks that had not been previously made available in stereo, but only “Yes It Is” lived up to the hype as “This Boy” was in fact mock-stereo. Copies were sent out with a gift card, of which there were two versions – the green card came with Heineken’s logo on the front whilst the red version had a picture of the Beatles on both the front and on the inside.

The cassette cover (front)

Tracks:

Side 1:

Love Me Do

Twist And Shout

She Loves You

This Boy

Eight Days A Week

All My Loving

Side 2:

Ticket To Ride

Yes It Is

Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

And I Love Her

Strawberry Fields Forever

The inlay card (continued from front)

The compilation was ℗ &© 1986 for Stiletto Limited, 122 Holland Park Avenue, London W11 4UA, with project realisation by Paul Watts (Stiletto) and Norman Bates (EMI).

The back of the inlay card advertised The Beatles’ catalogue of albums.

Not happy with the arrangement, Apple Corps Ltd sued over it on the 18th of July, 1986, EMI got cold feet and the promotion was halted quite swiftly, thus rendering the cassettes valuable.

In 2007, UK magazine “Record Collector” reported that it had been rumoured that a large cache of cassettes were found in the late nineties, so there are probably more of these cassettes in circulation than previously thought. Thus, a cassette can be bought for £5-10 GBP whereas the promotional beer cans are usually more expensive – unopened even more so! Full packages of the cassette, the promo poster, gift cards and beer cans are commanding higher prices than each item in itself.

4 cassettes in the original cellophane and a used beer can went for $68.22 USD on ebay in September 2014.

The cassettes were originally sealed in packs of 20 in this cellophane wrapper.

Finally, PoggMeister sent us some pictures of a cardboard sales presenter featuring a pop-up of the Beatles. Here they are:

Back
Front
First fold
Right
The Beatles pop-up on the left side.

9 Responses

  1. Unknown says:

    I possess an additional item connected to thee Heineken promo. At the time I was using the same promotional agency for a campaign and they knew I was a keen Beatles colector.

    They gave me 4 cans of the beer (sadly drunk many years ago!), a cassette and a cardboard salese presenter. This consists of a sheet of cardboard from which the Beatles pop-up when unfolded. Would you like a phot of this?

    Denis

  2. wogew says:

    I'd love to see that!

  3. Beat Girl says:

    It wasn't just available in England Roger. Scotland too! I know cos I have one thanks to my auntie who valiantly collected the ring pulls and sent away for the cassette for me.

  4. wogew says:

    A lot of people say "England" when they really mean "Great Britain", and the source of this information probably made this same mistake. I have rephrased the sentence now.

  5. Anonymous says:

    haha. I remember asking all my uncles if they drank Heineken, hoping they'd help me get this.
    All of them just said 'What?', leading me to groan and forget it.

    😛

  6. Unknown says:

    Hi! Here are some photos of the sales presenter – feel free to add them to your excellent blog. Denis

    mediafire.com/folder/y6m1xhy1cqedi//Beatles%20-%20Heineken

  7. wogew says:

    Thanks a lot! I added them at the end of the post.

  8. stpetric says:

    I've been a late to the party on this one — I didn't even know of this cassette's existence until I read it here two weeks ago! But I found one on eBay for a reasonable amount, and I'm its proud new owner. It's playing right now, in fact. Thanks for enlightening me!

  9. rick says:

    I’ve seen this only once on E-bay about a year ago. Forget how much the seller was asking.

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