July 19, 2018 • 31 mins
Heineken is one of the world's most well-known, popular beers, and people across the planet can instantly recognize the iconic green bottle and red star. But in the 1960s Freddy Heineken dreamed of a bottle that could do more than just hold beer -- he wanted to make bottles that could be used to build houses and shelters across the world (selling tons of booze in the process, of course). Join Ben and Noel as they explore the oddly inspiring story of Freddy Heineken and his dual purpose bottle brick.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, hi, Nick and everybody, no, no warning me. You
did warn me, I know, all fair. Before we started
(00:32):
this episode, I leaned away from the mic and whispered,
I have the worst pun, and that is it. We
can guarantee that that will be the worst pun of
the show today. Uh, this is of course ridiculous history.
We were joined as always with our super producer, Casey Pegrum,
and today we are talking about Heineken. Yeah. Today's episode
(00:54):
is brought to you by Heineken. Oh no, I'm sorry,
it's Miller lied, right right, right, I need to refresh
those Oh yeah, are we gonna yeah, well, you know what,
we're already rolling. Let's just do. Let's just do the
show and hope Miller doesn't get mad at it. I'm
sure it's fine. We have a good relationship with Miller
and we have a great story for you today about
Heineken and Heineken. Heineken Logger Beer is a internationally known
(01:20):
pale lagger five percent alcohol by volume. You've seen it.
It's got that iconic green bottle with the red star
out of the Netherlands, Holland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and
the company itself dates way back to eighteen sixty four
when a guy named Gerard Adrian Heineken convinced his mom
(01:44):
to buy a brewery in Amsterdam. It's called the hay
Stack Brewery, and that was the beginning of the of
the Heineken story. But it wouldn't be for many, many
more years that it would become the ubiquitous brand that
we know it as today. Right, if we're looking for
a person to think for the international popularity of Heineken
(02:09):
in the modern day Heineken as we understand it, then
we should tip our collective hats to Alfred Henry Heineken
known as Freddie to his friends, to his friends in
the press. Yeah. It was one of those like names
and quotes, you know, and be like Alfred Freddie Heineken. Yeah, yeah.
He he strikes me as the type of guy who
probably said, call me Freddie, call me Freddie. My parents
(02:29):
call me Alfred when I'm in trouble exactly, you know
what I mean. But the thing about Freddie, which I'm
gonna call him that because it's just more fun. I mean,
we've given him enough money over the years. No, I
think we can call him Freddie. You know, I'm not
a Heineken guy. I'm not either, but I dabbled in college.
I think I said in the last episode the quote
from Blue Velvet, which I'm not going to go into
again here, but I'm more of a perhaps guy. I'm
(02:51):
gonna drink a beer a beer because I'm not even
really a beer guy. I'm more of a whiskey guy. Yeah,
But we digress. So Freddie YEA. For the reason he
elevated this company to the meteoric stature that that it
is today in the world of beer is because he
had a really good eye for branding. He is the
one that oversaw the that label that you that you
(03:14):
know so well, um with the star and the Heineken logo,
but more importantly, that iconic green bottle. Yeah, the iconic
green bottle was his call. And he's pretty open about
it because he always had this eye for marketing. And
he said himself several times in public that if he
(03:37):
had not been in the brewing business, he would have
been an admin because he was personally fascinated by this,
and you know, obviously he was pretty good at it.
And just to backcheck ever so slightly, it was in
nineteen thirty three when prohibition was repealed that Heineken first
kind of came into the the American market and has
(03:58):
been one of the top selling brands ever since. But
because of Freddie's admin sensibilities that you just mentioned, um,
he really took everything to the next level. By nineteen sixty,
they were selling like a million cases of beer a year. Um.
Today it's more in the neighborhood of fifty million cases
(04:20):
a year. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the top ten
beers in the world by volume. And one thing that
I really respect about Freddie is that he was not
just a boardroom boss. He went out in the streets himself.
As we see in the obituary on Alfred Heineken from
The New York Times by Paul Miller. Shortly after World
(04:40):
War Two, Freddie went to New York himself and he
walked around Manhattan personally handing out Heineken to bartenders like
he's the king of the company basically, and he's in
the trenches. And he says that his two years he
spent in New York changed his life. He was a
big traveler, which is a huge part of our episode two.
(05:02):
Not only did he learn about the export market, but
he also found the love of his life a lady
named Lucille Cummins who was the daughter of a whiskey
making family in Kentucky. So I think it's a really
neat coincidence that they were both from these Oh I
almost said alcoholic families, alcohol manufacturing families. I bet they
(05:23):
threw great posts. Oh, I bet they did, Nolan. Now,
as you said, it's one of the three global giants
in the world of beer. I think it's second only
to anneheuser Busch and well no, and in terms of
ex imported beers, I think it's second to Corona. I
want to say this is number one. That that could
(05:43):
be an old stat doesn't matter, not with today's stories.
About today's story is about a trip that Freddie took
in nineteen sixty uh to an island called Kura. Cow.
Did I say that right? Cow? I think it's curas how,
just because I remember having it on a Cool Stuff
on Planet episode million years ago. Thanks man, that's been
(06:03):
Casey on the Case. I love that segment, and it's
and we need it. You really did need it. It's
not like I couldn't just like googled, you know, the pronunciation.
But no, it's better. We have the human touch from
Casey Pigraham, like Freddie Heineken said, we don't sell beer,
we sell warmth. Right, it's wonderful, and Casey is warmth personified.
(06:25):
So in nineteen sixty he took a trip out of
already forgot what is it again, Casey Casey on the
case Boom curus Ow in the Caribbean Sea Um, which
sounds like a lovely place, except at the time it
wasn't quite so lovely because they in this country did
not have the infrastructure for garbage disposal, let alone recycling. Right, Yeah,
(06:47):
it was tough. He said that he was walking on
the beach and it's like a vacation for him. Heineken
is popular there by the way, and he was alarmed
because he said he could barely walk fifteen feet without
stepping on a litterd Heineken bottle. That's right. According to
Housing for the Millions by John Habracken and the s
(07:08):
A r Um, he experienced the slums of of this
this island and there were just mountains of garbage according
to this this book, just surrounding everything. Not to mention
the beaches, as you say, we're just littered with trash,
many of which were those iconic green bottles, and that
(07:31):
wasn't a good look as far as Freddy was concerned.
He felt like he needed to do something about it, right,
and it speaks very highly to his character. You know,
back at this time, it was common for bottles to
be reused. So you would drink a beer and then
you would take the bottle back somewhere and it would
be refilled and resold. And I saw what it was like.
(07:54):
It would make a return round trip to the brewery
like dozens of times, potentially right lake up to thirty
times or so. And the problem there that bedeviled him
so much was that he knew there had to be
a solution, and so he and John Habric in the
(08:15):
architect and author that we just mentioned, he and Habrican
partnered up together to try to find a multipurpose solutions,
so not just to clean up the litter on the
beach and the island, not just to mitigate the bottle
waste that littered the place, but also to help provide
(08:36):
building materials because a lot of these people were living
in what we would call shanty towns, that's right, like
the slums we're talking about earlier um as mentioned in
this book, and the title of this book should give
you a little clue. Housing for the Millions is this
idea of creative solutions to housing crisises. And this is
exactly what he set out to do with a crazy idea.
(09:00):
Yea he liked to refer to as the Wobo. The Wobo, Yes,
the rectangular Heineken World bottle. It was it was meant
to serve as a regular beer bottle, so you would
buy it and you would drink beer. But then once
you were done with it, you could also use the
(09:20):
bottle the same way you would use a brick, so
you could build hypothetically rooms, houses, shelter entirely out of
Heineken beer bottles. And we can describe a little bit
about the the specifics of the bottle, which you can
still see on display at the Heineken Museum. Yeah, they
(09:41):
sort of had these little notches or a little bumps.
I guess that that could interlock. It wasn't like a
lego brake exactly. They didn't like snap into each other.
But the idea was that you could apply cement or
mortar and it would it would bond these together pretty easily.
And yes, of course they're stackable and if you can
picture them, um, they really do look exactly like bricks
(10:03):
when they're stacked, because the there's a recess at the
end so that the nozzle or the part you drink
from nozzles them. The mouth hole that's that's way more dignified,
would fit into the divot at the bottom on one end,
so they would be completely flush, and they would be
staggered like bricks. And they came in two sizes, three
(10:25):
and five milli leaders so that you could use some
shorter bricks if necessary during construction. A ten ft by
ten foot building structure would take approximately one thousand bottles
to build. First off, depending on how you feel about Heineken,
that's either great or really inconvenient because that's a lot
(10:46):
of beer, you know what I mean, that's true. When
he was thinking about this, they got into some very
interesting industrial design. I love the mention of the recessed
divot and the shorter neck. It looks so it looks
(11:06):
like a rounded rectangle, almost like a whiskey bottle, right,
And this led us to ask another fascinating question, which
is why are beer bottles round? It turns out there's
a there's a great answer. The bottles are made by
blowing air under high pressure into a glop of glass
or plastic. But that you know, beer is going to
(11:28):
be in class, right, and it expands outward in all
directions until it hits this mold where it solidifies and
the structure of the round shape distributes pressure much better,
so a bottle is less likely to break. It's just
kind of the same reason eggs are spheres. That's right.
And I imagine there's also sort of a tactile element
(11:49):
there too, where it's easier to grip a round thing
than a squared off thing. Oh good call, I don't know.
That just occurs to me. But ben, so, are you
saying that to make these lea shaped bottles would be
a more complex manufacturing process and potentially more expensive for
the Heineken company. Yeah, anytime you're doing a significant shift
(12:11):
in mass production, there's going to be an upfront associated costs.
And then also people, as groups consumers tend to be
adverse to change. And one of the problems that people
had with the Heineken bottle internally, not consumers internally, Heineken
(12:34):
said they thought it might be too effeminate. Did you
see that part I did. Did you see the amazing
retort from Cabinet magazine? Yes? Ye, did you read it
to it? Yeah, just saying that this was a very
strange um critique quote considering that the bottle consisted of
two bulbous compartments surmounted by a long shaft. Yeah, yeah,
(13:00):
that's funny. But they went through several different prototypes, um,
and a ton of them, or all of them except one.
Ultimately we're rejected by the board um because they because
of the thing that I just described a minute ago,
that this was a costly manufacturing process. It wasn't what
executives like to call scalable, right, And they were pursuing
(13:23):
too different aims to make an effective construction material, a
reliable effective construction material, and then also to make a
cost effective container for you know, their main product, this
alcoholic beverage known as Heineken. And on the way they
attempted to make several fixes. Significantly, they thickened the glass
(13:46):
because you know, these bottles are supposed to be laid
horizontally when their bricks, and they were attempting to their
mission on the beer side was an attempt to bring
the cost per bottle down to the established cost per
bottle of the existing cylindrical design, and they just couldn't
do it. I don't imagine that would be very difficult.
(14:08):
From the point of Heineken's infrastructure. It's already cheaper and
faster to make the bottles the way they were already
being made. And to the point that we brought up
earlier in this great Smithsonian article, the author speculates that
what most likely worked against Haprikins design was that customers
(14:29):
just liked how easy it was to hold the cylindrical bottle. Yeah,
so I think you're on the money with that. And
have we talked about how many how many milli eaters
these contained? Were These These weren't like these weren't like
uh tall boys. These were like a regimant to have
the same amount of liquid as the standard Heineken. Yeah yeah,
and the two sizes I have mentioned earlier, that's right,
(14:50):
yeah yeah, And that that also becomes weird because then
you have to ask, is the consumer just purposely buying
a smaller beer because they need to build the literal
glass house. That's the other videos of literal glass houses
and the brick bottles themselves. Because of these various cost objections,
(15:11):
and because of concerns about how consumers would react to them,
these brick bottles never got onto the consumer market, but
people remained impressed by the idea, so much so that
in nine they built a prototype house out of these
(15:32):
bottles near near one of Alfred Heineken's houses in Amsterdam.
Are you talking about the little shed with like a
corrugated metal roof and the tiny little four pane window thing. Yeah,
it's not that. Just it's like just the walls are
built out of the bottles, and we haven't really talked
about like logistically, surely this wouldn't offer much installation from
(15:56):
like the elements and stuff like that, right, Like, I know,
glass does offer a certain amount of insulation, but these
wouldn't be completely air tight with that, and I don't know,
I guess if they were mortared together they would, but
it just seems like they would get really cold if
if it was you know, winter, if your whole house
is made of a material like that, unless you added
(16:17):
some extra installation on the inside, it seems like it
would be pretty pretty nasty. No. I know, there are
some there are some structures that use plastic bottles to
provide um to provide cooling. But yeah, obviously there's a
reason that people tend to rely more on things like
(16:37):
wood and stone. So I did read that they produced
fifty thousand of these that were meant for production, but
they never made it past that stage. Why why do
you think that is? I couldn't see a detail like
why they make so many and then it's never bothered
putting them out there. Well, again, because the cost concern.
It didn't have scale, so they made the fifty as
(16:59):
a test to see a testerone or something. The guys
a lot. They got close. But then also you know,
these guys are making millions and millions of these every year,
or the cylindrical ones at least. And then also, as
they mentioned earlier, the concern that consumers just wouldn't react
well to the change. However, something very very inspiring here
(17:21):
because although Freddie may have ultimately not succeeded in creating
this reusable brick bottle, other companies have and there's a
company called e M one u M that succeeded. They
were mostly successful in Argentina. They've received numerous awards for
their bottle designs. They make bottles that are prisms cubes, cylinders,
(17:47):
and you know it's I think this kind of smart
conscious Dare I say woke construction has some some real
potential for the future. Man, other companies are doing it
to A French design company tried to resurrect the Wobo
design by making a cube. But yeah, it looks kind
of like a gas canister and I can't quite tell
(18:10):
the scale or the size of it, but I feel
like this would be almost more like a growler size
of beer than like for an individual. And their reasoning
behind doing this was making them stackable so that they
would travel easier and be able to uh, you know,
put in the back of your car for a you know,
family gathering or something, and not have them clinking around
(18:30):
in a cool or something like that. I'm not sure
how well this did. I've certainly never seen one of
these out in the out in the world. And you know,
you also have to wonder how inconvenient or convenient is
it to drink beer from a cube? So I have
a question for you know, casey and old ridiculous historians
listening now. When you were in school, did you ever
(18:51):
encounter milk in a bag? Yeah? I think we likely
this has come up before. Yeah, it's so I'm still
mystified by super weird. It looks like some sort of
medical supply. It looks like some sort of medical implant. Yeah.
And then and there's a little hole with a perforated
edge that you stick your straw into and then you
drink the milk from the bag. Yeah. Did you ever
have any of those? Casey, No, ours were just in
(19:12):
the paper carts, which also kind of vaguely gross me up.
I had that too, But I remember early for me,
there was a brief period of bag milk. Yeah. I
don't know what kind of backroom deal occurred between dairy
suppliers and local governments, but that that's my number one
personal example of the time when a relatively small design
(19:38):
philosophy or approach made a big difference. So funny this
Heineken cube that we were just talking about that kind
of like again not seeing these anywhere, but it was
it was handheld. It was just a personal size. It
wasn't bigger. You could tell it with the bottle cat
I see it now. And also there's a there's a
picture of a guy pouring it into a glass and
then also drinking directly from it, which looked super cord
(20:00):
because the what do you call it, the neck I'm
gonna go with mouth hole is recessed in a in
a kind of odd way, and it seems like a
very strange thing to hold in your hand. It's just
one of the top quarters. And while this housing trend
that that Freddie was so fond of ever thought was
such an innovative idea, which it was, um never really
took off. There's a pretty cool example that I've seen
(20:21):
sighted in every article that that that tells the story. Um.
It is a temple in Thailand that's made entirely out
of uh Heineken bottles and also the local tai beer
chan Chang, and I think to date it's like over
a million bottles making this thing up, and it's ornate
(20:41):
and like all these kind of almost mandala esque like
stained glass looking patterns, and even use the bottle caps
to make more of these kind of designs. And if
you didn't really, like really look closely, you would not
know what it was made of. It's beautiful and it's
way bigger than you think. It's crazy, and apparently they
continue to build onto it with these discarded bottles, so
(21:05):
at least that vision that Freddie had of like taking
this stuff and turning it into something else in an
interesting way, is happening, at least in one kind of
off the wall example. So Freddie Heydingen's life, while it
was replete with these amazing progressive acts in terms of
(21:30):
design and marketing, it wasn't all roses and angel harps.
He had several uh misadventures and unfortunate events, probably the
most famous of which was the time that he and
his chauffeur were kidnapped in nineteen eighty three by a
criminal organization in the Dutch underworld. I thought you were
(21:51):
going to say the netherworld of the Netherlands. Yeah, if
he happy, Netherlands on my mind as as well, they
should be. Um, this is is a a bizarre story. Um.
He and his his chauffeur were snatched up and taken
to a warehouse where they were chained UM two in
concrete cells for three weeks. And it turns out this
(22:14):
whole thing was orchestrated by a Dutch gangster, a criminal
mastermind by the name of Villam Holly Deare, who has
described in an article on The Guardian as being a cold,
vulgar killer who had a bit of a public persona
that was kind of almost celebrity like. Yeah, he was
(22:38):
like a comic super villain. He even had a cool
villain nickname the Nose, the Nose due to the size
of his nose. In this article by Daniel Boffi, they
explore some of his exploits. There's even a movie based
on that three kidnapping called Kidnapping Freddie Heineken. That's a
(22:58):
super creative name, I know, first of creativity. I've never
heard of this, and Anthony Hopkins is in it, sir Anthony,
excuse me, um, but yeah, they they held them for
a ransom of thirty five million Dutch guilders, and at
the time, Freddy Heineken was the most wealthy businessman in
(23:19):
the Netherlands, right, that's right, And um I did read
that They that it was paid, but they actually got
kind of busted out because one of the whoever was
babysitting them, you know whatever underboss or you know, Minion
was doing this made a fatal error. Yes, they made
a fatal flaw. One of the kidnappers and they were
(23:40):
about five guys involved with this kidnapping. One of the
kidnappers called for some Chinese takeout and accidentally gave away
their locations. So the police were able to burst into
the warehouse rescue Freddie, but they it took them a
while to catch all of the criminals, but it does
have a happy ending. Neither Freddie nor his driver were
(24:05):
killed first off, but they were left pretty shell shocked.
And I think Freddie had to have a like security
detail from for the rest of his life and chose
to and kind of gradually withdrew from the public. I
he had been, you know, the Freddie we mentioned from
the sixties who would go door to door at the bars,
you know, giving out samples. I think he kind of
(24:25):
carried that persona um later in life, and when this
and the unfortunate event happened, I think that probably shut
it down a good bit and he could withdrew and
really protected his family and their privacy from from that
point on. Yeah, and several other people involved in the
kidnapping had stories of their own. So there was a
guy in Franz Major who escaped from custody in Amsterdam
(24:50):
and then showed back up on the international radar in
Paraguay ten years later, where he owned a quote down
market restaurant Mary with three kids and one of the
other kidnappers. I appreciate that you mentioned this slow withdrawal
from public life because one of the other kidnappers, a
(25:10):
guy named cor Van hot h o U T excuse me,
he followed, He served his jail time, he got arrested,
he didn't escape, but when he got out of jail,
he would still occasionally follow Freddie Heineken around and try
to like talk trash to him. Is that weird? It
seems very smart. It seems incredibly petty too well, especially
(25:33):
since he probably had some bruiser security dudes hanging out
with him. I would think I would be a real
quick way to get, you know, get your ass kicked.
Very weird relationship, I would imagine. Did we talk about
what happened to the nose? We have not yet. The
huggable criminal, as the prosecutors enough, yeah, the prosecution. During
one of the trials, the prosecution said that he had
(25:55):
been described in the past as a new full criminal
or huggable criminal, due to his efforts to court the
media and become a celebrity figure. He even went on
a speaking tour of colleges in two thousand and twelve.
Of course he did whatever it takes. You gotta hustle. Yeah.
Seven he got sentenced to eleven years in prison for
this particular crime. He only served five. Wow. Yeah, that
(26:19):
seems pretty pretty light. But you know, he didn't stay
clean for well, I don't know. It's it's hard to
say what what what high profile crimes he did between
then and now. I'm sure he probably laid low, but
I have a feeling he still was up to no good.
But um. An article from this article we're talking about
(26:40):
from The Guardian is actually from February five of this year,
and it's about a new trial for the Nose that
has him up on charges of of murder. You have
five counts of murder, one count of manslaughter, two counts
of attempted murder, and the defense is arguing that his uh,
(27:02):
his sisters and his ex girlfriend are conspiring to make
him look bad, to stitch him up right, and he
supposedly orchestrated a hit on on her his sister UM
using his cell phone. UM, and the sister was able
to record said calls and distribute them to the authorities.
(27:23):
So UM, probably not the smartest criminal UM you know
on the block. But yeah, but part of a pretty
interesting story involving brick beer bottles. Yes, yes, that's a
roundabout way, in a roundabout way, and hollyder. As we
are recording this, the nose himself is still the subject
(27:48):
of media attention there in the Netherlands. So maybe we'll
we'll figure out what happens to the nose in a
future episode. In the meantime, I think we should end
on what happened to Freddie Heineken after the kidnapping, after
attempting to change the world with this brick bottle of beer.
Looks like I said a little while ago, he did
(28:09):
withdraw from public life. He gave up his controlling interest
in the Heineken Company, but according to this obituary from
New York Times, he still hung around and did his
kind of day to day thing right up until he
passed away. Uh. He ceded control of the board of
which he was the chairman, to his daughter Charlene. But
(28:33):
he did eventually pass away from pneumonia um at the
age of seventy eight, and that was on January of
two thousand and two, and his legacy continues on today.
Not just in beer, folks, he also had an active
role in philanthropy promoting science and the arts. He founded
(28:54):
the Doctor hp Heineken Foundation, which awards cash prizes for
pioneering work in biochemistry and biophysics, and he started another
foundation in his own name in the nineteen eighties that
awards cash prizes to the sciences and the arts. So
I think that's that's one of the most beautiful things
you can do as an individual. Has paved the way
(29:17):
for future progress. I don't know, this guy seemed like
a pretty progressive, interesting um beer tycoon, you know. I
really enjoyed the story, and he seemed like a guy
that would have been uh an interesting dude to sit
down and have a beer a hie with. Yes, yes uh,
And we hope you enjoy this episode. Didn't have time
(29:39):
to get to it today, but it reminds me of
uh fascinating guy named Richard Swert who is down in Mexico,
I believe, and has built his own island entirely of
reusable materials. I think we might have mentioned him and
weird people who built weird things. If we didn't, that
was a missed opportunity. My friend, Well luck Leanal, you
(30:01):
and I and you as well fellow Ridiculous Historians will
have more and more opportunities in the future to explore
strange stories throughout history. Thank you so much for tuning
into the show. Of course, thank you to our super producer,
Casey Pegram, and thank you to our researcher Eve's Jeff
Coote who assisted us with this episode. And of course
(30:22):
thanks to you for listening to the show. Please please
please do us a solid and write us a nice
and friendly review on iTunes or your pod catcher service
of choice. Here we go. Um. It helps the the
old iTunes algorithm, you know, pop us up in the
rankings and make people discover the show. So if you
dig it, pay it forward, friends, pay it forward. True story. Occasionally,
(30:45):
if we're if we're doing well on the show, uh,
the president of our company will walk by and pop
a couple of finger gunds at us. That always feels
so good. Um. You can also reach out to us
via social media. We're on Facebook, we have our face
spook group, the Ridiculous Historians. We're always hanging out having
a good time. We're on Twitter, We're on the Instagram.
(31:07):
Still still popping around these vision boards, man, You know,
we just said, it's a lot that goes into it.
It's a collaboration um for the Ages, and we're working
on a concept album. Those spoilers, because that's that's what
it's called. It's called it's it's called spoilers. Yeah, So
tune in for our next episode when we explore the
(31:29):
very strange story of the nineteen o four Summer Olympic Games.
See you next time.
Yeah, hi, Nick and everybody, no, no warning me. You
did warn me, I know, all fair. Before we started
(00:32):
this episode, I leaned away from the mic and whispered,
I have the worst pun, and that is it. We
can guarantee that that will be the worst pun of
the show today. Uh, this is of course ridiculous history.
We were joined as always with our super producer, Casey Pegrum,
and today we are talking about Heineken. Yeah. Today's episode
(00:54):
is brought to you by Heineken. Oh no, I'm sorry,
it's Miller lied, right right, right, I need to refresh
those Oh yeah, are we gonna yeah, well, you know what,
we're already rolling. Let's just do. Let's just do the
show and hope Miller doesn't get mad at it. I'm
sure it's fine. We have a good relationship with Miller
and we have a great story for you today about
Heineken and Heineken. Heineken Logger Beer is a internationally known
(01:20):
pale lagger five percent alcohol by volume. You've seen it.
It's got that iconic green bottle with the red star
out of the Netherlands, Holland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and
the company itself dates way back to eighteen sixty four
when a guy named Gerard Adrian Heineken convinced his mom
(01:44):
to buy a brewery in Amsterdam. It's called the hay
Stack Brewery, and that was the beginning of the of
the Heineken story. But it wouldn't be for many, many
more years that it would become the ubiquitous brand that
we know it as today. Right, if we're looking for
a person to think for the international popularity of Heineken
(02:09):
in the modern day Heineken as we understand it, then
we should tip our collective hats to Alfred Henry Heineken
known as Freddie to his friends, to his friends in
the press. Yeah. It was one of those like names
and quotes, you know, and be like Alfred Freddie Heineken. Yeah, yeah.
He he strikes me as the type of guy who
probably said, call me Freddie, call me Freddie. My parents
(02:29):
call me Alfred when I'm in trouble exactly, you know
what I mean. But the thing about Freddie, which I'm
gonna call him that because it's just more fun. I mean,
we've given him enough money over the years. No, I
think we can call him Freddie. You know, I'm not
a Heineken guy. I'm not either, but I dabbled in college.
I think I said in the last episode the quote
from Blue Velvet, which I'm not going to go into
again here, but I'm more of a perhaps guy. I'm
(02:51):
gonna drink a beer a beer because I'm not even
really a beer guy. I'm more of a whiskey guy. Yeah,
But we digress. So Freddie YEA. For the reason he
elevated this company to the meteoric stature that that it
is today in the world of beer is because he
had a really good eye for branding. He is the
one that oversaw the that label that you that you
(03:14):
know so well, um with the star and the Heineken logo,
but more importantly, that iconic green bottle. Yeah, the iconic
green bottle was his call. And he's pretty open about
it because he always had this eye for marketing. And
he said himself several times in public that if he
(03:37):
had not been in the brewing business, he would have
been an admin because he was personally fascinated by this,
and you know, obviously he was pretty good at it.
And just to backcheck ever so slightly, it was in
nineteen thirty three when prohibition was repealed that Heineken first
kind of came into the the American market and has
(03:58):
been one of the top selling brands ever since. But
because of Freddie's admin sensibilities that you just mentioned, um,
he really took everything to the next level. By nineteen sixty,
they were selling like a million cases of beer a year. Um.
Today it's more in the neighborhood of fifty million cases
(04:20):
a year. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the top ten
beers in the world by volume. And one thing that
I really respect about Freddie is that he was not
just a boardroom boss. He went out in the streets himself.
As we see in the obituary on Alfred Heineken from
The New York Times by Paul Miller. Shortly after World
(04:40):
War Two, Freddie went to New York himself and he
walked around Manhattan personally handing out Heineken to bartenders like
he's the king of the company basically, and he's in
the trenches. And he says that his two years he
spent in New York changed his life. He was a
big traveler, which is a huge part of our episode two.
(05:02):
Not only did he learn about the export market, but
he also found the love of his life a lady
named Lucille Cummins who was the daughter of a whiskey
making family in Kentucky. So I think it's a really
neat coincidence that they were both from these Oh I
almost said alcoholic families, alcohol manufacturing families. I bet they
(05:23):
threw great posts. Oh, I bet they did, Nolan. Now,
as you said, it's one of the three global giants
in the world of beer. I think it's second only
to anneheuser Busch and well no, and in terms of
ex imported beers, I think it's second to Corona. I
want to say this is number one. That that could
(05:43):
be an old stat doesn't matter, not with today's stories.
About today's story is about a trip that Freddie took
in nineteen sixty uh to an island called Kura. Cow.
Did I say that right? Cow? I think it's curas how,
just because I remember having it on a Cool Stuff
on Planet episode million years ago. Thanks man, that's been
(06:03):
Casey on the Case. I love that segment, and it's
and we need it. You really did need it. It's
not like I couldn't just like googled, you know, the pronunciation.
But no, it's better. We have the human touch from
Casey Pigraham, like Freddie Heineken said, we don't sell beer,
we sell warmth. Right, it's wonderful, and Casey is warmth personified.
(06:25):
So in nineteen sixty he took a trip out of
already forgot what is it again, Casey Casey on the
case Boom curus Ow in the Caribbean Sea Um, which
sounds like a lovely place, except at the time it
wasn't quite so lovely because they in this country did
not have the infrastructure for garbage disposal, let alone recycling. Right, Yeah,
(06:47):
it was tough. He said that he was walking on
the beach and it's like a vacation for him. Heineken
is popular there by the way, and he was alarmed
because he said he could barely walk fifteen feet without
stepping on a litterd Heineken bottle. That's right. According to
Housing for the Millions by John Habracken and the s
(07:08):
A r Um, he experienced the slums of of this
this island and there were just mountains of garbage according
to this this book, just surrounding everything. Not to mention
the beaches, as you say, we're just littered with trash,
many of which were those iconic green bottles, and that
(07:31):
wasn't a good look as far as Freddy was concerned.
He felt like he needed to do something about it, right,
and it speaks very highly to his character. You know,
back at this time, it was common for bottles to
be reused. So you would drink a beer and then
you would take the bottle back somewhere and it would
be refilled and resold. And I saw what it was like.
(07:54):
It would make a return round trip to the brewery
like dozens of times, potentially right lake up to thirty
times or so. And the problem there that bedeviled him
so much was that he knew there had to be
a solution, and so he and John Habric in the
(08:15):
architect and author that we just mentioned, he and Habrican
partnered up together to try to find a multipurpose solutions,
so not just to clean up the litter on the
beach and the island, not just to mitigate the bottle
waste that littered the place, but also to help provide
(08:36):
building materials because a lot of these people were living
in what we would call shanty towns, that's right, like
the slums we're talking about earlier um as mentioned in
this book, and the title of this book should give
you a little clue. Housing for the Millions is this
idea of creative solutions to housing crisises. And this is
exactly what he set out to do with a crazy idea.
(09:00):
Yea he liked to refer to as the Wobo. The Wobo, Yes,
the rectangular Heineken World bottle. It was it was meant
to serve as a regular beer bottle, so you would
buy it and you would drink beer. But then once
you were done with it, you could also use the
(09:20):
bottle the same way you would use a brick, so
you could build hypothetically rooms, houses, shelter entirely out of
Heineken beer bottles. And we can describe a little bit
about the the specifics of the bottle, which you can
still see on display at the Heineken Museum. Yeah, they
(09:41):
sort of had these little notches or a little bumps.
I guess that that could interlock. It wasn't like a
lego brake exactly. They didn't like snap into each other.
But the idea was that you could apply cement or
mortar and it would it would bond these together pretty easily.
And yes, of course they're stackable and if you can
picture them, um, they really do look exactly like bricks
(10:03):
when they're stacked, because the there's a recess at the
end so that the nozzle or the part you drink
from nozzles them. The mouth hole that's that's way more dignified,
would fit into the divot at the bottom on one end,
so they would be completely flush, and they would be
staggered like bricks. And they came in two sizes, three
(10:25):
and five milli leaders so that you could use some
shorter bricks if necessary during construction. A ten ft by
ten foot building structure would take approximately one thousand bottles
to build. First off, depending on how you feel about Heineken,
that's either great or really inconvenient because that's a lot
(10:46):
of beer, you know what I mean, that's true. When
he was thinking about this, they got into some very
interesting industrial design. I love the mention of the recessed
divot and the shorter neck. It looks so it looks
(11:06):
like a rounded rectangle, almost like a whiskey bottle, right,
And this led us to ask another fascinating question, which
is why are beer bottles round? It turns out there's
a there's a great answer. The bottles are made by
blowing air under high pressure into a glop of glass
or plastic. But that you know, beer is going to
(11:28):
be in class, right, and it expands outward in all
directions until it hits this mold where it solidifies and
the structure of the round shape distributes pressure much better,
so a bottle is less likely to break. It's just
kind of the same reason eggs are spheres. That's right.
And I imagine there's also sort of a tactile element
(11:49):
there too, where it's easier to grip a round thing
than a squared off thing. Oh good call, I don't know.
That just occurs to me. But ben, so, are you
saying that to make these lea shaped bottles would be
a more complex manufacturing process and potentially more expensive for
the Heineken company. Yeah, anytime you're doing a significant shift
(12:11):
in mass production, there's going to be an upfront associated costs.
And then also people, as groups consumers tend to be
adverse to change. And one of the problems that people
had with the Heineken bottle internally, not consumers internally, Heineken
(12:34):
said they thought it might be too effeminate. Did you
see that part I did. Did you see the amazing
retort from Cabinet magazine? Yes? Ye, did you read it
to it? Yeah, just saying that this was a very
strange um critique quote considering that the bottle consisted of
two bulbous compartments surmounted by a long shaft. Yeah, yeah,
(13:00):
that's funny. But they went through several different prototypes, um,
and a ton of them, or all of them except one.
Ultimately we're rejected by the board um because they because
of the thing that I just described a minute ago,
that this was a costly manufacturing process. It wasn't what
executives like to call scalable, right, And they were pursuing
(13:23):
too different aims to make an effective construction material, a
reliable effective construction material, and then also to make a
cost effective container for you know, their main product, this
alcoholic beverage known as Heineken. And on the way they
attempted to make several fixes. Significantly, they thickened the glass
(13:46):
because you know, these bottles are supposed to be laid
horizontally when their bricks, and they were attempting to their
mission on the beer side was an attempt to bring
the cost per bottle down to the established cost per
bottle of the existing cylindrical design, and they just couldn't
do it. I don't imagine that would be very difficult.
(14:08):
From the point of Heineken's infrastructure. It's already cheaper and
faster to make the bottles the way they were already
being made. And to the point that we brought up
earlier in this great Smithsonian article, the author speculates that
what most likely worked against Haprikins design was that customers
(14:29):
just liked how easy it was to hold the cylindrical bottle. Yeah,
so I think you're on the money with that. And
have we talked about how many how many milli eaters
these contained? Were These These weren't like these weren't like
uh tall boys. These were like a regimant to have
the same amount of liquid as the standard Heineken. Yeah yeah,
and the two sizes I have mentioned earlier, that's right,
(14:50):
yeah yeah, And that that also becomes weird because then
you have to ask, is the consumer just purposely buying
a smaller beer because they need to build the literal
glass house. That's the other videos of literal glass houses
and the brick bottles themselves. Because of these various cost objections,
(15:11):
and because of concerns about how consumers would react to them,
these brick bottles never got onto the consumer market, but
people remained impressed by the idea, so much so that
in nine they built a prototype house out of these
(15:32):
bottles near near one of Alfred Heineken's houses in Amsterdam.
Are you talking about the little shed with like a
corrugated metal roof and the tiny little four pane window thing. Yeah,
it's not that. Just it's like just the walls are
built out of the bottles, and we haven't really talked
about like logistically, surely this wouldn't offer much installation from
(15:56):
like the elements and stuff like that, right, Like, I know,
glass does offer a certain amount of insulation, but these
wouldn't be completely air tight with that, and I don't know,
I guess if they were mortared together they would, but
it just seems like they would get really cold if
if it was you know, winter, if your whole house
is made of a material like that, unless you added
(16:17):
some extra installation on the inside, it seems like it
would be pretty pretty nasty. No. I know, there are
some there are some structures that use plastic bottles to
provide um to provide cooling. But yeah, obviously there's a
reason that people tend to rely more on things like
(16:37):
wood and stone. So I did read that they produced
fifty thousand of these that were meant for production, but
they never made it past that stage. Why why do
you think that is? I couldn't see a detail like
why they make so many and then it's never bothered
putting them out there. Well, again, because the cost concern.
It didn't have scale, so they made the fifty as
(16:59):
a test to see a testerone or something. The guys
a lot. They got close. But then also you know,
these guys are making millions and millions of these every year,
or the cylindrical ones at least. And then also, as
they mentioned earlier, the concern that consumers just wouldn't react
well to the change. However, something very very inspiring here
(17:21):
because although Freddie may have ultimately not succeeded in creating
this reusable brick bottle, other companies have and there's a
company called e M one u M that succeeded. They
were mostly successful in Argentina. They've received numerous awards for
their bottle designs. They make bottles that are prisms cubes, cylinders,
(17:47):
and you know it's I think this kind of smart
conscious Dare I say woke construction has some some real
potential for the future. Man, other companies are doing it
to A French design company tried to resurrect the Wobo
design by making a cube. But yeah, it looks kind
of like a gas canister and I can't quite tell
(18:10):
the scale or the size of it, but I feel
like this would be almost more like a growler size
of beer than like for an individual. And their reasoning
behind doing this was making them stackable so that they
would travel easier and be able to uh, you know,
put in the back of your car for a you know,
family gathering or something, and not have them clinking around
(18:30):
in a cool or something like that. I'm not sure
how well this did. I've certainly never seen one of
these out in the out in the world. And you know,
you also have to wonder how inconvenient or convenient is
it to drink beer from a cube? So I have
a question for you know, casey and old ridiculous historians
listening now. When you were in school, did you ever
(18:51):
encounter milk in a bag? Yeah? I think we likely
this has come up before. Yeah, it's so I'm still
mystified by super weird. It looks like some sort of
medical supply. It looks like some sort of medical implant. Yeah.
And then and there's a little hole with a perforated
edge that you stick your straw into and then you
drink the milk from the bag. Yeah. Did you ever
have any of those? Casey, No, ours were just in
(19:12):
the paper carts, which also kind of vaguely gross me up.
I had that too, But I remember early for me,
there was a brief period of bag milk. Yeah. I
don't know what kind of backroom deal occurred between dairy
suppliers and local governments, but that that's my number one
personal example of the time when a relatively small design
(19:38):
philosophy or approach made a big difference. So funny this
Heineken cube that we were just talking about that kind
of like again not seeing these anywhere, but it was
it was handheld. It was just a personal size. It
wasn't bigger. You could tell it with the bottle cat
I see it now. And also there's a there's a
picture of a guy pouring it into a glass and
then also drinking directly from it, which looked super cord
(20:00):
because the what do you call it, the neck I'm
gonna go with mouth hole is recessed in a in
a kind of odd way, and it seems like a
very strange thing to hold in your hand. It's just
one of the top quarters. And while this housing trend
that that Freddie was so fond of ever thought was
such an innovative idea, which it was, um never really
took off. There's a pretty cool example that I've seen
(20:21):
sighted in every article that that that tells the story. Um.
It is a temple in Thailand that's made entirely out
of uh Heineken bottles and also the local tai beer
chan Chang, and I think to date it's like over
a million bottles making this thing up, and it's ornate
(20:41):
and like all these kind of almost mandala esque like
stained glass looking patterns, and even use the bottle caps
to make more of these kind of designs. And if
you didn't really, like really look closely, you would not
know what it was made of. It's beautiful and it's
way bigger than you think. It's crazy, and apparently they
continue to build onto it with these discarded bottles, so
(21:05):
at least that vision that Freddie had of like taking
this stuff and turning it into something else in an
interesting way, is happening, at least in one kind of
off the wall example. So Freddie Heydingen's life, while it
was replete with these amazing progressive acts in terms of
(21:30):
design and marketing, it wasn't all roses and angel harps.
He had several uh misadventures and unfortunate events, probably the
most famous of which was the time that he and
his chauffeur were kidnapped in nineteen eighty three by a
criminal organization in the Dutch underworld. I thought you were
(21:51):
going to say the netherworld of the Netherlands. Yeah, if
he happy, Netherlands on my mind as as well, they
should be. Um, this is is a a bizarre story. Um.
He and his his chauffeur were snatched up and taken
to a warehouse where they were chained UM two in
concrete cells for three weeks. And it turns out this
(22:14):
whole thing was orchestrated by a Dutch gangster, a criminal
mastermind by the name of Villam Holly Deare, who has
described in an article on The Guardian as being a cold,
vulgar killer who had a bit of a public persona
that was kind of almost celebrity like. Yeah, he was
(22:38):
like a comic super villain. He even had a cool
villain nickname the Nose, the Nose due to the size
of his nose. In this article by Daniel Boffi, they
explore some of his exploits. There's even a movie based
on that three kidnapping called Kidnapping Freddie Heineken. That's a
(22:58):
super creative name, I know, first of creativity. I've never
heard of this, and Anthony Hopkins is in it, sir Anthony,
excuse me, um, but yeah, they they held them for
a ransom of thirty five million Dutch guilders, and at
the time, Freddy Heineken was the most wealthy businessman in
(23:19):
the Netherlands, right, that's right, And um I did read
that They that it was paid, but they actually got
kind of busted out because one of the whoever was
babysitting them, you know whatever underboss or you know, Minion
was doing this made a fatal error. Yes, they made
a fatal flaw. One of the kidnappers and they were
(23:40):
about five guys involved with this kidnapping. One of the
kidnappers called for some Chinese takeout and accidentally gave away
their locations. So the police were able to burst into
the warehouse rescue Freddie, but they it took them a
while to catch all of the criminals, but it does
have a happy ending. Neither Freddie nor his driver were
(24:05):
killed first off, but they were left pretty shell shocked.
And I think Freddie had to have a like security
detail from for the rest of his life and chose
to and kind of gradually withdrew from the public. I
he had been, you know, the Freddie we mentioned from
the sixties who would go door to door at the bars,
you know, giving out samples. I think he kind of
(24:25):
carried that persona um later in life, and when this
and the unfortunate event happened, I think that probably shut
it down a good bit and he could withdrew and
really protected his family and their privacy from from that
point on. Yeah, and several other people involved in the
kidnapping had stories of their own. So there was a
guy in Franz Major who escaped from custody in Amsterdam
(24:50):
and then showed back up on the international radar in
Paraguay ten years later, where he owned a quote down
market restaurant Mary with three kids and one of the
other kidnappers. I appreciate that you mentioned this slow withdrawal
from public life because one of the other kidnappers, a
(25:10):
guy named cor Van hot h o U T excuse me,
he followed, He served his jail time, he got arrested,
he didn't escape, but when he got out of jail,
he would still occasionally follow Freddie Heineken around and try
to like talk trash to him. Is that weird? It
seems very smart. It seems incredibly petty too well, especially
(25:33):
since he probably had some bruiser security dudes hanging out
with him. I would think I would be a real
quick way to get, you know, get your ass kicked.
Very weird relationship, I would imagine. Did we talk about
what happened to the nose? We have not yet. The
huggable criminal, as the prosecutors enough, yeah, the prosecution. During
one of the trials, the prosecution said that he had
(25:55):
been described in the past as a new full criminal
or huggable criminal, due to his efforts to court the
media and become a celebrity figure. He even went on
a speaking tour of colleges in two thousand and twelve.
Of course he did whatever it takes. You gotta hustle. Yeah.
Seven he got sentenced to eleven years in prison for
this particular crime. He only served five. Wow. Yeah, that
(26:19):
seems pretty pretty light. But you know, he didn't stay
clean for well, I don't know. It's it's hard to
say what what what high profile crimes he did between
then and now. I'm sure he probably laid low, but
I have a feeling he still was up to no good.
But um. An article from this article we're talking about
(26:40):
from The Guardian is actually from February five of this year,
and it's about a new trial for the Nose that
has him up on charges of of murder. You have
five counts of murder, one count of manslaughter, two counts
of attempted murder, and the defense is arguing that his uh,
(27:02):
his sisters and his ex girlfriend are conspiring to make
him look bad, to stitch him up right, and he
supposedly orchestrated a hit on on her his sister UM
using his cell phone. UM, and the sister was able
to record said calls and distribute them to the authorities.
(27:23):
So UM, probably not the smartest criminal UM you know
on the block. But yeah, but part of a pretty
interesting story involving brick beer bottles. Yes, yes, that's a
roundabout way, in a roundabout way, and hollyder. As we
are recording this, the nose himself is still the subject
(27:48):
of media attention there in the Netherlands. So maybe we'll
we'll figure out what happens to the nose in a
future episode. In the meantime, I think we should end
on what happened to Freddie Heineken after the kidnapping, after
attempting to change the world with this brick bottle of beer.
Looks like I said a little while ago, he did
(28:09):
withdraw from public life. He gave up his controlling interest
in the Heineken Company, but according to this obituary from
New York Times, he still hung around and did his
kind of day to day thing right up until he
passed away. Uh. He ceded control of the board of
which he was the chairman, to his daughter Charlene. But
(28:33):
he did eventually pass away from pneumonia um at the
age of seventy eight, and that was on January of
two thousand and two, and his legacy continues on today.
Not just in beer, folks, he also had an active
role in philanthropy promoting science and the arts. He founded
(28:54):
the Doctor hp Heineken Foundation, which awards cash prizes for
pioneering work in biochemistry and biophysics, and he started another
foundation in his own name in the nineteen eighties that
awards cash prizes to the sciences and the arts. So
I think that's that's one of the most beautiful things
you can do as an individual. Has paved the way
(29:17):
for future progress. I don't know, this guy seemed like
a pretty progressive, interesting um beer tycoon, you know. I
really enjoyed the story, and he seemed like a guy
that would have been uh an interesting dude to sit
down and have a beer a hie with. Yes, yes uh,
And we hope you enjoy this episode. Didn't have time
(29:39):
to get to it today, but it reminds me of
uh fascinating guy named Richard Swert who is down in Mexico,
I believe, and has built his own island entirely of
reusable materials. I think we might have mentioned him and
weird people who built weird things. If we didn't, that
was a missed opportunity. My friend, Well luck Leanal, you
(30:01):
and I and you as well fellow Ridiculous Historians will
have more and more opportunities in the future to explore
strange stories throughout history. Thank you so much for tuning
into the show. Of course, thank you to our super producer,
Casey Pegram, and thank you to our researcher Eve's Jeff
Coote who assisted us with this episode. And of course
(30:22):
thanks to you for listening to the show. Please please
please do us a solid and write us a nice
and friendly review on iTunes or your pod catcher service
of choice. Here we go. Um. It helps the the
old iTunes algorithm, you know, pop us up in the
rankings and make people discover the show. So if you
dig it, pay it forward, friends, pay it forward. True story. Occasionally,
(30:45):
if we're if we're doing well on the show, uh,
the president of our company will walk by and pop
a couple of finger gunds at us. That always feels
so good. Um. You can also reach out to us
via social media. We're on Facebook, we have our face
spook group, the Ridiculous Historians. We're always hanging out having
a good time. We're on Twitter, We're on the Instagram.
(31:07):
Still still popping around these vision boards, man, You know,
we just said, it's a lot that goes into it.
It's a collaboration um for the Ages, and we're working
on a concept album. Those spoilers, because that's that's what
it's called. It's called it's it's called spoilers. Yeah, So
tune in for our next episode when we explore the
(31:29):
very strange story of the nineteen o four Summer Olympic Games.
See you next time.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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