Garage Beer's Jason Kelce Monster Cards Sold Out in 24 Hours

Garage Beer thinks the scariest thing in football is the parking lot.

The light beer brand teamed up with Kingsford for "Terrors of the Tailgate," a Halloween-style campaign that puts six tailgate archetypes on limited-run trading cards.

Co-owner Jason Kelce leads the roster as the "King of the Tailgate."

Five more characters (a.k.a. "Terrors"), each drawn from habits seen in stadium lots, round out the lineup:

• The Table Smasher
• The Face Paint Fanatic
• The Cooler Raider
• The Parking Lot Prophet
• Kingsford's The Flamekeeper

Packs went up at 10 a.m. ET on Friday at $5.99 each, and within 90 minutes, Garage Beer posted that only 50 were left.

The brand then posted on X the next day that the packs were all sold out.

"The '90s had a grip on fall like no other era," Garage Beer Founder and CEO Andy Sauer said in a press release.

"We wanted to bring all of that nostalgia together with 'Terrors of the Tailgate' and have some fun with the characters and traditions that make football season what it is."

Sauer also framed the charcoal partner as a tailgate requirement, not a sponsor line.

"If you're not grilling or drinking, you're probably not tailgating."

The partnership puts charcoal and beer in the same setup, so a fan who stocks one has a reason to reach for the other.

Co-branding sticks when two products already show up in the same hour of the same day.

Kelce Leads the Monster Hunt

Garage Beer sets up stadium parking lots as hunting grounds, with fans cast as the creatures.

The campaign's hero spot starts inside a lab, where a mad scientist and his monster (played by Kelce) watch tailgaters in action on a small TV.

One by one, they use the cards to make tailgate monsters out of fans, running through the full lineup.

The ad closes by asking fans to collect the full set at drinkgaragebeer.com.

The drop follows Garage Beer's stunt with Liquid Death, which asked fans to donate urine to cool AI data centers.

While the stunt was raunchy and news-driven, the brand's latest effort takes a more nostalgic route tied to the football calendar.

Both keep Kelce up front and the humor loud.

Garage Beer wants an identity that's playful and unserious, with one of football's biggest names attached.

One stunt a month, both handled in-house, is a real pace for a beer brand this young.

Tailgaters Already Dress the Part

To Garage Beer's benefit, fans were already playing tailgate characters long before it even named them.

Hormel Foods' 2022 tailgating survey found that 29% call grill master the best job at a tailgate, ahead of side dish taster at 25% and game hype man at 23%.

Fans already sort themselves into these roles, so a set of named characters gives them something easy to claim and post.

The campaign offers three lessons for anyone running a collectible drop:

• Give every fan a role: Named archetypes like the Cooler Raider let audiences pick a character they resonate with.
• Hand a partner one character: Kingsford's Flamekeeper gave the partnering brand a bigger role in the campaign.
• Price the collectible low: A $5.99 pack makes a limited product an easy purchase during a season-long push.

Naming behavior fans already perform costs less than inventing a mascot, and it gives a brand partnership something that both sides can own.

Our Take: Which Terror Will Fans Claim First?

Every stadium parking lot has a guy who went through a folding table, and his friends still tell the story.

We think the Table Smasher gets claimed first because the story is already out there, and somebody always gets tagged in it.

Garage Beer gets a cheap read on which persona people want attached to their name, and this data is worth more than the $5.99.

A $5.99 paper product clearing in a day says the print run was small, not that the demand was enormous.

The cards may matter most to Kingsford, which got a character, a grill mention, and a reason to sit next to a beer in the same cart.

Looking to build a campaign that fans want to collect? Explore these top branding agencies in our directory.