In Texas at least "Malt Liquor" was always malt liquor and beers with higher alcohol content were still "beer" (or ale). The differences were the nature of the license (and the "local option" status) required to sell them. Malt liquor was the quintessential niche market product, at the end of the cooler in convenience stores, and except for a few (Micky's plus a Schlitz product) almost always available only in big bottles (and these days, some "Tall Boy" type cans).

Does anyone recall the year when Schlitz introduced the original "Tall Boy"? In Texas, it must have been about 1955, but introduction must have been based on the laws of individual states which also regulated the size of beer containers. In Texas, before the Tall Boy, beer (and ML) could only be sold in 12 ounce or 32 ounce containers. Was Micky's the first "Pull tab"?

By 1970 or so, the local Owens Illinois glass plant had converted its total production to disposable beer bottles, and the old returnables quickly disappeared. We completed our first "Convention Center" here in 1971. I was appointed to the Board by the Mayor. The Board's Chair was a former Mayor, soon to retire as general manager of the local "Owenized" glass plant. The Convention Center only sold beer in bottles (disposable) since the nearest can factory was up on the Southside of Fort Worth, next door to what had been anew Carling's Brewery, the first "continuous run" brewing operation in the US. Black Label was so disdained that the plant was soon paying exhorbitant sewer charges because it had to pump over-production down the drain. Quickly, Miller had purchased the brewery, retooled to normal brewing, and used it as a test plant for the new "Lite", which soon became the #1 seller in Texas, dethroning such perennial leaders as Lone Star and Pearl, and once quite popular Schlitz (brewed in Longview, TX, and only kept afloat here by its "Old Milwaukee" down-price brand, very popular on draught in the hundreds of ethnic "Lodge Halls" around the state).

For several years, the newly locally distributed Coors "Banquet" and Miller "Lite" were Texas market leaders. Between refrigerated shipment and the local distributor, Cowboy Hall of Famer, Bob Lily and his distribution manager, ex-Cowboy George Andre', Coors had a good run of popularity here, although local glass plant and General Tire workers were able to keep it out of some coolers because of its non-union production. While in college, we would haul whisk(e)y and vodka to dry counties in far West Texas for illegal sale, then fill up the trunk with Coors, available as far down as Lubbock, to carry back to Austin, where it wasa cult favorite. Of course, back then, "Shiner" was only popular in the few counties around the brewery in Shiner, disdained elsewhere, and "Corona" was the most downscale of Mexican beers, little more than a generic, found in cheap Mexican saloons/whorehouses and on one of the Mexican airlines.