Who Approved These?

There are some bottle caps where you look at them and immediately want to know the story behind them. These are definitely one of those. After doing some digging, they’re from Topless, a Russian drinks brand produced by the Kaliningrad Food Plant. The company even registered TOPLESS as a trademark back in 2005, so they were pretty committed to the idea.

FYI these weren’t originally blurred, I am strong believer in not objectifying women (6’3 btw) but also big ally of the free the nipple movement. so I’m not sure what the correct protocol is here.

There seems to have been a whole series of them, with different women photographed on each bottle cap and numbers printed around the edge. It’s basically a collectible series of topless women stuck on top of bottles, which is a respectable marketing strategy.

I imagine how this idea actually came about. Somewhere in a beer factory in Kaliningrad, I like to think there was a board of directors sitting around a table trying to work out how to sell more beer. Someone asks how they get more guys buying it, and eventually someone just says, “Why don’t we put topless women on the bottle caps?” Everyone looks around the table. Genius. Meeting over. Get them printed.

Obviously I have no evidence of this, but at some point someone genuinely had to pitch this idea and someone else had to approve it. Then they went even further and made loads of different ones, essentially giving people a reason to keep buying them to see which one they got next. They’re about as unsubtle as advertising gets, and I love that.