Girl on the Moon looms large on Miller High Life's new packaging

The old Miller High Life bottles may have reminded you of your wood-paneled basement back in the 1970s, but the new design, rolled out today, hearkens even further back. The Girl on the Moon icon, introduced with the brand in 1903, has been downplayed in recent years, but now she takes up one side of the 12-pack's design. The brand has also opted for a retro, streamlined look, which is all the rage in packaging right now. As Peter Clarke, CEO and founder of Product Ventures, noted in a recent Brandweek interview, Kraft's Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies also exhibited this "almost hyperclean" look in a Target-only rollout last year. If anything, it's a different direction from High Life's blaze orange can and deer-laden packaging from 2007, which was designed to give hunters something to get buzzed on while they were shooting at things. Seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

Beer and exercise finally join forces in Miller's MGD iPhone app

Because every athlete knows (or should know) that beer is the cornerstone of any training regimen, Miller has introduced an iPhone app called the MGD Pedometer 64 that lets you track the amount of calories you're burning while doing cardio. The app is related to MGD 64, a brew that clocks in at 64 calories, which is roughly the amount the average person would burn by running about half a mile at a decent speed. Of course, there's a social-media function as well: You and your Facebook friends can try to walk up Mount Everest 64 times (a mere 704,000 steps) or burn the 152,896 calories you'd ingest from 64 pizzas. While doing your calculations, you may decide that drinking water rather than MGD 64 will save you even more calories, or you may discover that all that extra exercise makes you extra hungry, prompting you to eat even more, in which case you may want to bag the whole thing, get a six-pack of Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre beer, accept the fact that you have a beer gut, and call it a day.

—Posted by Todd Wasserman

Miller Lite knows that every guy's true life partner is cheap beer

Just as surely as the diet and exercise ads hit with full force, the new year brings out droves of online dating service commercials starring a bunch of adorable faux fairy-tale couples. They're Soul Mates, get it? And if it hadn't been for eHarmony, Match.com or Chemistry, et al, they never would've found The One. The period between Christmas, New Year and Valentine's Day is especially packed with these smarmy testimonials, making this Miller Lite ad as fresh as an early spring breeze. Not only is it an eHarmony döppelganger in look and tone (I did a double-take when I realized it wasn't peddling a monthly membership), it's perfectly executed. Instead of being hopelessly devoted to his brunette beauty, it turns out the guy loves his beer above all else. The look on his face says he can't understand why that's a problem. Girlfriend sees it differently, storming off and leaving him with just his bottle of brew. Happy ending for her? She got rid of the lunkhead. For him? He's stuck with Miller Lite. Oh well, there's always the Internet.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Beer and sausage: good on their own, so much better together

Mmm. Beer sausage. Apparently the only thing better than eating some sausage and then swigging a beer is putting the beer inside the sausage. At least, this is the premise behind Hillshire Farms' new Miller High Life Beer Brats. The product, announced on Monday, "contains the delicious flavor of brats cooked in beer ... prepared in only a fraction of the time," according to the company's press release, titled "B.Y.O.B." ("Bring your own brat"). The beer brat and the new hot-and-spicy Italian-style sausage will be featured in a new TV commercial in May, and at GoMeat.com, which offers recipes from Mama's kitchen and $5 off DVD coupons. They will also be featured as part of the Char-Broil Tour. The company will also be hitting sports festivals and events through November with cooking tips and free samples. The sausages better be careful in Milwaukee, though, where there is a history of violence directed at spicy meats.

—Posted by Kenneth Hein