(courtesy Pabst Blue Ribbon)

Pabst Blue Ribbon is getting an early start on Halloween this year, and it has recruited one of the most recognizable killers in movie history to help.

PBR has teamed up with Horror Inc. and the Jason Universe for a fall campaign built around Jason Voorhees, the hockey mask-wearing slasher who has spent more than four decades making Camp Crystal Lake a terrible vacation destination.

At the heart of this promotion is limited-edition PBR packaging that transforms a 12-pack into a wearable Jason Voorhees mask.

Yep, that’s right. You can actually put the beer box on your head.

The collaboration will also include Jason-themed apparel, glassware, bobbleheads, tap handles, tackers and koozies, along with events and promotions running throughout the fall.

And it’s hardly an unnatural pairing.

Pabst Blue Ribbon has its own place in American pop culture, leaning into irreverent promotions, retro imagery and merchandise that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Jason, meanwhile, has become so culturally ubiquitous that even people who have never watched a Friday the 13th movie probably recognize his battered hockey mask.

And Jason has quite a history.

The character is forever associated with the Friday the 13th franchise, which began in 1980, but one of the great pieces of horror movie trivia is that Jason isn’t actually the killer in the original film.

That distinction belongs to his mother, Pamela Voorhees, who seeks revenge against the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake after blaming their negligence for her young son’s apparent drowning years earlier.

Jason emerges as the franchise’s primary killer in Friday the 13th Part 2, released in 1981, but even then he doesn’t yet have the look that would make him a horror icon. Instead, he spends much of that movie wearing a burlap sack over his head.

The hockey mask that PBR is having fun with doesn’t arrive until 1982’s Friday the 13th Part III. Once it did, everything changed. The mask became inseparable from Jason and eventually one of the most recognizable images in horror.

Jason changed considerably along the way as well.

The early version of the character was essentially a remarkably tough human killer stalking the woods around Crystal Lake. By Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, released in 1986, he had been resurrected by lightning and transformed into the virtually indestructible supernatural monster most people now associate with the character.

Jason eventually left Crystal Lake, terrorized Manhattan, went to outer space in Jason X and faced Freddy Krueger in 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason. Through all of it, the hockey mask remained.

(Courtesy Pabst Blue Ribbon

Which explains why PBR saw an opportunity in turning a beer carton into one.

“Jason’s hockey mask is instantly recognizable, so making it wearable right off the pack was a no-brainer for us,” Robbie Barsamian, Executive Vice President of Horror, Inc., said in announcing the collaboration.

Of course, Pabst is leaning heavily into the absurdity of the idea.

“We turned a 12-pack into a Jason mask and, in the process, solved that all-too-familiar problem of figuring out a last-minute Halloween costume,” Pabst Head of Brand Strategy Zac Nadile said. “Cut out the mask, or just wear the whole box on your head.”

The promotion begins in September and continues through Friday, November 13, a date that PBR obviously wasn’t going to let go to waste.

Along the way, PBR and the Jason Universe will stage nightlife takeovers surrounding New York Comic Con from October 8 through October 11, bring Jason-themed merchandise to venues participating in The Fest 24 from October 23 through October 25, and hold Crystal Lake-themed watch parties with horror creators on October 15.

Retailers will also get in on the action with six-foot Jason displays and custom three-foot Jason Voorhees bobbleheads at select stores. A national sweepstakes will give fans a chance to win some of those oversized collectibles along with PBR and Jason merchandise.

The campaign will continue beyond Halloween with a National Hockey Mask Day promotion on November 1 before wrapping up, appropriately enough, on Friday, November 13.

The timing also gives the collaboration another pop culture hook. Interest in the Friday the 13th universe is building ahead of Crystal Lake, the upcoming Peacock series from A24 that returns to the mythology surrounding the infamous summer camp.

Beer brands are always looking for unusual ways to get people’s attention, and Pabst certainly knows its way around an over-the-top promotion. The brewery introduced a Godzilla-sized 99-pack earlier in 2026. But we’ve got to admit, turning a 12-pack into the face of one of America’s most famous movie monsters is a “killer” idea.

And if Halloween parties really do end up filled with people wearing PBR boxes on their heads this October, Pabst Brand Director Hannah Barnett has one suggestion.

Maybe consider cutting out an extra hole for drinking the beer.

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