We here at Hop Talk don’t talk much about Heineken. It’s primarily one of those “if you don’t have something nice to say” situations.
Oh, we’ve nothing personally against Heineken. It’s just that millions of gallons of it are imported to the U.S. every year and it is overpriced. Further, it doesn’t make that long transatlantic jouney very well, because every single bottle of it we’ve ever had has been skunked. Every. Single. One.
Recently I was at a function at a business conference where the open bar offered Budweiser, Coors Light, and Heineken. I considered just having water, but opted for the Bud. At least I knew it would be fairly fresh. Someone nearby had a Heineken and, from five feet away, I could smell that it had turned.
It was with some interest that we noticed the following item: Heineken Beer Bottle Bricks.
Apparently, Freddy Heineken, whose family lost and regained control of the brewery and who was at its helm while it became a worldwide brand, had a brainstorm while strolling on a garbage-strewn beach in the Caribbean. 
(Jamaica, Curaçao, or some other island. There seems to be some contention as to which it was.) As the story goes, the islanders would simply discard the bottles after they were finished with them. At the time this is supposed to have happened, somewhere around 1960 or so, the usual practice was to return the bottles for refilling. But, considering how far away the island was from the Netherlands, it wasn’t worth it and so they were discarded.
Something of a philanthropist, Freddy was weighing the need for affordable building materials and apparently put two-and-two together. The idea was to make squared bottles that, after the contents were consumed, could be used as cheap bricks. Glass and air make excellent insulators, and the neck of the bottle fit into an indentation in the bottom. They were dubbed “world bottles”, or “WOBOs” for short.
The idea, though, never took off. Except for a little shack built on the Heineken estate, nothing was ever built of them. The board of directors apparently rejected the idea of the "World Beer" bottle.
A shame, really. It's probably not the best idea for a building material, although if you filled them with dirt it might not be bad. It would certainly make shipping and storage more efficient, though. Take a look in a case of beer. See all that empty space between the round bottles? How much less space could 24 beers take up—or, better, how many more bottles could you fit in the same space—if they were square?
Why do you think square watermelons are so popular in Japan? They take up less space and they can do it. Think of how much easier it would be to stack bottles in your refrigerator.
Okay, so, granted, I wouldn't want the bottles with any actual Heineken in them.
(See also: BBC obituary, Wikipedia)
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