When Hank Hill bring personalized beer mugs to the gang, it can become a source of tension when people use each other’s mugs.
Having personalized gear in their bar set gives people a sense of belonging, a place of permanence within the ritual of pouring a drink with friends. Over the last 50 years as beer drinking moved out of the public house and into our homes, people have been looking to recreate the experience of their own barstool and drinking buddies which is at the heart of the personalization trends.
This ritualistic experience is only part of the larger changes enacted as the public spread out into decentralized subburbs, and is not necessesarily easily recreated through any bar set. To be sure, privileged people built bars in their home long before the suburbs sprawled, but as the upwardly-mobile working class moved further from urban hubs, beer drinkers came along looking for a place to drink.
Instead of the corner pub to meet with neighbors, new homeowners were increasingly storing canned beer from the supermarket in their refrigerators, and new social drinking opportunities started to center around a new meeting place - the television. (It might also be why Cheers was such a popular TV series; a sitcom of familiar characters reenacting their friendship bonded by a common place - the neighborhood pub). Likewise in this scene from King of the Hill, Hank shares a beer with his friends and neighbors, all of whom are looking for something to show they belong together around the bar.
