How Pepsi Fought a Lawsuit over a Harrier Jet Contest Prize – By Blake Stilwell (Military.com) / Aug 23 2021
Harrier Jump Jets are pretty awesome to see in action. That vertical take-off capability was enough to make any red-blooded American student in the 1990s join the Marine Corps just to get behind the controls of one.
John Leonard wasn’t about to join the Corps to fly one. He saw a Pepsi Super Bowl commercial in 1996 that offered him the same chance for just seven million “Pepsi Points.” Leonard did what any good business student would have done: a cost-benefit analysis.
He found a loophole in the contest rules that would allow him to purchase the jet without getting millions of Pepsi Points, so that’s what he did. But when he sent in for the jet, Pepsi-Cola told the 21-year-old Leonard that it was all a joke.
Leonard didn’t see it that way.
In the mid-1990s, PepsiCo unveiled its “Pepsi Stuff” catalog, beginning with a Super Bowl commercial that featured a number of real items consumers could buy, complete with how many Pepsi Points each item cost.
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