Aspiring Dictators Drink Pepsi

The amusing case of the day is Leonard v. Pepsico Inc. (88 F. Supp. 2d 116 )

In 1996 Pepsi launched a new ad campaign called "Get Stuff." The idea was to collect "Pepsi Points" from various pepsi products and redeem them for merchandise bearing the pepsi logo. To publicize their new promotion, pepsi produced an entertaining commercial that featured some of the products and the number of points required to acquire the item. The commercial ended with a kid climbing out of a Harrier Jet (featured in the movie True Lies) captioned with: "7,000,000 Points." Clearly, this item was not actually offered as part of the promotion. Nevertheless, somebody scraped together the points and cash (1 pepsi point = 10 cents) and tried to make Pepsico pay up.

Amusing in its own right, but I actually remember this commercial and hearing about this suit. Also fun to consider: to acquire the requisite points just by drinking pepsi, you'd have to drink 190 cans a day for 100 years. That's why Leonard decided to take the shortcut. At a dime per point, the commercial put the cost of the jet at $700,000. That's quite a bargain considering the military typically pays $23 million per plane.

UPDATE: Professor Rougeau provided a link today in class where you can view this commercial. Pepsi actually altered the commercial sometime after the lawsuit, raising the number of Pepsi Points required for a Harrier from 7,000,000 to 700,000,000. That puts the jet's pricetag at $70 million... no longer a bargain.