dex14

Toddarino

I don’t remember this ad campaign, but that description sounds interesting. I’ll probably check this out.

cultshock

Yeah, I don't remember it either, but it does sound interesting.

bluetoast

I remember the commercial and the situation, it was interesting.

Count Dooku

Not sure how interesting this is to make a multi episode series versus a single feature length movie

. . . or an episode of The Simpsons.

Toddarino

It’ll be interesting to read the reactions after this show airs.

story

I remember this thread about the documentary detailing the whole situation, it does sound interesting.

Noonan

Ahh, I miss Stampy

Rob V

I remember this campaign and I heard of the kid collecting 7M caps just a few years ago. I'll watch this just to see how Pepsi weaseled out of it.

movieguru

I seem to recall a somewhat similar case my dad had told me about when I was a kid. The case must have happened in the 1960's or 70's. An auto dealership advertised a new car for sale that could be purchased for a certain number of bananas. The ad was intending the word "bananas" to be used as slang for "dollars" and not the fruit, but somebody brought actual bananas to purchase the automobile. The dealership refused to sell the car in exchange for the bananas. In the end, the dealership had to sell the car to the customer for the bananas otherwise it would have been considered false advertising.

In this case, the dealership actually had the car for sale. In the Pepsi case, they never had the military jet, nor would they ever be able to acquire one to give away. I'm also sure the military or the U.S. government wouldn't want a civilian to own a military vehicle that could be used as a weapon.

bluetoast

This was really good. As with other docuseries, it's not just about the basic facts that can be found on the Wikipedia page. It's like that McMillions series that came out in early 2020 - there's interesting characters and different avenues to go down.

Osiris3657

I was just a kid when this happened so I never heard about this until now. I found it very interesting, but also

whotony

Wasn’t there a contest giving a car away but they never stipulated the size of the car and ended up giving away a toy car?

The Cow

I remember one where the station was giving away a "Toyota", but in reality they gave away a "Toy Yoda".

And there's one about toy Hummer car vs full sized one (I don't remember this one).

Both are mentioned here:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hummer-bummer/

whotony

Yeah the Toy Yoda. That’s the one I remember

Decker

I'm two episodes in and I absolutely love it. What a fun docu-series.

IDrinkMolson

I'm not sure if this documentary was points on labels, or the caps one, but when the label campaign was going on my brother-in-law was a truck driver for a company that made the 2 liter bottles for local distributors. And they had rolls of labels. He gave one of his nephews a whole roll, and he got all kinds of Pepsi Stuff. The main thing he wanted was the bike. And 30-something old me was like, I want a roll of labels...

I might still have a t-shirt around here somewhere. We were big into Nascar at the time. And after the race on the way out we would grab a bunch of points from bottles laying around.

I remember someone wanted the jet, but don't remember a lawsuit. I'll probably check this out at some point.

Decker

Thought this was great. The computer de-aging was a fantastic tool and it worked surprisingly well. And of course the "celebrity" who shows up half way through takes the whole thing to a surreal level.
Agree the end is a bit of a let-down but I still enjoyed the ride.

Neil M.

This was a lot of fun but I do think it could have been cut down a little bit or been edited a little more tightly. I think this would make a great movie.

I have some thoughts on the story. I think John Leonard is a nice guy but I do think he's not being 100% genuine. I have no doubt that he wanted a jet but I also don't believe that he thought that Pepsi was making a legit offer. Todd certainly knew it was at best a false advertising case. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is why you would call the Pentagon to see if it was legal to own a jet but you wouldn't call Pepsi to see if they actually had a jet to give away. When he saw that the catalogue didn't have the jet in it, he should have realized that it was not a legit offer. They act like he's a kid but he was 20 years old.

I like David vs Goliath stories but in the end, I think this one ended the right way. He should have taken the settlement and Pepsi would have learned a lesson. Instead, he got greedy and won nothing, and Pepsi learned a lesson. I think the Phillipines story is much more egregious and damning than this one.

And this story proves that Avenatti was always a scumbag and asshole.

jpcamb

This was somewhat surreal and a bit of a letdown in the end that it amounted to nothing. It was fun but for sure could have been cut down to an hour and a half or less and not across 4 episodes. It's weird I recall the commercial but nothing about the lawsuit or story itself. Pretty mindboggling that they gave away Pepsi points for so cheap. Wish the kid had made out a little better or had taken the initial offer. Hopefully, he wrote a book and got more than documentary money for the whole thing or at least did some kind of speaking engagements.

story

We wrapped this up as a family last night and we all liked it. I think it could have been tighter but that's okay. I don't really remember much about this and I kept myself from looking up "the ending" so I could go along for the ride. I'm glad Todd and John picked each other and I was not expecting the episode 3 surprise "celebrity" to be part of this. I don't know if John really thinks Pepsi should have given him a jet. I do think Todd knows the truth that it was false advertising and was not handled well by Pepsi. They continued to not handle it well, either. That judge was a joke. I kind of want to spend a day with Todd listening to stories now.

MLBFan24

Great documentary. Very fun, humorous editing.

stingermck

Could have easily been an hour long and still made the point, but it was a fun watch.

John Galt

I haven't seen this documentary but remember the ad campaign clearly. I would have been 14 when they rolled it out. We were living in a neighborhood with a ton of new construction, so we did what any 14 year old boy does in that scenario....we spent the evenings and weekends roaming through all the houses being built collecting scrap wood and discarded tools to build a fort in the woods. We also went through the trash piles trying to find as many promotional freebies as we could (Marlboro miles, McDonalds Monopoly pieces, Free Coke bottlecaps, etc). It was quite lucrative for a 14 year old. We'd typically find enough coupons in one evening to piecemeal at least a free meal. I'm talking stacks of free fries, free sodas, free large sandwiches, free ice cream, etc. So when Pepsi ran this promotion, we requested the catalog and started collecting the bottlecaps. We'd all have something circled that we wanted to buy with our bottlecaps and would joke about putting enough together to get the Harrier Jet. My recollection is that almost everything in there was a bunch of Pepsi branded (what I would today call) crap. I ended up sending out for the hat bill shaper (or whatever it was called), which was brand new at the time, and never even received it.

MLBFan24

Funny enough, after all the debates back and forth, the commercial said “Harrier Fighter”.

Nowhere did it say “jet”.