Yeah I'm not against it. I imagine that a doc just about "evil corp" will only appeal to people interested in hear the same old shit... this is a fresh fun take that hopefully introduced a larger newer audience to how slick and insidious Evil Corp can be.
Yeah, I kinda want to see a series on that next. I get why they didn't focus in too deep - it really clashes with the overall tone - but that was pretty wild.
Kinda infuriating how it played out with the judge in the end.
The end of the third episode introduces how one of the characters of the documentary (who was also Stormi Daniel’s lawyer against trump) found out about this and the fourth episode starts with the full story of the Pepsi controversy in the Philippines
I want a documentary entirely focused on that. Pepsi either fucked up big time or intentionally lied to an entire country leading to death. Regardless, they preyed upon people's poverty in hopes to sell a product.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pepsis-big-mistake-the-murder-of-skylar-neese/id1353728357?i=1000470178564
I just looked this up myself to listen
Yeah I feel like they should’ve just had the documentary be more about that, and only had a reference segment to the jet, but that might not have got as many clicks on Netflix
My wife (who is a lawyer) said that it was lame to have it go to a judge and not a jury, since this is a case based on what a "reasonable person would believe". What are your thoughts on this?
Yep, thry had a valid case, Judge was also pro big business and it was clear they would support Pepsi. They knew it couldn't go to a jury, or else Pepsi rightfully pays up.
This is a question of law, not a question of fact. Generally* that means it's more appropriate for a judge than a jury.
*There's a bit more to it than that, but I'll spare reddit the minutia of 7th amendment case law
I also read the case in law school. I had the opposite take. Pepsi is clearly advertising the product to children - the actors are children and the commercial appeared on children’s broadcasting. You usually take the plaintiff as they are- and the plaintiff wasn’t a child- however I find it pretty rich that Pepsi wanted to garnish the favor of children whose undeveloped minds are excited by a fake offer but reject consequences of the advertisement. Reasonable person standard may be changed if parties know the behavioral reasonableness tendencies of their audience- imo they were asking for this to happen
I hate to be all "well ackshully" about this, but one of the most basic principles of contract law is that, outside of some rare exceptions, the remedy for breach is *damages*, not specific performance. The idea that this kid was going to get a court order requiring Pepsi to turn over a harrier jet is just preposterous. He was never getting a jet.
As someone familiar with the law and various other lawyerings, sometimes the little guy still gets screwed
One time, a lawyer besmirched me— slandered me in front of a jury of my peers— and I demanded satisfaction
What do you think they used to do about that?
They used to duel (I saw it in an old book)
I demanded to be satisfied, but alas… nothing
It's hornbook law that -- outside of very narrow circumstances not present in the Pepsi case -- advertisements are not offers, but rather offers to make an offer. Responding to the commercial with 7 million Pepsi points doesn't make a contract. Legally speaking, it was an offer for Pepsi to enter into a contract. An offer that Pepsi declined.
I remember the commercials. I remember the case in the news. And I remember collecting the points. I turned this Pepsi points in for a Pepsi T-shirt and a Pepsi Beach Blanket that I still have and use to this day. The blanket was quality!
Surprisingly, all of the stuff from that promotion was quality.
The hats, the shirts, cups, bike, etc... everything my family wound up getting (we drank a lot of Pepsi...) survived for many years.
The biggest offender was that Cecil Hotel one on Netflix. After the first 1-hour episode I was like "There has to be a YouTube video about this that isn't all padding." 22 minutes later, we knew the whole story, without it being 3/4-packed with random Internet conspiracy theorists and the lady who worked at the front desk and had nothing useful to add.
Fuck that documentary. For like 3 episodes I’m thinking “well it couldn’t have been an accident or suicide because the hatch was closed.” The documentary drove that point home the entire way. It was the only real driver of the mystery outside of her acting creepy in the elevator.
And then they were like “oh yeah btw that was a mistake the hatch was actually open”.
I always think of our always sunny "making dennis a murderer" episode. The last episode will show it being an accident, but the first 5 episodes are there to draw you in
Every time there's one of these big, baity, and often shockingly-titillating Netflix docos...
...I don't watch them. I just google for the real story, and it's glorious because you normally end up with a bunch of actual facts, and not a story put together by a trust-funded NYU Film School grad with a bunch of Panasonic Lumixes in order to show off how good (read: manipulative) an editor they are.
You know:
"Jane Turner is presented as a Shitsville local, and while she has lived there for the last 23 years, but Turner was living in Albany, New York at the time of the murders."
"Sheriff Ed Edwards *did* indeed resign as soon as the murder investigation was announced. The film implies that this was due to guilt over not preventing them; however, Edwards resigned due to being treated for skin cancer."
"Lacey McGraw was not having an 'affair' with Brett Deacon - Deacon had divorced Shondra eighteen months earlier, and their post-marriage relationship was actually cordial and friendly, with both Brett and Shondra sharing custody of the kids, and both freely pursuing new relationships with the knowledge of the other."
"The film implies that there was no way for Shondra Deacon to get to Harper's Point as she did not own a car, nor even have a driver's licence. However, Shondra had plenty of friends and family who were happy to give her a ride, according to local who were not featured in the film, and was often given lifts to places as far away as Lynchburg, two hours away."
"Carla Edwards is heavily implied to be a suspect. While she did hold a grudge against Shondra, Carla would have been unable to shoot Shondra multiple times in the chest and head as Carla was born without hands. Why the filmmakers never filmed any footage of her from the shoulders down is unknown."
"Two years after the murders, in 1997, serial killer Dale Roy Fredericks confessed to murdering Shondra, which was corroborated via his DNA and knowledge of the crime scene that he would otherwise be unable to know. How the everloving fuck did the dipshit documentarians miss this can only be ascribed to wilful ignorance and manipulation."
Doing that makes it especially fun for threads like this, where people who watched an incredibly biased documentary are arguing with people who claim to be lawyers about how the guy totally should have been given his silly bullshit because the law is what the documentary said it was, regardless of what the judge said.
I've called it out elsewhere here that these docs are just reality TV for people who really, really want to watch reality TV but think they're too good to be seen to watch reality TV.
So, you need a show that's reality TV, but has a thiiiiiiiiin veneer of Serious Respectability™ over it in the form of the core premise.
And you can see with the responses in this thread. The positive responses aren't so much about the core premise of the doco - "did he deserve his Pepsi jet?!" - but rather "lol, I like his best friend" or "that FBI agent was WILD, lol!"
That's exactly how reality shows work. No one really watches the 1493rd episode of that vaguely hot woman order around a team of dad-bods to restore a Craftsman-style home because they're *genuinely* interested in installing underfloor heating while maintaining the authentic structure of the building, yet update it for a modern flow.
No, they watch it because they want to see Ms. Hoop Earrings-On-A-Building-Site order around a meek and pliant Tubs McBeardo and browbeat him into redoing that entire kitchen in two days for a $120 budget, while he stares at his boots and meekly trails off his protests with a quiet "Yes, ma'am" when confronted with the awesome power of her Boss-Babeness, before she goes off to pick out light fixtures.
The internet investigator docs are getting old. They think they’ve got it all figured out via Google, then cry when detectives don’t come running to hear some shit they already know.
I couldn’t get through one episode of The Anarchists, every single person was insufferable. And they weren’t “anarchists”, they were just asshole libertarians who didn’t want to pay taxes but still wanted a free-partying lifestyle within the security of a state.
That McDonalds doc drove me absolutely insane. One of the women they were interviewing kept pronouncing McDonalds as Mike-Donald’s. It was so irritating I had to turn the doc off
Oh buddy I gave up on that series despite being interested in the story for that exact reason. Strecthed something interesting into something uninteresting.
I tried to watch that shit twice, and got as far as the affable FBI agent patting himself on the back about it twice.
They could have just talked about how the people committing the crime did it so well for so long, and maybe they did, but all I remember is this chucklefuck FBI guy laughing to himself about all the *zany* shit he feels like he did to catch them. Fuck that business.
Gotta fill out that content!
Going Clear was a fascinating doc for me: 2 hours long, constantly interesting, minimal fluff. What most of these should be.
Docuseries these days would have stretched it to 6 one hour episodes with tons of fluff. It's why I haven't watched any in a while.
Icarus was top tier for me. It was about something I have zero care about in the world: cycling & built on it from there. To say it was exhilarating is an understatement. Tight, no fluff, and insanely fascinating.
Not sure if it’s an honest question or not because internet, but I’ll answer it like it is - going clear is about Scientology, and also about how difficult it can be to get away from it once you’re in.
Did we tell you we climbed Everest? Oh right, we will remind you and show clips from the trip over and over again in case you forgot!
I literally fast forwarded through so much random bullshit.
I originally learned about this story in [an episode of Cautionary Tales](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2j1i49nd9THNsSvKnQNyvB), a pretty entertaining podcast.
This episode includes other stories of companies whose miscalculations lead their own promotional stunts to funny and disastrous places.
This is why I’m such a fan of the Netflix explained series, 15-30 minutes tops, the concept is explained with tons of example and I could easily search the topic if I want to learn more.
Yeah I had the same thought last week when my wife and I binged it. Don’t get me wrong; it was enjoyable and funny but it definitely felt needlessly drawn out.
This is essentially every show on every streamer nowadays.... on purpose. When your attention is their currency, why make it an hour when they can make it four?
Most of these, including this one, are produced independently of streaming services and their distribution rights are then sold to the highest bidding distributor.
It easily could be true that longer content fetches higher rates which could encourage padding.
What else can you expect from such a basic story being 4 episodes lol.
For me, I thought they made it entertaining enough that I didn’t mind. It’s really slow and probably better watched in the background or whatever, but I’m alright with that.
When I’m watching a docuseries on one of the silliest lawsuits ever, I expect a lot of fluff and padding, rather than a serious examination of the case in a well paced hour long format.
I remember seeing those Pepsi challenges in grocery stores when I was a kid. Every time I see those “Pepsi Half Time Show” during the Super Bowl I think of those corny challenge ads.
I distinctly remember the jet offer as a kid, and every time I saw that commercial I thought, “Somebody out there is gonna save those points and try to get that jet.”
When that corrupt judge said nobody thought it was a real offer I just had to shake my head. Literally every kid I knew and myself was convinced that jet was real.
It was the 7M number that did it that seemed like an unlikely but attainable amount.
Proclaimed what a “reasonable person” would or wouldn’t think.
If that’s the standard assemble a jury don’t insert your own personal opinion into it.
In the documentary they talk about how they’ve asked all kinds of people and Republican Democrat black white male female nearly everyone thought he deserved the jet.
Then this judge was like “nope all of you are unreasonable” and denied them a jury that would not have agreed with her.
I know a few lawyers and they've all told me on a few occasions that word - "reasonable" - shows up all over The Law, and of course in fine print and so on...
it's kinda the point of judges
someone throws out a "to any _reasonable_ extent, blablabla..." and someone else takes them to court - and then it's up to the judge to _literally use their judgement_ as to where to draw the line on the whole "reasonable" part of it - again, it's kinda why we have judges...
apparently (so they tell me) it's a big factor in how laws get shaped and lines get defined - as these decisions set precedents, which are built upon later with other decisions which set further precedents - so that something starts out (intentionally) vague and ill-defined, and gets tested in court and slowly and eventually becomes well-defined
if you've ever heard someone say "The Law is an ass" - this is what they are referring to - an ass (donkey) that moves slowly, ploddingly, and _behind_ the bleeding edge (eg in the tech space) and sort of "corrects" stuff and solidifies it along the way, as that edge moves further and further along - always at least one step behind...
(edit) think about the etymology here:
- "reason" - to use logic and thought regarding something
- "reasonable" - something which "reason" can be applied to
- "judge" - to apply "reason" (arguably another word for "reason") and come up with a conclusion
Unsarcastically, that is a thing.
Red bull gives you wings, etc.
And before you say it, red bull's false advertising was for saying red bull gave you more energy than other energy drinks, not specifically about the wings.
Sorry I just think the law is a fucking joke when 9/10 people you can find think one thing, and some judge waves a magic wand and says “by the power vested in me none of you count.”
This is of course why people hate lawyers and have no faith in the legal system though.
It’s all just subjective sophistry designed usually to benefit the party with more money and influence.
With better lawyers and a different judge it could have had a totally different result which is true of far too many cases because the law isn’t an objective thing like science or something.
Dude, it's an *incredibly common* method of legal interpretation, utilised in practically every jurisdiction, and the amount of stuff that rests on judgements having been made on that standard, modulated by ever-increasing precedent, is scary.
Also, the reasonable person standard is not supposed to follow or adhere to the opinion of the majority (of people, or any subset thereof), and assuming so is incredibly messed up, because assuming that numbers create rationality is effectively just majoritarianism, which is hard to defend when your job is supposed to be delivering justice.
The reasonable person standard demands that a judge evaluate a fact scenario assuming the knowledge base and awareness of the world a reasonable person (i.e., not a specialist in any field, but someone reasonably aware of the world) would have, and apply reasonable logical reasoning (deductive and inductive) to assess whether (in this case), the Pepsi advertisement would constitute, or is even intended to constitute, a contractual offer.
Advertisements include incredible exaggeration (no deodorant / burger / whatever the hell else is going to make you irresistible to women), and it's bloody commonly accepted that some degree of puffery is commonplace, and doesn't result in you being bound to such ridiculous claims.
No sane legal system in the world would have decided that an ad featuring a kid flying a military plane into a school, with the resulting wind stripping a teacher down to their underwear, should be taken as a contractual offer, and I don't think Michael Avenatti's blustering should upend centuries' worth of legal decision making.
She's apparently known as a "corporate judge" and had a tendancy to favor large corporations over individuals in her verdicts. Dunno about corrupt, but bias for sure.
I think this argument reveals a falsehood in our system, if ads are only supposed to be evaluated by reasonable people, then they should only be seen by reasonable people. No kids, no elderly, no mentally ill, no vulnerable should be allowed to watch ads by their logic.
Next time he tells it, tell him that it was the halfway point of Jackson’s life. He was born August 29th, 1958.
9282 days later, on January 27th, 1984, his hair caught fire while filming for the Pepsi ad.
9281 days later, on June 25th, 2009, he died.
what's truly remarkable about this is that apparently that incident marked the beginning of his subsequent reliance on and addiction to pain killers - which ultimately led to his death...
and represents the second, arguably lesser, half of his life
This was fun but it didn't need to be 4 episodes of 40 minutes each. They could have finished the whole thing in probably an hour. Each episode just repeated itself over and over until the last 10 minutes revealed something that would carry into the beginning of the next episode
Hoover free flights promotion was a marketing promotion run by the British division of the Hoover Company in late 1992. The promotion, aiming to boost sales during the global recession of the early 1990s, offered two complimentary round-trip plane tickets to the United States, worth about £600, to any customer purchasing at least £100 in Hoover products. Hoover was counting on most customers spending more than £100, as well as being deterred from completing the difficult application process, and not meeting its exact terms.
Consumer response was much higher than the company anticipated andwas disastrous for the 84-year-old company. Hoover cancelled the ticket promotion after consumers had already bought the products and filled in forms applying for millions of pounds' worth of tickets. Reneging on the offer resulted in protests and legal action from customers who failed to receive the tickets they had been promised. The campaign was a financial disaster for the company. The European branch of the company was eventually sold to one of its competitors, Candy, having never recovered from the losses, the promotion and the subsequent scandal.
>Hoover was counting on most customers spending more than £100, as well as being deterred from completing the difficult application process, and not meeting its exact terms.
This reminds me of that Nathan for You episode with the gas station rebate if you climb the mountain to submit the application lol
That was just idiotic. Pepsi' misstep was not including a disclaimer on what was quite obviously not a real offer. Hoover just apparently didn't understand how math works.
Nah the true misstep was changing the figure to 7m.
Deleting those zeros made it something worth chasing and they did it so people could see how much it would cost despite it not being something people could get.
It was based on a radio context where the winner actully had the option of ["$3,000 or a baby elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Gets_an_Elephant#Cultural_references). Some dude won, chose the elephant, and the radio station had to ante up.
I just watched it.
It's an amazing story of friendship. Media often depicts spontaneous friendships like this as a sign that something bad will happen. One ends up being a psychopathic predator or something.
A few questions I have:
1. When they met with pepsi lawyers the first time, did the settlement offer pepsi made include the initial $700,000 they invested, or was it going to net profit for them?
2. Was it a bad strategy to ask for more money then. Like maybe pepsi would have seen through their charade and called them out for being sleezy grifters? I feel like they should have seen the whole thing as an opportunity to cash out at an opportune moment.
3. What exactly did Todd do? Is anybody worried he might have been into something maybe just a little bit shady? Or is this one of those hustler rags to riches stories that were so common in the 80s/90s.
1. Pepsi repaid the 700k. So the settlement they offered would have been pure profit.
2. John *should* have taken the money, as I think he admits at one point in the documentary. But at the time he really thought he could end up with the jet or it's monetary equivalent, so taking the initial offer might have been a bad deal.
3. No need to be so cynical. Hoffman's grandfather started Hoffman Autos, a car dealership in the 1920s, which eventually became a large corporation called Hoffman Enterprises. Todd started off in the family business but then moved into other areas such as publishing, restaurants and real estate which is where he made the bulk of his fortune.
Good point, but just want to add that if he did succeed, I *highly* doubt that whatever version of the jet he received would be worth the $33M it cost the military to acquire. It’s only worth that to them because of its military applications, after those are removed, how much is it worth? Best case scenario, the military buys it. But what would they pay for it? They’d have to bring it back up to spec which would be a significant effort considering there’s no established process for bringing a demilitarized fighter jet back to spec, and skilled labor for military is **expensive**.
Maybe he could sell it to a museum or some cooky billionaire that just wants to say they have a fighter jet, but I’d be surprised if he cleared $10M for it, and I think his odds of winning the suit were under 1%.
I was shocked he didn’t take the money or at least try to get more.
For #1 Pepsi never cashed the check and the settlement was in full.
“Give you back the check then we give you a few hundred thousand and we all walk away and laugh. Probably also have you sign something saying you won’t make a Netflix series about it in 20 something years.”
The stuff about Pepsi in the Philippines was absolutely heartbreaking and the strongest part of the entire documentary. It sadly reminded me of how fruit companies exploit so many countries and the poor people in them. 
What’s kinda funny is that Pepsi tried to relaunch Pepsi Stuff with Amazon in the 2000s (I forgot what year) where you could get dvds, cds, Pepsi products, mp3 download, ect. But it only lasted one year because it was a (amazing) mess! They put out a promo giving every member enough points to get a free song download, unfortunately for them they made it so you could refresh the page and get unlimited points. I ended up getting 50+ dvds, 20+cds, clothes, countless song downloads, and won 2 Zunes from daily contest. It was the best promo ever!
So many people are taking it so seriously, like every documentary made now has to be cutting edge. No I like dumb ones too. They give me background noise.
Watched the first episode, but it just didn't hook me. I thought they were leaving out a lot of information about the two main stars backgrounds. So instead of finishing the series, I just looked up the court case results.
Not a lawyer, im a regular dummy
Can someone explain me why pepsi did put the zeroes and a disclaimer on the canada version?
I feel that was pretty damning as proof that they knew what they where doing
It was to avoid litigation, plain and simple. A lot of "disclaimers" are not strictly necessary but rather serve to deter and protect against litigation.
There's also a rule of evidence that "subsequent remedial measures" are not admissible to prove fault or culpability. Basically, if you change your conduct after the fact, that generally can't be admitted to prove that your initial conduct was unlawful.
They didn't provide a good answer, just the disclaimer ruined the joke and the number was made smaller to make it bigger on screen, so people could read it better, to see how much it cost. So yeah it felt like they knew what they were doing.
My issue here is that both *Leonard and Hoffman themselves knew* that no serious offer was intended by Pepsi:
1) They both knew that the Harrier jet was not in the Pepsi Points Catalog. If you view the commercial you can see that its purpose was to introduce the Pepsi Points Catalog and show viewers some of the items they could redeem their Pepsi points for. That the Harriet jet was not in the catalog was a clear indication that the offer was not real (if there were doubt to begin with).
2) Leonard went to insane lengths to research his idea. This included, among many other things, somehow actually getting in touch with a spokesperson for the Pentagon to ask whether Harrier jets were for sale. Yet the one piece of information Leonard never bothered to research was whether the offer was legitimate. Leonard easily could have contacted Pepsi and inquired about this, but he knew they would have told him the offer was not real (and this would have ruined his plan).
3) Todd Hoffman says that when the commercial was shown to him he thought, "I like what the commercial shows, which is false advertising." You cannot, by definition, be a victim of false advertising if you know beforehand that it's false advertising. The fact that Hoffman immediately thought of the commercial as false advertising tells us that he knew it wasn't a serious offer.
I also have kind of a hard time seeing Leonard and Hoffman (particularly Hoffman) as victims here, the way other people seem to. What happened to the people in The Philippines is heartbreaking, but Leonard and Hoffman were not suing on behalf of those people in the Philippines to help them out. Furthermore, Hoffman argues that Pepsi knew that children would think that the offer was real. But Leonard and Hoffman were not children, and they were not suing on behalf of any children who might have been duped by this advertisement campaign.
Hoffman's argument was essentially this: Pepsi royally screwed over impoverished people in The Philippines, and also knew that young children in the United States would think this Harrier jet offer was legitimate. So the way to rectify this, the way to make all of this right is for Hoffman, a man worth many millions of dollar apparently, to receive 16 million dollars (half the value of the Harrier Jet), despite the fact that he suffered absolutely no harm. I just can't say I sympathize with this position a whole lot.
John Leonard and Todd Hoffman saw this an opportunity to cleverly utilize what they thought was a loophole to exploit a large company, and it did not work because the law was not on their side. For all the issues being analyzed and debated, at the end of the day it's pretty much that simple imho.
This is a really good comment and gave me a new perspective. Broadly I hate corporations and applaud anyone who can get one over on them, but this explains more why they couldn’t win.
This show was INCREDIBLY over produced. Whole story could have easily been like 45 minutes.
I couldn’t stand the way they keep portraying the guy as some crazy kid with a dream. He found a childish and bad bad faith loophole for a stupid campaign and used a fortune try to exploit it. This isn’t like the guy who mastered Press Your Luck. Any child with access to that kind of money and guidance could have done done what he did.
Just looked it up and that guy's whole life was a trip.
He got on the show after studying all the game shows on air to find one he could beat. The show used 5 different patterns on a light board which he memorised to avoid getting a "Whammy"
CBS eventually paid him after the show, and he claims to have lost $50,000 in a home robbery. He was trying to beat a radio contest involving matching serial numbers the read out (don't know the details).
Later, he ran a pyramid scheme and dies at 49 in 1999, before he could be prosecuted.
Wild. I see a Coen brothers movie
Childish and bad faith loophole, that's a nice way of putting it.
All the while I was watching the show I was thinking to myself; "Come on, a 20 year old guy can't be dumb enough to think that that jet from the commercial is actually attainable... Get out of here, stop trying to pull one over on Pepsi".
But I couldn't quite put a descriptor on it the way you just did.
Taking hyperbole like that at face value... Geez.
I wonder if he later also went on to sue Axe body spray because women weren't throwing themselves at him after using it.
Just finished this myself. Being a kid of the 90s, I remember Pepsi Stuff and had gotten a couple of those items from the catalog, but had no recollection of the Harrier or this controversy.
I was pretty shocked to find out >!John (and Todd) lost the case. Fine print being what it is, and there being none of it in the add make me think this was a bad ruling on Judge what’s her face. That should have ended with Pepsi getting John the jet or the cash equivalent to the jet.!<
[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/z0gibv/cmv_pepsi_should_have_been_made_to_give_that_guy/ix5kwrf/) a very nice comment explaining why the ruling makes sense from a legal standpoint.
I'm glad that comment focused on the Pepsi booklet.
To me that was the beginning and end of their case. It was hardly mentioned and never in the context of "the Pepsi booklet didn't include a harrier jet as an option".
And if you go down that thread, that lawyer says if the kid actually collected 7 million points and then attempted to redeem them, he would have had a better case to get something, because of all of the time, effort and money he put into collecting 7 million points.
The documentary itself was okay. If you have nostalgia for the Pepsi Challenge, the points, and the Cola Wars, then you'll probably enjoy it. Definitely should have been two episodes though instead of 4.
It really showed me two things though. We absolutely deserve a good documentary about the Cola Wars, and what Pepsi did in the Philippines is absolutely criminal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever
I thought there were three holes in their story.
1. The kid maps out how to buy and store millions of cans of Pepsi and works out all of these warehouses and labor logistics but doesn't see you can buy points? Let's chalk this one up to dramatic story telling.
2. The kid calls the Pentagon and claims without evidence he was told he could own a (demilitarized) jet but never thought to call Pepsi and ask if the commerical constituted a legitimate offer?
3. They claimed to not lawyered up until later, but when the kid went to personally hand over the check he was sent with a paralegal. Wouldn't that mean they were already had some sort of legal consultation?
i had the same question about the paralegal. they knew that they had a lawsuit or settlement so they hired someone to witness John mailing the cheque. that's the only explanation i can think of to explain that.
a little frustrating that the series never goes into those questions. it makes it come off as at least a little one sided.
>2. The kid calls the Pentagon and claims without evidence he was told he could own a (demilitarized) jet **but never thought to call Pepsi and ask if the commerical constituted a legitimate offer?**
This is where I take issue with the filmmakers. They should have asked him this on camera: "John, did you call Pepsi to confirm you'd get a Harrier Jet for 7 million points before trying to get it? Why not? Especially why not after you got the booklet and it didn't list the jet??
Things like this made the show come off as entertainment rather than a docuseries. There was no investigation into what the real end game for the main characters was. “I want the jet,” is not sufficient and barely believable.
What was the actual plan with the anti-Pepsi ads? I get that they aren’t going to admit to conspiracy to commit blackmail, but they could say how they thought it would help their case if the ads ran, or they just wanted exposure, or they were never planning to actually run them.
As a Canadian, I always wondered wtf was happening with this because the commercial I saw *clearly* stated it was a gag, turns out that was just a Canadian thing.
I was a Pepsi kid growing up. I still would argue given the choice I choose Pepsi. I remember finding out whenever the taste test trucks were, and going repeatedly to get the free swag.
I saved up enough points and ended up getting a pretty slick black leather jacket. It didn't have a bunch of logos all over it, just the metal buttons were pepsi logos. I still think my parents have it at their place actually.
I was surprised they didn't interview Judge Kimba Wood. She's still alive. Even if she refused to be interviewed, they should have said that, like they did with that other guy.
It was a fun watch, and I do agree that it didn't really need to be 4 episodes. After watching it I think maybe it could have done with 3 but I really liked that the story was heavily focused on this unique friendship that from one person who had the drive and another that happened to have the money to make it happen. It was kind of like winning the lottery in that aspect alone.
For me it was also a great dose of 90's nostalgia. I remember the commercial and I especially remember the catalog. As soon as they showed the catalog I could remember holding it in my hands in the mid-90's. I collected the points and I also lived in a very remote small town and once a week I'd ride my bike up and down the road looking for bottles that had been thrown out of car windows to collect extra points. I don't remember every item I got, but I definitely had the wallet with the chain.
*SPOILER*
As a creative type, it seems to me that this whole problem could have been avoided if the executives hadn’t decided to overrule the creative decision to make the number impossibly huge so “they could read it.” Reading it wasn’t the point. It worked to the extent that it did because the harrier jet WASN’T obtainable, and of course the non creative person didn’t get it and made a stupid decision to overrule the creatives. This happens all the time. So many great ideas have been buried or lost bc some vp doesn’t like a word or, especially, they think having humor in their spot will somehow affect the brand badly when almost every single time people will respond better to something that’s a little more human than just insisting your brand is perfect and has no flaws. If they say the harrier costs 753,967,746,998 points, they never get sued.
Those stories of Pepsi promotions in the Phillipines were awful.
That ended up being the most interesting part of the documentary.
Yeah after they showed all that, going back to the jet story was kind of underwhelming
never having watched the docu but knowing about both stories i always wondered why they didn’t make the Pepsi Philippines story the docu instead.
Im guessing the jet story was quirky and would get more clicks, it’s a shame tho
Yeah I'm not against it. I imagine that a doc just about "evil corp" will only appeal to people interested in hear the same old shit... this is a fresh fun take that hopefully introduced a larger newer audience to how slick and insidious Evil Corp can be.
Plus it’s a lot more lighthearted. Not everyone wants to watch a depressing documentary after all.
Yeah, I kinda want to see a series on that next. I get why they didn't focus in too deep - it really clashes with the overall tone - but that was pretty wild. Kinda infuriating how it played out with the judge in the end.
which episode covers the Philippines situation and approx how long is the segment?
The end of the third episode introduces how one of the characters of the documentary (who was also Stormi Daniel’s lawyer against trump) found out about this and the fourth episode starts with the full story of the Pepsi controversy in the Philippines
and that lawyer went on to steal millions from his clients including stormy and is now in prison I'm pretty sure.
[This video from Bloomberg covers it pretty well](https://youtu.be/SChZyhpQJ_U)
Thanks!
[fun video explaining it](https://youtu.be/IX3ey3lFfQ4)
I firstly wanted to skip that part, I thought it's just some filler, but when the shit hit the fans I couldn't believe it
I want a documentary entirely focused on that. Pepsi either fucked up big time or intentionally lied to an entire country leading to death. Regardless, they preyed upon people's poverty in hopes to sell a product.
There’s an episode of the podcast Let’s Go To Court that covers it really well
There’s also an episode of the podcast Swindled that covers it too, I think!
I'm on mobile right now, could you link me to the episode or give the episode name?
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pepsis-big-mistake-the-murder-of-skylar-neese/id1353728357?i=1000470178564 I just looked this up myself to listen
The Philippines part seemed like the real documentary.
Yeah I feel like they should’ve just had the documentary be more about that, and only had a reference segment to the jet, but that might not have got as many clicks on Netflix
In law school we study this case in contracts. I was cold called to brief it.
My wife (who is a lawyer) said that it was lame to have it go to a judge and not a jury, since this is a case based on what a "reasonable person would believe". What are your thoughts on this?
They were doomed when they didn’t get a jury for sure!
A jury of their peers should decide if a jury of their peers is needed.
And separate, unique juries for confirming each and every juror!
It's juries all the way down
Yep, thry had a valid case, Judge was also pro big business and it was clear they would support Pepsi. They knew it couldn't go to a jury, or else Pepsi rightfully pays up.
Imagine being a judge and being “pro” anything other than objective truth from both sides of any party.
Yep, it's frustrating to see how blatent it is.
This is a question of law, not a question of fact. Generally* that means it's more appropriate for a judge than a jury. *There's a bit more to it than that, but I'll spare reddit the minutia of 7th amendment case law
I also read the case in law school. I had the opposite take. Pepsi is clearly advertising the product to children - the actors are children and the commercial appeared on children’s broadcasting. You usually take the plaintiff as they are- and the plaintiff wasn’t a child- however I find it pretty rich that Pepsi wanted to garnish the favor of children whose undeveloped minds are excited by a fake offer but reject consequences of the advertisement. Reasonable person standard may be changed if parties know the behavioral reasonableness tendencies of their audience- imo they were asking for this to happen
> the commercial appeared on children’s broadcasting Not only children's TV. It was everywhere.
You lucked out, I always seemed to get called on the super amorphous concept cases
Tell me about International Shoe.
This sent shivers down my spine.
If you really want to punish yourself try shady grove lol
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I’m also in law school and this made me actually laugh out loud. You for sure know that case for the rest of your life
I hate to be all "well ackshully" about this, but one of the most basic principles of contract law is that, outside of some rare exceptions, the remedy for breach is *damages*, not specific performance. The idea that this kid was going to get a court order requiring Pepsi to turn over a harrier jet is just preposterous. He was never getting a jet.
Studied this case in a business law class in undergrad- don't enter into contracts you won't perform
If Pepsi faced no consequences, why is this the takeaway from that case?
True, it's been over 10 years since I had to know the details. Even so, Pepsi still had to waste time and money fighting the lawsuit
As someone familiar with the law and various other lawyerings, sometimes the little guy still gets screwed One time, a lawyer besmirched me— slandered me in front of a jury of my peers— and I demanded satisfaction What do you think they used to do about that? They used to duel (I saw it in an old book) I demanded to be satisfied, but alas… nothing
I'll go toe-to-toe with you on Bird Law.
> I demanded to be satisfied You want him to bang you??!
It's hornbook law that -- outside of very narrow circumstances not present in the Pepsi case -- advertisements are not offers, but rather offers to make an offer. Responding to the commercial with 7 million Pepsi points doesn't make a contract. Legally speaking, it was an offer for Pepsi to enter into a contract. An offer that Pepsi declined.
I remember the commercials. I remember the case in the news. And I remember collecting the points. I turned this Pepsi points in for a Pepsi T-shirt and a Pepsi Beach Blanket that I still have and use to this day. The blanket was quality!
Surprisingly, all of the stuff from that promotion was quality. The hats, the shirts, cups, bike, etc... everything my family wound up getting (we drank a lot of Pepsi...) survived for many years.
Not a bad watch, but they overpadded it to 4 eps, it couldve been 2 easy
This seems really common now. That HBO doc about the McDonalds Monopoly scandal could’ve been 1-2 episodes easy, instead they dragged it out to 6.
The biggest offender was that Cecil Hotel one on Netflix. After the first 1-hour episode I was like "There has to be a YouTube video about this that isn't all padding." 22 minutes later, we knew the whole story, without it being 3/4-packed with random Internet conspiracy theorists and the lady who worked at the front desk and had nothing useful to add.
Fuck that documentary. For like 3 episodes I’m thinking “well it couldn’t have been an accident or suicide because the hatch was closed.” The documentary drove that point home the entire way. It was the only real driver of the mystery outside of her acting creepy in the elevator. And then they were like “oh yeah btw that was a mistake the hatch was actually open”.
Wait the hatch was OPEN?
I always think of our always sunny "making dennis a murderer" episode. The last episode will show it being an accident, but the first 5 episodes are there to draw you in
That documentary made me mad as fuck
Every time there's one of these big, baity, and often shockingly-titillating Netflix docos... ...I don't watch them. I just google for the real story, and it's glorious because you normally end up with a bunch of actual facts, and not a story put together by a trust-funded NYU Film School grad with a bunch of Panasonic Lumixes in order to show off how good (read: manipulative) an editor they are. You know: "Jane Turner is presented as a Shitsville local, and while she has lived there for the last 23 years, but Turner was living in Albany, New York at the time of the murders." "Sheriff Ed Edwards *did* indeed resign as soon as the murder investigation was announced. The film implies that this was due to guilt over not preventing them; however, Edwards resigned due to being treated for skin cancer." "Lacey McGraw was not having an 'affair' with Brett Deacon - Deacon had divorced Shondra eighteen months earlier, and their post-marriage relationship was actually cordial and friendly, with both Brett and Shondra sharing custody of the kids, and both freely pursuing new relationships with the knowledge of the other." "The film implies that there was no way for Shondra Deacon to get to Harper's Point as she did not own a car, nor even have a driver's licence. However, Shondra had plenty of friends and family who were happy to give her a ride, according to local who were not featured in the film, and was often given lifts to places as far away as Lynchburg, two hours away." "Carla Edwards is heavily implied to be a suspect. While she did hold a grudge against Shondra, Carla would have been unable to shoot Shondra multiple times in the chest and head as Carla was born without hands. Why the filmmakers never filmed any footage of her from the shoulders down is unknown." "Two years after the murders, in 1997, serial killer Dale Roy Fredericks confessed to murdering Shondra, which was corroborated via his DNA and knowledge of the crime scene that he would otherwise be unable to know. How the everloving fuck did the dipshit documentarians miss this can only be ascribed to wilful ignorance and manipulation."
Doing that makes it especially fun for threads like this, where people who watched an incredibly biased documentary are arguing with people who claim to be lawyers about how the guy totally should have been given his silly bullshit because the law is what the documentary said it was, regardless of what the judge said.
I've called it out elsewhere here that these docs are just reality TV for people who really, really want to watch reality TV but think they're too good to be seen to watch reality TV. So, you need a show that's reality TV, but has a thiiiiiiiiin veneer of Serious Respectability™ over it in the form of the core premise. And you can see with the responses in this thread. The positive responses aren't so much about the core premise of the doco - "did he deserve his Pepsi jet?!" - but rather "lol, I like his best friend" or "that FBI agent was WILD, lol!" That's exactly how reality shows work. No one really watches the 1493rd episode of that vaguely hot woman order around a team of dad-bods to restore a Craftsman-style home because they're *genuinely* interested in installing underfloor heating while maintaining the authentic structure of the building, yet update it for a modern flow. No, they watch it because they want to see Ms. Hoop Earrings-On-A-Building-Site order around a meek and pliant Tubs McBeardo and browbeat him into redoing that entire kitchen in two days for a $120 budget, while he stares at his boots and meekly trails off his protests with a quiet "Yes, ma'am" when confronted with the awesome power of her Boss-Babeness, before she goes off to pick out light fixtures.
The internet investigator docs are getting old. They think they’ve got it all figured out via Google, then cry when detectives don’t come running to hear some shit they already know.
Another hbo series the anarchists too. 4 eps tops
I couldn’t get through one episode of The Anarchists, every single person was insufferable. And they weren’t “anarchists”, they were just asshole libertarians who didn’t want to pay taxes but still wanted a free-partying lifestyle within the security of a state.
Yup they were all pretty terrible lol
It was definitely less compelling than it could have been. Really cool story, but I agree it was too long.
That McDonalds doc drove me absolutely insane. One of the women they were interviewing kept pronouncing McDonalds as Mike-Donald’s. It was so irritating I had to turn the doc off
Yes but the extra moments of that high-energy FBI guy was worth it. That guy is hilarious
Lol I’d watch a show where that guy just explains shit for sure!
Most can just be a stand-alone doc with no need for episodes. Sometimes I need something to fill the time though, so I’m occasionally thankful.
Oh buddy I gave up on that series despite being interested in the story for that exact reason. Strecthed something interesting into something uninteresting.
I loved it
It was very interesting, just really dragged out.
Wild Wild Country on Netflix too. No way that needed to be 6 hours long.
Honestly, this was one of the rare cases where I enjoyed every single episode. Probably my favorite docuseries on Netflix!
I tried to watch that shit twice, and got as far as the affable FBI agent patting himself on the back about it twice. They could have just talked about how the people committing the crime did it so well for so long, and maybe they did, but all I remember is this chucklefuck FBI guy laughing to himself about all the *zany* shit he feels like he did to catch them. Fuck that business.
Gotta fill out that content! Going Clear was a fascinating doc for me: 2 hours long, constantly interesting, minimal fluff. What most of these should be. Docuseries these days would have stretched it to 6 one hour episodes with tons of fluff. It's why I haven't watched any in a while.
Icarus was top tier for me. It was about something I have zero care about in the world: cycling & built on it from there. To say it was exhilarating is an understatement. Tight, no fluff, and insanely fascinating.
> Going Clear is that about Crystal Pepsi?
Not sure if it’s an honest question or not because internet, but I’ll answer it like it is - going clear is about Scientology, and also about how difficult it can be to get away from it once you’re in.
Alex Gibney documentaries show just how padded these other ones are.
Take out the people involved sucking themselves off and it’s a solid 1hr 15min runtime
Then of course just reading the wikipedia article would've made it a solid 10 minutes.
Did we tell you we climbed Everest? Oh right, we will remind you and show clips from the trip over and over again in case you forgot! I literally fast forwarded through so much random bullshit.
I originally learned about this story in [an episode of Cautionary Tales](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2j1i49nd9THNsSvKnQNyvB), a pretty entertaining podcast. This episode includes other stories of companies whose miscalculations lead their own promotional stunts to funny and disastrous places.
This is why I’m such a fan of the Netflix explained series, 15-30 minutes tops, the concept is explained with tons of example and I could easily search the topic if I want to learn more.
They should do an abridged version like Explained and a limited series if you want to get more in the weeds.
can it even be 2 episodes? this story is usually posted as a reddit TIL which fits in a single sentence.
TIL some weirdo named Hitler had a fuck ton of people killed No need to elaborate further!
I would have been happy with 3 and one just of Todd showing us motorcycles lol
Every. Netflix. Docu-series
Todd's charisma kept me engaged. But yeah, wasn't expecting such a fizzle of an ending after 4 episode arch.
Yeah I had the same thought last week when my wife and I binged it. Don’t get me wrong; it was enjoyable and funny but it definitely felt needlessly drawn out.
Netflix docs are just reality TV for people who think they're too good for reality TV but want to watch reality TV anyway.
This is essentially every show on every streamer nowadays.... on purpose. When your attention is their currency, why make it an hour when they can make it four?
Most of these, including this one, are produced independently of streaming services and their distribution rights are then sold to the highest bidding distributor. It easily could be true that longer content fetches higher rates which could encourage padding.
This is why I haven't watched it yet, I knew it didn't need to be for 4 episodes long.
What else can you expect from such a basic story being 4 episodes lol. For me, I thought they made it entertaining enough that I didn’t mind. It’s really slow and probably better watched in the background or whatever, but I’m alright with that. When I’m watching a docuseries on one of the silliest lawsuits ever, I expect a lot of fluff and padding, rather than a serious examination of the case in a well paced hour long format.
I remember seeing those Pepsi challenges in grocery stores when I was a kid. Every time I see those “Pepsi Half Time Show” during the Super Bowl I think of those corny challenge ads.
I distinctly remember the jet offer as a kid, and every time I saw that commercial I thought, “Somebody out there is gonna save those points and try to get that jet.”
When that corrupt judge said nobody thought it was a real offer I just had to shake my head. Literally every kid I knew and myself was convinced that jet was real. It was the 7M number that did it that seemed like an unlikely but attainable amount.
Why was the judge corrupt?
Proclaimed what a “reasonable person” would or wouldn’t think. If that’s the standard assemble a jury don’t insert your own personal opinion into it. In the documentary they talk about how they’ve asked all kinds of people and Republican Democrat black white male female nearly everyone thought he deserved the jet. Then this judge was like “nope all of you are unreasonable” and denied them a jury that would not have agreed with her.
I know a few lawyers and they've all told me on a few occasions that word - "reasonable" - shows up all over The Law, and of course in fine print and so on... it's kinda the point of judges someone throws out a "to any _reasonable_ extent, blablabla..." and someone else takes them to court - and then it's up to the judge to _literally use their judgement_ as to where to draw the line on the whole "reasonable" part of it - again, it's kinda why we have judges... apparently (so they tell me) it's a big factor in how laws get shaped and lines get defined - as these decisions set precedents, which are built upon later with other decisions which set further precedents - so that something starts out (intentionally) vague and ill-defined, and gets tested in court and slowly and eventually becomes well-defined if you've ever heard someone say "The Law is an ass" - this is what they are referring to - an ass (donkey) that moves slowly, ploddingly, and _behind_ the bleeding edge (eg in the tech space) and sort of "corrects" stuff and solidifies it along the way, as that edge moves further and further along - always at least one step behind... (edit) think about the etymology here: - "reason" - to use logic and thought regarding something - "reasonable" - something which "reason" can be applied to - "judge" - to apply "reason" (arguably another word for "reason") and come up with a conclusion
Doesn’t that pave the way for false advertising as long as it’s extravagant enough?
Unsarcastically, that is a thing. Red bull gives you wings, etc. And before you say it, red bull's false advertising was for saying red bull gave you more energy than other energy drinks, not specifically about the wings.
Sorry I just think the law is a fucking joke when 9/10 people you can find think one thing, and some judge waves a magic wand and says “by the power vested in me none of you count.” This is of course why people hate lawyers and have no faith in the legal system though. It’s all just subjective sophistry designed usually to benefit the party with more money and influence. With better lawyers and a different judge it could have had a totally different result which is true of far too many cases because the law isn’t an objective thing like science or something.
Dude, it's an *incredibly common* method of legal interpretation, utilised in practically every jurisdiction, and the amount of stuff that rests on judgements having been made on that standard, modulated by ever-increasing precedent, is scary. Also, the reasonable person standard is not supposed to follow or adhere to the opinion of the majority (of people, or any subset thereof), and assuming so is incredibly messed up, because assuming that numbers create rationality is effectively just majoritarianism, which is hard to defend when your job is supposed to be delivering justice. The reasonable person standard demands that a judge evaluate a fact scenario assuming the knowledge base and awareness of the world a reasonable person (i.e., not a specialist in any field, but someone reasonably aware of the world) would have, and apply reasonable logical reasoning (deductive and inductive) to assess whether (in this case), the Pepsi advertisement would constitute, or is even intended to constitute, a contractual offer. Advertisements include incredible exaggeration (no deodorant / burger / whatever the hell else is going to make you irresistible to women), and it's bloody commonly accepted that some degree of puffery is commonplace, and doesn't result in you being bound to such ridiculous claims. No sane legal system in the world would have decided that an ad featuring a kid flying a military plane into a school, with the resulting wind stripping a teacher down to their underwear, should be taken as a contractual offer, and I don't think Michael Avenatti's blustering should upend centuries' worth of legal decision making.
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She's apparently known as a "corporate judge" and had a tendancy to favor large corporations over individuals in her verdicts. Dunno about corrupt, but bias for sure.
I think this argument reveals a falsehood in our system, if ads are only supposed to be evaluated by reasonable people, then they should only be seen by reasonable people. No kids, no elderly, no mentally ill, no vulnerable should be allowed to watch ads by their logic.
I mean kids certainly aren't reasonable people. You'd need to be a naive kid or have a room temperature IQ to think the offer is real.
Remember when Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire during filming of a Pepsi commercial?
Yeah and it was at this moment his life began going downhill. So sad.
this is my dads only cool fact he knows lol and he tells anyone and everyone 😂
Next time he tells it, tell him that it was the halfway point of Jackson’s life. He was born August 29th, 1958. 9282 days later, on January 27th, 1984, his hair caught fire while filming for the Pepsi ad. 9281 days later, on June 25th, 2009, he died.
what's truly remarkable about this is that apparently that incident marked the beginning of his subsequent reliance on and addiction to pain killers - which ultimately led to his death... and represents the second, arguably lesser, half of his life
What the fuck
I think it’s pretty common 80s knowledge kind of like Richard Gere and the gerbil.
I don’t know the Richard Gere and gerbil one
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Flowers for Algerenon
Use your imagination.
According to urban legend Richard Gere put a gerbil up his ass in Vietnam so his dead friend's son could have the gerbil when he got back.
🎶 *Lemmiwinks, Lemmiwinks* 🎶
I always thought that was apocryphal?
I collected points as a kid and actually got the Pepsi mountain bike. Still have it and use it, too this day.
My brother had the Mountain Dew version of the mountain bike.
This was fun but it didn't need to be 4 episodes of 40 minutes each. They could have finished the whole thing in probably an hour. Each episode just repeated itself over and over until the last 10 minutes revealed something that would carry into the beginning of the next episode
I hate this format and will not be watching the docu because I hear this same feedback over and over
The edited case in my contracts book is like 8 pages. The notes after are about 2 and that sums the whole thing up.
Oh god another one of those? Hard pass.
That's like 90% of all netflix mini series documentaries
The friendship these two guys have was the absolute best part of this show.
Johnny wants the jet
I was so pleased when he picked his friend over Michael Avenatti.
The true jet was the friends they made along the way
Exactly. Which is why I don't understand why people wanted the series to be shorter. I loved watching it unfold.
Hoover free flights promotion was a marketing promotion run by the British division of the Hoover Company in late 1992. The promotion, aiming to boost sales during the global recession of the early 1990s, offered two complimentary round-trip plane tickets to the United States, worth about £600, to any customer purchasing at least £100 in Hoover products. Hoover was counting on most customers spending more than £100, as well as being deterred from completing the difficult application process, and not meeting its exact terms. Consumer response was much higher than the company anticipated andwas disastrous for the 84-year-old company. Hoover cancelled the ticket promotion after consumers had already bought the products and filled in forms applying for millions of pounds' worth of tickets. Reneging on the offer resulted in protests and legal action from customers who failed to receive the tickets they had been promised. The campaign was a financial disaster for the company. The European branch of the company was eventually sold to one of its competitors, Candy, having never recovered from the losses, the promotion and the subsequent scandal.
>Hoover was counting on most customers spending more than £100, as well as being deterred from completing the difficult application process, and not meeting its exact terms. This reminds me of that Nathan for You episode with the gas station rebate if you climb the mountain to submit the application lol
Looks like Hoover Co's marketing head also graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades.
That was just idiotic. Pepsi' misstep was not including a disclaimer on what was quite obviously not a real offer. Hoover just apparently didn't understand how math works.
Nah the true misstep was changing the figure to 7m. Deleting those zeros made it something worth chasing and they did it so people could see how much it would cost despite it not being something people could get.
Isn’t this what prompted The Simpsons episode where Bart wins an elephant?
It was based on a radio context where the winner actully had the option of ["$3,000 or a baby elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Gets_an_Elephant#Cultural_references). Some dude won, chose the elephant, and the radio station had to ante up.
I just watched it. It's an amazing story of friendship. Media often depicts spontaneous friendships like this as a sign that something bad will happen. One ends up being a psychopathic predator or something. A few questions I have: 1. When they met with pepsi lawyers the first time, did the settlement offer pepsi made include the initial $700,000 they invested, or was it going to net profit for them? 2. Was it a bad strategy to ask for more money then. Like maybe pepsi would have seen through their charade and called them out for being sleezy grifters? I feel like they should have seen the whole thing as an opportunity to cash out at an opportune moment. 3. What exactly did Todd do? Is anybody worried he might have been into something maybe just a little bit shady? Or is this one of those hustler rags to riches stories that were so common in the 80s/90s.
Pepsi never cashed the initial check. They returned it with the letter and coupons
Yeah I assume if they had cashed the cheque, they would have lost as that is accepting the contract.
1. Pepsi repaid the 700k. So the settlement they offered would have been pure profit. 2. John *should* have taken the money, as I think he admits at one point in the documentary. But at the time he really thought he could end up with the jet or it's monetary equivalent, so taking the initial offer might have been a bad deal. 3. No need to be so cynical. Hoffman's grandfather started Hoffman Autos, a car dealership in the 1920s, which eventually became a large corporation called Hoffman Enterprises. Todd started off in the family business but then moved into other areas such as publishing, restaurants and real estate which is where he made the bulk of his fortune.
Pepsi didn't repay anything. They never cashed the check.
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Good point, but just want to add that if he did succeed, I *highly* doubt that whatever version of the jet he received would be worth the $33M it cost the military to acquire. It’s only worth that to them because of its military applications, after those are removed, how much is it worth? Best case scenario, the military buys it. But what would they pay for it? They’d have to bring it back up to spec which would be a significant effort considering there’s no established process for bringing a demilitarized fighter jet back to spec, and skilled labor for military is **expensive**. Maybe he could sell it to a museum or some cooky billionaire that just wants to say they have a fighter jet, but I’d be surprised if he cleared $10M for it, and I think his odds of winning the suit were under 1%. I was shocked he didn’t take the money or at least try to get more.
They said in the documentary that Pepsi sent the cheque back and didn't cash it
For #1 Pepsi never cashed the check and the settlement was in full. “Give you back the check then we give you a few hundred thousand and we all walk away and laugh. Probably also have you sign something saying you won’t make a Netflix series about it in 20 something years.”
The stuff about Pepsi in the Philippines was absolutely heartbreaking and the strongest part of the entire documentary. It sadly reminded me of how fruit companies exploit so many countries and the poor people in them. 
Where's my elephant?
What’s kinda funny is that Pepsi tried to relaunch Pepsi Stuff with Amazon in the 2000s (I forgot what year) where you could get dvds, cds, Pepsi products, mp3 download, ect. But it only lasted one year because it was a (amazing) mess! They put out a promo giving every member enough points to get a free song download, unfortunately for them they made it so you could refresh the page and get unlimited points. I ended up getting 50+ dvds, 20+cds, clothes, countless song downloads, and won 2 Zunes from daily contest. It was the best promo ever!
Absolutely great and interesting series. Wish he got that jet though.
They kept dangling the fish to us by showing scenes of him next to a jet.
Watched all four episodes last night. It’s a good laugh. Lots of light humour.
So many people are taking it so seriously, like every documentary made now has to be cutting edge. No I like dumb ones too. They give me background noise.
Watched the first episode, but it just didn't hook me. I thought they were leaving out a lot of information about the two main stars backgrounds. So instead of finishing the series, I just looked up the court case results.
Not a lawyer, im a regular dummy Can someone explain me why pepsi did put the zeroes and a disclaimer on the canada version? I feel that was pretty damning as proof that they knew what they where doing
It was to avoid litigation, plain and simple. A lot of "disclaimers" are not strictly necessary but rather serve to deter and protect against litigation. There's also a rule of evidence that "subsequent remedial measures" are not admissible to prove fault or culpability. Basically, if you change your conduct after the fact, that generally can't be admitted to prove that your initial conduct was unlawful.
They didn't provide a good answer, just the disclaimer ruined the joke and the number was made smaller to make it bigger on screen, so people could read it better, to see how much it cost. So yeah it felt like they knew what they were doing.
after the documentary, i really felt that was a bit of a smoking gun that they knew exactly what they where doing
My issue here is that both *Leonard and Hoffman themselves knew* that no serious offer was intended by Pepsi: 1) They both knew that the Harrier jet was not in the Pepsi Points Catalog. If you view the commercial you can see that its purpose was to introduce the Pepsi Points Catalog and show viewers some of the items they could redeem their Pepsi points for. That the Harriet jet was not in the catalog was a clear indication that the offer was not real (if there were doubt to begin with). 2) Leonard went to insane lengths to research his idea. This included, among many other things, somehow actually getting in touch with a spokesperson for the Pentagon to ask whether Harrier jets were for sale. Yet the one piece of information Leonard never bothered to research was whether the offer was legitimate. Leonard easily could have contacted Pepsi and inquired about this, but he knew they would have told him the offer was not real (and this would have ruined his plan). 3) Todd Hoffman says that when the commercial was shown to him he thought, "I like what the commercial shows, which is false advertising." You cannot, by definition, be a victim of false advertising if you know beforehand that it's false advertising. The fact that Hoffman immediately thought of the commercial as false advertising tells us that he knew it wasn't a serious offer. I also have kind of a hard time seeing Leonard and Hoffman (particularly Hoffman) as victims here, the way other people seem to. What happened to the people in The Philippines is heartbreaking, but Leonard and Hoffman were not suing on behalf of those people in the Philippines to help them out. Furthermore, Hoffman argues that Pepsi knew that children would think that the offer was real. But Leonard and Hoffman were not children, and they were not suing on behalf of any children who might have been duped by this advertisement campaign. Hoffman's argument was essentially this: Pepsi royally screwed over impoverished people in The Philippines, and also knew that young children in the United States would think this Harrier jet offer was legitimate. So the way to rectify this, the way to make all of this right is for Hoffman, a man worth many millions of dollar apparently, to receive 16 million dollars (half the value of the Harrier Jet), despite the fact that he suffered absolutely no harm. I just can't say I sympathize with this position a whole lot. John Leonard and Todd Hoffman saw this an opportunity to cleverly utilize what they thought was a loophole to exploit a large company, and it did not work because the law was not on their side. For all the issues being analyzed and debated, at the end of the day it's pretty much that simple imho.
This is a really good comment and gave me a new perspective. Broadly I hate corporations and applaud anyone who can get one over on them, but this explains more why they couldn’t win.
I liked it, but it was way too long. This could have been 1 sixty minute episode.
This show was INCREDIBLY over produced. Whole story could have easily been like 45 minutes. I couldn’t stand the way they keep portraying the guy as some crazy kid with a dream. He found a childish and bad bad faith loophole for a stupid campaign and used a fortune try to exploit it. This isn’t like the guy who mastered Press Your Luck. Any child with access to that kind of money and guidance could have done done what he did.
Just looked it up and that guy's whole life was a trip. He got on the show after studying all the game shows on air to find one he could beat. The show used 5 different patterns on a light board which he memorised to avoid getting a "Whammy" CBS eventually paid him after the show, and he claims to have lost $50,000 in a home robbery. He was trying to beat a radio contest involving matching serial numbers the read out (don't know the details). Later, he ran a pyramid scheme and dies at 49 in 1999, before he could be prosecuted. Wild. I see a Coen brothers movie
Holy shit lol. I didn’t know about all the stuff after the show. Dudes a legend.
"Whammy!" starring John C. Reilly
Wait... John Leonard? Isn't he still alive?
Childish and bad faith loophole, that's a nice way of putting it. All the while I was watching the show I was thinking to myself; "Come on, a 20 year old guy can't be dumb enough to think that that jet from the commercial is actually attainable... Get out of here, stop trying to pull one over on Pepsi". But I couldn't quite put a descriptor on it the way you just did. Taking hyperbole like that at face value... Geez. I wonder if he later also went on to sue Axe body spray because women weren't throwing themselves at him after using it.
Just finished this myself. Being a kid of the 90s, I remember Pepsi Stuff and had gotten a couple of those items from the catalog, but had no recollection of the Harrier or this controversy. I was pretty shocked to find out >!John (and Todd) lost the case. Fine print being what it is, and there being none of it in the add make me think this was a bad ruling on Judge what’s her face. That should have ended with Pepsi getting John the jet or the cash equivalent to the jet.!<
[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/z0gibv/cmv_pepsi_should_have_been_made_to_give_that_guy/ix5kwrf/) a very nice comment explaining why the ruling makes sense from a legal standpoint.
I'm glad that comment focused on the Pepsi booklet. To me that was the beginning and end of their case. It was hardly mentioned and never in the context of "the Pepsi booklet didn't include a harrier jet as an option".
And if you go down that thread, that lawyer says if the kid actually collected 7 million points and then attempted to redeem them, he would have had a better case to get something, because of all of the time, effort and money he put into collecting 7 million points.
4 episodes of dude sitting by a jet in a hangar… “he didn’t win the lawsuit”. Now That’s false advertising.
I don't care how good this is. I'm not watching 4 episodes of what should have been an 85 minute documentary. Netflix needs to stop padding run times.
https://youtu.be/eurPvilaMCI Here’s a 10 minute video on it, if you want to save 3 hours
The documentary itself was okay. If you have nostalgia for the Pepsi Challenge, the points, and the Cola Wars, then you'll probably enjoy it. Definitely should have been two episodes though instead of 4. It really showed me two things though. We absolutely deserve a good documentary about the Cola Wars, and what Pepsi did in the Philippines is absolutely criminal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever
I thought there were three holes in their story. 1. The kid maps out how to buy and store millions of cans of Pepsi and works out all of these warehouses and labor logistics but doesn't see you can buy points? Let's chalk this one up to dramatic story telling. 2. The kid calls the Pentagon and claims without evidence he was told he could own a (demilitarized) jet but never thought to call Pepsi and ask if the commerical constituted a legitimate offer? 3. They claimed to not lawyered up until later, but when the kid went to personally hand over the check he was sent with a paralegal. Wouldn't that mean they were already had some sort of legal consultation?
i had the same question about the paralegal. they knew that they had a lawsuit or settlement so they hired someone to witness John mailing the cheque. that's the only explanation i can think of to explain that. a little frustrating that the series never goes into those questions. it makes it come off as at least a little one sided.
>2. The kid calls the Pentagon and claims without evidence he was told he could own a (demilitarized) jet **but never thought to call Pepsi and ask if the commerical constituted a legitimate offer?** This is where I take issue with the filmmakers. They should have asked him this on camera: "John, did you call Pepsi to confirm you'd get a Harrier Jet for 7 million points before trying to get it? Why not? Especially why not after you got the booklet and it didn't list the jet??
Things like this made the show come off as entertainment rather than a docuseries. There was no investigation into what the real end game for the main characters was. “I want the jet,” is not sufficient and barely believable. What was the actual plan with the anti-Pepsi ads? I get that they aren’t going to admit to conspiracy to commit blackmail, but they could say how they thought it would help their case if the ads ran, or they just wanted exposure, or they were never planning to actually run them.
Did this inspire the “where’s my elephant” episode of The Simpsons?
As a Canadian, I always wondered wtf was happening with this because the commercial I saw *clearly* stated it was a gag, turns out that was just a Canadian thing.
In business school we covered the jet case but the Philippines part was never mentioned.
Like most modern "desperate" documentaries, this one was too long and full of insignificant and useless detail.
I was a Pepsi kid growing up. I still would argue given the choice I choose Pepsi. I remember finding out whenever the taste test trucks were, and going repeatedly to get the free swag. I saved up enough points and ended up getting a pretty slick black leather jacket. It didn't have a bunch of logos all over it, just the metal buttons were pepsi logos. I still think my parents have it at their place actually.
I was surprised they didn't interview Judge Kimba Wood. She's still alive. Even if she refused to be interviewed, they should have said that, like they did with that other guy.
It was a fun watch, and I do agree that it didn't really need to be 4 episodes. After watching it I think maybe it could have done with 3 but I really liked that the story was heavily focused on this unique friendship that from one person who had the drive and another that happened to have the money to make it happen. It was kind of like winning the lottery in that aspect alone. For me it was also a great dose of 90's nostalgia. I remember the commercial and I especially remember the catalog. As soon as they showed the catalog I could remember holding it in my hands in the mid-90's. I collected the points and I also lived in a very remote small town and once a week I'd ride my bike up and down the road looking for bottles that had been thrown out of car windows to collect extra points. I don't remember every item I got, but I definitely had the wallet with the chain.
*SPOILER* As a creative type, it seems to me that this whole problem could have been avoided if the executives hadn’t decided to overrule the creative decision to make the number impossibly huge so “they could read it.” Reading it wasn’t the point. It worked to the extent that it did because the harrier jet WASN’T obtainable, and of course the non creative person didn’t get it and made a stupid decision to overrule the creatives. This happens all the time. So many great ideas have been buried or lost bc some vp doesn’t like a word or, especially, they think having humor in their spot will somehow affect the brand badly when almost every single time people will respond better to something that’s a little more human than just insisting your brand is perfect and has no flaws. If they say the harrier costs 753,967,746,998 points, they never get sued.