Saturday, May 2, 2020

P-E-P-S-I S-P-I-R-I-T

In 1981, Pepsi launched a bottle cap collecting game to ignite the "Pepsi Spirit" in their customers. The idea was simple: collect the letters printed on the inside of each bottle cap to spell "Pepsi Spirit." This was before plastic twist-off caps were common, and you had to pop open a Pepsi with a bottle opener. Here’s the original commercial.

As a kid, I didn't realize that the rarest letter was the elusive R. I thought the distribution of letters was even, and I would excitedly tell people that we had all the letters except for the R. Little did I know, everyone was in the same boat.

One day, while stopping at a gas station, my friend and I thought we had struck gold. The gas station owner had altered a P into an R with a marker and had the caps displayed next to the register. We were ecstatic and thought our dream of completing the Pepsi Spirit was finally coming true.

"We have the E! You have the R! Let's go in together and split the money!" we exclaimed.

But then, the gas station owner laughed and pointed out that it was a fake R—one of the fifth ones he'd made because people kept stealing them!

Pretty good prank.


[Originally posted on Rebel Leady Boy, May 18, 2006]

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