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

In 1981, Pepsi had a plan to ignite the "Pepsi Spirit" within their customers by launching a bottle cap collecting game. 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 opening a Pepsi required you to pop the metal cap with a bottle opener.  Here is the original commercial.

As a kid, I didn't know the rarest piece of the puzzle was the elusive R. I thought the distribution of letters was even, and I would excitedly tell people that we had all the letters but the R. But, little did I know that everyone was in the same boat.

One day, while stopping at a gas station, my friend and I stumbled upon what we thought was a stroke of luck. The gas station owner had altered a P into an R with a marker and had the caps on display next to the cash register. We were ecstatic and thought that finally, our dreams of completing the Pepsi Spirit were about to come 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 it was a fake R and was actually about the 5th one he made because people kept stealing them!

Pretty good prank.

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