This came up in the comments of another post, so I thought I’d post the complete story here.
In 1995, Pepsi ran a promotion where you could collect Pepsi Points (something like 10 points for a 12 pack and 5 points for a 20 oz. bottle) and use them to buy things.
There was a catalog that offered things like a Pepsi Leather Jacket for 1450 points or a T-Shirt for 75 points.
There was also a commercial that showed a Harrier Jet with the caption 7,000,000 points.
The rules of the promotion stated that if you didn’t have enough points, you could buy the remainder for 10 cents each.
So a guy in Washington raised money from his friends and submitted 15 Pepsi Points and a check for $700,008.50 (for the remaining 6,999,985 points, plus $10 shipping and handling) to Pepsi and waited for his jet.
When it was not forthcoming, he sued. Pepsi counter-sued claiming that everyone knew it was a joke.
The court agreed with Pepsi, and the case was eventually dismissed. The guy never got his jet, which is super lame. I hope he got something. At least a Pepsi Leather Jacket.
Source: Court TV and This Site
Update: I found the ad. Here for your enjoyment:
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Jeff beat me to this post, but mine is already written, so I’m going to post it in the comments anyway. See which one you like better! (Though my post didn’t have an embedded video, so I don’t know if I can compete…)
As discussed in the comments for one of the Vince posts, there was a Pepsi campaign in the 90′s where you could collect “Pepsi Points” and redeem them for crappy prizes. I remember we got a CD case… which I think I still have, though I had to duck tape some of the pages back in… but I digress.
So on one of the commercials, it said you could get a Harrier Jet for 7,000,000 Pepsi points. There was also fine-print that said you could buy points for $.10 each.
So a guy named John Leonard sent in 15 points and a check for $700,008.50 (the balance needed to get 7,000,000 points plus $10 shipping and handling). Did he get his Harrier Jet? NO! Did he even get a copy of Space Harrier. NO! Not even that!!!
So, it being America, he sued. I just learned the outcome of the suit. He lost.
The court, presided over by Judge Kimba Wood, rejected Leonard’s claims and denied recovery on three grounds.
1) It was found that the advertisement featuring the jet did not constitute an offer.
2) The court found that even if the advertisement had been an offer, no reasonable person could have believed that the company seriously intended to convey a jet worth roughly $23 million for under a million dollars.
3) The value of the alleged contract meant that it fell under the provisions of the statute of frauds, but the Statute’s requirement for writing between the parties was not fulfilled, so a contract had not been formed.
I think that where he went wrong was that the funds for the check actually came from his lawyers account, which proves that they planning on suing before it started. I do think it was a frivolous lawsuit, but I think at a minimum, a commercial does relate to terms of an offer, and the company made a mistake of how many points they asked for. They could have cleared all this up if they had said 1,000,000,000 points instead. And, in fact, they’d have made a profit on the deal!
Source: Wiki
-320 points for ripping off another one of my posts
+390 points for referencing Space Harrier.
What’s super lame is I think they kept running the ad after the lawsuit. Screw them.
FU – I brought up the Pepsi thing! I should have had dibs! Oh, well, at I’m net positive on pts.
Again, though, I think it’s a stupid set-up lawsuit, but it really was Pepsi’s mistake and they are bastards for running the ad after the suit…
If they didn’t make Mt. Dew, I’d be fine with Pepsi collapsing…
I had a Pepsi last night because the restaurant didn’t have coke.
It was sub-par, as always.
I was forced to buy a 24 pack of Pepsi because it was only $4.44, and Coke was like $8.