
MagiCan - Lammy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagiCan
======
Animats
It was worse than that.[1] One can was opened by cabin staff on an American
Airlines flight. They weren't sure what it was, so they assumed the worst, a
bomb. The plane made an emergency landing.

They'd succeeded in angering a customer who bought millions of cans a year.

[1] [http://archive.is/gsl4f](http://archive.is/gsl4f)

~~~
Lammy
"a flight attendant who couldn’t pour the liquid out of a Coke Magican
suspected it had a bomb in it."

I don't blame them for being on edge considering the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing
was barely more than a year old and fresh on everyone's minds.

~~~
birdyrooster
Being on edge is fine but landing the plane and traumatizing everyone on board
because flight attendants are unfamiliar with a dud can of coke? Why would the
attendant immediately assume there was an inside job to blow up the plane? Did
they instead think a random passenger rigged a can of coke and slipped it into
their beverage cart before the flight? If you were on that plane, you just had
otherwise legitimate figures of authority telling you that you are likely to
blow up and have your life ended at any moment for however many minutes it
took to land and disembark.

Good grief. Just thinking about this for a minute makes it clear that they
shouldn't have prematurely landed the plane. This is an example of the "zero
tolerance" mindset that ignores all collateral damage in pursuit of some goal
which is often unobtainable (safety).

~~~
Lammy
I don’t think it’s an unrealistic assumption. If somebody can sneak a device
into the lavatory then why couldn’t they sneak a device into the beverage cart
right next to the lavatory?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_Flight_434](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_Flight_434)

------
ajsnigrutin
So lets say I was really really thirsty, somewhere on the road in the middle
of nowhere... and I stopped at a gas stop, bought myself a really really cold,
refreshing coca cola, drive on, 10 minutes later decide to open it.. and a
dollar would pop out? So i'd waste my time at the station/store, waste my time
at another, all for 1 dollar?

~~~
koliber
In the worst case scenario, you could consider the $1.00 a refund.

~~~
IgorPartola
Except in places that charge a tax and $0.05-0.10 can deposit.

~~~
calmworm
Though a can of coke wasn't $1.00 30 years ago, I might still be annoyed at a
$1.00 prize for a $0.50 can.

On the other hand, the story itself would be worth more than $0.50.

~~~
variaga
Correct - I remember the MagiCan promotion. At the time (1990), a $1 can of
Coke would be far above the norm.

(Later, in 1993, being charged the princely sum of $0.85 for a can of Coke
triggered Michael Douglas' breakdown in the the movie "Falling Down", as it
didn't leave enough change from a dollar for him to use the payphone. The past
truly is a foreign country.)

It was still a dumb promotion. I was packing a can of coke with my lunch
pretty much every day at the time, and if I'd opened one at the jobsite and
discovered nothing drinkable, just a dollar (and no easy way to spend that
dollar to buy a new coke), I'd have had some harsh words for the coca-cola
company.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
At least nobody died, unlike this competing sugar water promotion:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever)

~~~
sercankd
That was a wild ride of reading,

>"They formed a consumer group, the 349 Alliance, which organized a boycott of
Pepsi products, and held rallies outside the offices of PCPPI and the
Philippine government. Most protests were peaceful, "

....

> "but three PCPPI employees were killed by a grenade thrown into a warehouse
> in Davao,[13] and a mother and child were killed in Manila on February 13,
> 1993, by a grenade thrown at a Pepsi truck."

What the hell

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The Philippines is a former US colony and inherited many things from them,
including liberal gun laws.

------
binsh
> "We are winding [the promotion] down early. There is the impression we don't
> like among our consumers that there is a problem with the promotion."

Do they teach this in marketing school or do you pick up this kind of passive,
responsibility-avoidance on the job?

~~~
Cthulhu_
As a company, you NEVER admit to problems; this opens you up to lawsuits,
class-action ones that can end up costing hundreds of millions.

They leave it up to a court to decide if there was a problem.

I think the closest you get to an admission of fault is the language used in
recalls, and even in those the language will be carefully chosen and reviewed
by lawyers. They will NEVER say anything like "the battery in this product has
ballooned up and exploded, grounding planes and burning children". At best
they go "There may be an issue with the battery in this product", and that's
not even the language they use, just what I vaguely remember.

------
lukeholder
Check out the advert for the MagiCan:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBCKnhFwE_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBCKnhFwE_4)

"If you see anything other than coke, don't drink it!"

------
c3534l
I'm not sure I'd want my customers to associate my product with a "foul-
smelling liquid."

~~~
drno123
I never understood why they didn't fill the sealed container with regular coke
anyway.

~~~
CodeBeater
Probably because they were using well-circulated currency for their lower
prizes ($5, $10, etc...), and they were afraid of contamination as the prize
appears to be touching the liquid itself.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
A little extra cocaine wouldn't impact Coke though.

------
himinlomax
Soda companies are basically marketing / advertising machines. Their products
are mostly worthless, as in, if all Pepsi and Coke disappeared from the world
suddenly, nothing whatsoever would be lost. Except, eventually, an untold
amount of pounds of fat in the belly of their former customers.

So it's no surprise their marketing department go wild with completely
ludicrous ideas.

------
wilhil
Silly question maybe...

Why didn't they just put the prize in a sterile packet and fill it with Coke
like normal?!

Seems like it would solve pretty much all the complaints and issues!

~~~
notatoad
i think the US has some laws that forbid non-edible products being embedded in
the middle of foodstuffs. IIRC that's the reason kinder surprise eggs are
banned.

~~~
mrguyorama
I'd be surprised. Bags of toys in sugary cereals is a mainstay of the
breakfast cereal industry

~~~
RandallBrown
That's not _inside_ the food. It's next to the food.

I suppose you could argue the same thing for this drink too, but I imagine it
was just hard to get the spring loaded mechanism to be sterile and food safe.

------
Aardwolf
> To make the cans feel and weigh normal, and prevent people from easily
> finding the prize cans, a sealed area within the cans was filled with a
> mixture of chlorinated water and a foul-smelling substance to discourage
> drinking.

How does the foul-smelling substance prevent easily finding the prize cans? I
don't get it.

Did that fluid actually touch the money? If not, why not make that fluid just
also cola?

~~~
mojomark
> How does the foul-smelling substance prevent easily finding the prize cans?
> I don't get it.

The fluid was used to artificially weight the can so people couldn't easily
detect. The foul smell was simply to prevent not-so-bright consumers from
trying to drink the fluid.

> Did that fluid actually touch the money? If not, why not make that fluid
> just also cola?

The fluid was sealed in the can and segregated from the spring loaded payload
(money or certificates). So, two chambers: one with fluid for weight decoy,
and a second for the payload prize. As for why they didn't just use cola vice
chlorinated water, it could have been a number of reasons (e.g. corossivity of
cola on the sealed chamber material, cost at scale), but if I had to guess it
was that the magican's we produced in a separate facility using separate
tooling than the cola filled cans.

I have no idea why I'm spending my time writing this, but I do appreciate the
post as I vividly remember being enthralled with the prospect of money popping
out of a coke can as a child and wanting to then rip-open the can to see how
it worked. Though this never happened for me or any of my friends who were
pretty avid coke drinkers back in the day :_(

~~~
lloyddobbler
> I have no idea why I'm spending my time writing this, but I do appreciate
> the post as I vividly remember being enthralled with the prospect of money
> popping out of a coke can as a child and wanting to then rip-open the can to
> see how it worked. Though this never happened for me or any of my friends
> who were pretty avid coke drinkers back in the day :_(

+1 on all counts. I still remember this promotion vividly from my time as a
kid. In spite of the mishaps, it was pretty effective marketing.

------
noja
and Kinder Eggs are not allowed?!

~~~
Cthulhu_
I've done a bit of googling and if I'm reading this correct it was always
forbidden (or as long as the US Code has been around) to have products
containing "a non-nutritive object", but it was re-emphasized for Kinder
Surprises specifically after they investigated some imported ones. This was in
1997, while the MagiCan was 1990.

Anyway, reading the text there, I'm fairly sure that this thing would also
have been illegal under that code.

~~~
em-bee
my understanding is that the non-food item may not be enclosed by the food,
because someone could try to take a large bite and swallow the non-food item.

the coke prize cans don't seem to violate that as the non-food item and the
liquid are separate.

lucky they didn't outlaw cherries, plums or peaches.

~~~
fyfy18
Isn't that why kinder eggs have a rather large plastic shell that contains the
toy? I haven't seen one in years, but from my memory, even an adult would be
unable to consume - or swallow enough to choke on - the plastic shell.

~~~
em-bee
right, you'd have to wolf it down believing that it must all be edible.

it is conceivable that someone takes a large bite that causes the inner
container to open up and let small pieces of plastic fall out into the mouth.

but the law was not written for kinder eggs. i can imagine much more dangerous
products.

i believe in germany they approach this with better product testing. instead
of blanket rules for what is allowed and what not, individual products are
tested for safety, and get regulated based on that.

------
DonHopkins
>Pepsi's promotion also suffered from negative publicity when it was
discovered that if two specific Cool Cans were stacked in a certain way, the
designs appeared to spell out the word "SEX".

Makes me wonder why there was never a moral panic around Post Alpha-Bits
breakfast cereal or Campbell's Alphabet Soup.

~~~
function_seven
The allegation toward Pepsi was that the can design was intentionally done so
that—when six-packs were stacked in the grocery store—some portion of them
would line up to spell "SEX".

There was (still is?) a mini-moral panic around subliminal advertising, and
Pepsi trying to do that wasn't well received.

You can judge for yourself here:
[https://i.imgur.com/H1OV1iC.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/H1OV1iC.jpg)

I'm not sure Alpha-Bits or the soup have had labels with naughty words on
them.

~~~
pubutil
I’d have to see more of the can design but this looks weak to me. The 'S' and
'E' are each one color. The ‘X’ is both red and blue, and seems to only exist
because part of a 'P'(?) intersects the background. But what do I know?

~~~
function_seven
Then how do you explain the fact that you just bought a case of Pepsi, despite
not having done so in years?

But yeah, I'm leaning toward this being a coincidence rather than a masterful
scheme to juice sales. The 'X' isn't even fully-formed. It is a "P", and the
can designer was probably just plonking down random letters from "PEPSI" in
the background.

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codezero
This is funny, I don't remember it at all from my youth, but they mention the
Monsters of the Gridiron promo by Coca-Cola, and I remember brute-forcing that
number to guess a Super Bowl winner. I never followed through because you need
to actually mail in your cap to claim the prize :(

The Monsters one was a halloween promo, and I still kind of vaguely remember
the haunting vincent price talk track when you call the 800 number, but I'm
sure i've constructed that memory :)

------
imtringued
When I buy a can of coke I don't want a stupid MagiCan.

~~~
DonHopkins
I wouldn't mind! Pre-owned, opened $5 MagiCans are going for $650 - $800 on
eBay now.

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-Rare-MagiCans-COCA-COLA-
Class...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-Rare-MagiCans-COCA-COLA-Classic-
MAGIC-Summer-1990-Promotional-Can-5-Prize/324142056925)

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/1990-MagiCan-Promotional-Coke-
Can/2...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/1990-MagiCan-Promotional-Coke-
Can/283354305642)

While you can get an opened can of Billy Beer for less than a buck.

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/Billy-Beer-Billy-Carter-Beer-Can-
Pu...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Billy-Beer-Billy-Carter-Beer-Can-Pull-
Tab-12-Ounce-circa-1976/203048581453?hash=item2f46a3794d:g:wZkAAOSwsJFe8qIB)

But you still would have been better off investing that $5 from the MagiCan in
Apple stock.

~~~
SifJar
They are listed for those prices, but those listings have been around for a
while; the $650 one has been listed for at least 2 months, the $800 one for at
least 8 months, and neither is sold. It would be more informative to find
listings where the can actually got sold, there's no evidence here that people
are willing to pay $650-800 for these (in fact, I'd say there is evidence to
the contrary)

~~~
kube-system
You can filter for recently sold listings on eBay. There are zero relevant
results for "coca cola magican" under the "sold" filter. The evidence
demonstrates nobody is buying MagiCans on eBay.

------
kristopolous
I bet this is what Donald Norman has in his nightmares

------
lamby
I'll remember this whenever someone waxes lyrical about the subversive
'genius' of their New Coke campaign.

------
jccalhoun
I remember seeing the commercials for this. I never saw one in person though.

------
Gunax

        >Be blind.
        >Buy can of delicious Coca-Cola.
        >Crack open that cool crisp refreshing beverage.
        >Sip from that cool, sweet, BLURGRGH!!!

~~~
totetsu
is that you anonymous?

