
When Pepsi Had a Navy - davesailer
https://lflank.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/when-pepsi-had-a-navy/
======
deftnerd
This is just a rewritten version of the AtlasObscura story from Jan 2018

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-union-pepsi-
shi...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-union-pepsi-ships)

It's rewritten paragraph-by-paragraph, probably automatically using "rewriting
tools" that blog spammers use to plagiarize articles. You can tell because the
story follows the same threads from paragraph to paragraph.

~~~
novaleaf
good catch, though probably not rewritten automatically. There's too much
"context awareness" going on. If it was auto-written, it was then heavily
edited by a native english speaker.

also after skimming the atlas obscura article, I have to say I wish I read
that instead. Better prose and a lot more images than the plagiarized version.

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vmlinuz
And then, of course, there's the time when Pepsi almost had an air force,
albeit briefly:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc).

~~~
daeken
I'm still bothered by this case. While I don't think that PepsiCo should've
been forced to buy and then sell (for points) a Harrier jet, the fact that
there were no consequences for the ad just kind of baffles me. If you look at
any ad targeting youth markets from the time period, they had the same
nonchalance; sure, they're not pitching a jet, but that just seems like a
terrible argument.

~~~
chrisseaton
> the fact that there were no consequences for the ad

It was obviously a joke. No reasonable person would not see that.

~~~
anilakar
In 2005 Pepsi had a campaign where you would get a Sony laptop priced at 2000
EUR by buying some 850 EUR net worth of soda.

When people started sending in their bottle labels en masse, it turned out
that the company never expected anyone to actually aim for the prize. Pepsi
representation tried to weasel out by changing the rules thrice. In the end,
they had to bow down to the consumer protection officials and sent out a newer
generation Vaio as they could not source enough of the model they advertised.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That puts me in mind of Hoover's infamous 1990s UK flight promotion. It
started off OK, buy £100 of Hoover products, get a free flight to Europe. Not
many redeemed the offer. Then they added global destinations. Loads redeemed
the offer. People were buying a Hoover and giving or throwing it away, or
leaving it in the shop to get (much more expensive) flights to the US.

Hoover made £30m in extra sales, and had to spend £50m on flights, and unknown
compensation. TV programmes were made, court cases filed, board execs were
fired and Hoover UK sold to the Italians.

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

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Hoover made £30m in extra sales, and had to spend £50m on flights, and
> unknown compensation.

This is impressive, but it seems to understate Hoover's problems pretty
dramatically. The Wikipedia article says this:

> at this point the consumer response increased enormously, as Hoover was
> offering around £600 of airline tickets for an outlay of just £100.
> Customers opted to purchase the cheapest product that was enough to satisfy
> the £100 requirement, with some not even bothering to pick up the product
> they had purchased. The Hoover factory had to switch to seven-day working
> and hire additional employees to meet the demand for the cheapest qualifying
> vacuum cleaner.

This sounds like a lot of additional expense in labor and materials, all of
which was basically wasted.

~~~
chrisseaton
> This sounds like a lot of additional expense in labor and materials, all of
> which was basically wasted.

Yes I think that's the point of the story.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I thought the point of the story was the front-and-center statistics, 30
million pounds in additional sales outweighed by 50 million pounds in
expenditures on airline tickets.

But that sounds like a 20 million pound loss most of which was wealth transfer
(from Hoover to you!) rather than wealth destruction. In fact, because of the
sideshow in ordering unwanted vacuum cleaners, the loss was apparently much
larger and mostly wealth destruction rather than wealth transfer.

~~~
jacobush
Thank you for bringing in the greater picture of wealth destruction vs wealth
transfer instead of just the consumer and the producer.

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duxup
Interesting story although:

> Pepsi a fleet of 17 obsolete Soviet Navy diesel attack submarines along with
> a decommissioned cruiser, destroyer and frigate, as well as a number of new
> civilian oil tankers. At a stroke, PepsiCo had become the sixth most
> powerful navy in the world.

Not sure a bunch of questionable quality / condition ships and some oil
tankers would really be the "sixth most powerful."

~~~
jandrese
What are the more powerful ones? US, UK, France, Korea?, who else? Japan's SDF
was still pretty neutered at the time, China didn't have a navy to speak of,
I'm not sure how many other countries would have beaten them at the time.
Maybe Egypt?

~~~
rangibaby
Here's what I got searching country names searching the pennant list from
"Janes Fighting Ships 1988-89". It's limited to "major surface ships", and
notably doesn't include the USSR due to their policy of regularly changing
pennant numbers. I think it's OK for ballpark purposes.

1\. USA 425

2\. UK 95

3\. Japan 81

4\. France 65

5\. Taiwan 60

6\. China 52

7\. Indonesia 36

8\. India 35

9\. Italy 34

10\. Germany, Federal 30

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/a74zpbb556lv4mn/ships.pdf?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/a74zpbb556lv4mn/ships.pdf?dl=0)

~~~
jandrese
Interesting. I wonder what qualifies as a "major surface ship"? Presumably not
50 foot coast guard cutters?

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tedsuo
Can’t believe they didn’t mention the cherry (pepperoni?) on top: PepsiCo also
got Gorbachev to huck some Pizza Hut for them:
[https://youtu.be/fgm14D1jHUw](https://youtu.be/fgm14D1jHUw)

~~~
benj111
Olive surely?

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omegaworks
>The Soviet ruble was still worthless on the international market

Who controls the currency controls the country. A government forced to barter
its warships so a multinational company would continue delivering its soft-
drink to its citizens. I wonder if the deliberate sabotage of the Ruble helped
usher in collapse.

~~~
rmason
Actually the Soviet Union was indirectly brought down by the humble FAX
machine.

The AFL-CIO from Detroit got friendly with the Polish Solidarity union. During
protests the government would shut down communications.

They told the AFL-CIO what they really could use were FAX machines. AFL people
and priests smuggled in the FAX machines in their suitcases and with it an
alternative communications network was established. During protests they could
quickly send information country wide and they hoped the government wouldn't
catch on and it worked.

Without the absolute control over information one country after another fell.

[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159069,...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159069,00.html)

~~~
varjag
Not sure about communist Poland, but fax machine had little to do with fall of
USSR.

~~~
rmason
Poland was the domino and after it got its freedom one after another the rest
of the countries in Eastern Europe gained their independence.

This put immense pressure on the Soviet Union after people in some of its
republics like Georgia and the Ukraine decided that they wanted their freedom
too.

The military panicked and staged a coup against Gorbachev. It then dawned on
the Russians that they could have their freedom as well.

~~~
rimliu
Ehm. I think you should refresh your knowledge about the fall of the USSR. The
Orange revolution in Ukraine and the Rose revolution in Georgia heppened years
after USSR felt apart. In reality the Baltic states were the first to declare
independance from the Soviet Union. And it had little to do with Poland.

Source: citizen of Lithuania, the first one to break away.

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mirimir
As I recall, during the 80s, Pepsi typically cost more than vodka.

~~~
benj111
Is that in the soviet union?

~~~
mirimir
Yeah. Vodka was typically served in a simple ~100 ml glass (maybe 3-4 shots).
Pepsi came with a fancy goblet.

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jedberg
I remember this! I was 12 when this happened, and I remember talking about it
in history class, including all the stuff about Nixon and Krushchev.

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nashashmi
I dont get it. They traded Pepsi for scrap metal? Could not they have traded
it for wood, or ore, or gold? Like raw materials?

~~~
pjc50
It was a command economy, and the entire export surplus of those other items
was probably committed to other trade purposes.

We're used to total fungible value of everything, but in the Soviet Union
bartering with what you had to hand was far more necessary.

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creaghpatr
Interesting case there, but nowadays big conglomerates like Pepsi and Coke
surely have thousands of security contractors on retainer? Then again, they
can't exactly order an airstrike against Coke...

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coleifer
Super grimy site, picked up that I'm on at&t and redirected me to some scummy
"take our survey and win some shit" site with a fake message dialog.

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pts_
East India Co

