Advertising trick: Pepsi’s Harrier Jet Commercial Led to a $700,000 Court Fight
John Leonard tried to redeem seven million Pepsi Points for a military aircraft—and a federal judge decided whether the joke could be a contract.
In 1996, John Leonard sent PepsiCo an order form, 15 Pepsi Points and a check for $700,008.50. On the form, the Seattle resident wrote a request that was at once precise and wildly improbable: “1 Harrier Jet.”
The request grew out of Pepsi Stuff, a promotional campaign that had been tested in the Pacific Northwest from late 1995 into early 1996. Customers collected points from specially marked Pepsi and Diet Pepsi packages, then exchanged them for branded goods: sunglasses, shirts, a leather jacket, even a mountain bike.
A television commercial took the premise further.
It showed a teenager arriving at school in a Harrier fighter jet, declaring that it “sure beats the bus,” while text on screen assigned the aircraft a price of 7,000,000 Pepsi Points.
The commercial was meant as a gag.
The catalog, however, contained a rule Leonard believed gave the gag a price: customers who had at least 15 original points could buy additional points for 10 cents each.
Seven million points therefore appeared to cost about $700,000, far less than the roughly $23 million value cited by the court for a Harrier jet.
Leonard first considered collecting the points through Pepsi purchases, then changed course.
He raised about $700,000 through acquaintances, used the catalog’s original order form and submitted his check on or about March 27, 1996. His accompanying letter said the money was being used to buy points “expressly for obtaining a new Harrier jet as advertised” in the commercial.
Pepsi’s fulfillment company returned the check.
The jet, it said, was not in the catalog or on the order form, and only catalog merchandise could be redeemed.
It described the aircraft as a fanciful element of a humorous advertisement and included product coupons with its reply.
Leonard’s lawyers answered with a demand that Pepsi arrange the transfer of the aircraft.
What followed was not simply a dispute over a clever commercial.
PepsiCo filed a federal action in New York seeking a declaration that it had no obligation to provide the jet.
Leonard also sued in Florida, a case later transferred to New York because it had no meaningful connection to the state.
The litigation became a durable lesson in the difference between advertising, invitation and offer.
On August 5, 1999, Judge Kimba M. Wood granted summary judgment for PepsiCo. The ruling did not rest on a hidden disclaimer in the television spot.
It examined the whole commercial: a helmetless teenager piloting a military aircraft to a school, students scattering, a teacher stripped by the jet’s downwash and a fighter landing beside a bicycle rack.
No reasonable viewer, the judge held, would have understood the scene as a serious offer.
The court also found that the commercial lacked the definite terms required to create a contract, that the catalog did not list a Harrier among redeemable items and that any supposed multimillion-dollar sale failed the Statute of Frauds because there was no adequate signed writing from PepsiCo. In short, the advertisement was an invitation for consumers to make offers, not an offer Pepsi had already made.
The decision was affirmed on appeal in 2000. Pepsi later changed the commercial’s jet price to 700,000,000 points and added “Just Kidding.” Leonard did not get an aircraft, but his attempt preserved something more lasting: a case still taught for the plain, stubborn proposition that even a brilliantly calculated deal must begin with a real offer.
The request grew out of Pepsi Stuff, a promotional campaign that had been tested in the Pacific Northwest from late 1995 into early 1996. Customers collected points from specially marked Pepsi and Diet Pepsi packages, then exchanged them for branded goods: sunglasses, shirts, a leather jacket, even a mountain bike.
A television commercial took the premise further.
It showed a teenager arriving at school in a Harrier fighter jet, declaring that it “sure beats the bus,” while text on screen assigned the aircraft a price of 7,000,000 Pepsi Points.
The commercial was meant as a gag.
The catalog, however, contained a rule Leonard believed gave the gag a price: customers who had at least 15 original points could buy additional points for 10 cents each.
Seven million points therefore appeared to cost about $700,000, far less than the roughly $23 million value cited by the court for a Harrier jet.
Leonard first considered collecting the points through Pepsi purchases, then changed course.
He raised about $700,000 through acquaintances, used the catalog’s original order form and submitted his check on or about March 27, 1996. His accompanying letter said the money was being used to buy points “expressly for obtaining a new Harrier jet as advertised” in the commercial.
Pepsi’s fulfillment company returned the check.
The jet, it said, was not in the catalog or on the order form, and only catalog merchandise could be redeemed.
It described the aircraft as a fanciful element of a humorous advertisement and included product coupons with its reply.
Leonard’s lawyers answered with a demand that Pepsi arrange the transfer of the aircraft.
What followed was not simply a dispute over a clever commercial.
PepsiCo filed a federal action in New York seeking a declaration that it had no obligation to provide the jet.
Leonard also sued in Florida, a case later transferred to New York because it had no meaningful connection to the state.
The litigation became a durable lesson in the difference between advertising, invitation and offer.
On August 5, 1999, Judge Kimba M. Wood granted summary judgment for PepsiCo. The ruling did not rest on a hidden disclaimer in the television spot.
It examined the whole commercial: a helmetless teenager piloting a military aircraft to a school, students scattering, a teacher stripped by the jet’s downwash and a fighter landing beside a bicycle rack.
No reasonable viewer, the judge held, would have understood the scene as a serious offer.
The court also found that the commercial lacked the definite terms required to create a contract, that the catalog did not list a Harrier among redeemable items and that any supposed multimillion-dollar sale failed the Statute of Frauds because there was no adequate signed writing from PepsiCo. In short, the advertisement was an invitation for consumers to make offers, not an offer Pepsi had already made.
The decision was affirmed on appeal in 2000. Pepsi later changed the commercial’s jet price to 700,000,000 points and added “Just Kidding.” Leonard did not get an aircraft, but his attempt preserved something more lasting: a case still taught for the plain, stubborn proposition that even a brilliantly calculated deal must begin with a real offer.
