User reviews

I just read some reviews from other people and I don't understand why they think it was too long. It was only 4 episodes and the episodes are less than 40 minutes each. They go so fast!

I was hooked from the beginning. I knew nothing about this going in so I didn't know what the outcome would either. Some of the people in this documentary are funny, some are smart, some are stupid and some are creeps. It has it all.

Such an interesting story, I also liked the Philippines story and would like to hear more about that. So sad!

I know which I prefer (coke) and I know how I would have voted if I were on a jury deciding this case (there was no fine print - you can't say "it was a joke". It's like cheating on your wife then saying "it didn't mean anything". Give him the damn jet.) I laughed out loud in a few parts of this! Super enjoyable.

Back when advertising campaigns were very, very different, Pepsi launched an audacious, fun campaign, Pepsi points for prizes, 7 million, would get you a Harrier jet.....just fun right, not for John Leonard.

I have to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed this four part series, first of all, it was refreshing to watch something that didn't feature serial killers and murders, and it was good to learn of a story I knew nothing about.

Plenty of really interesting interviews, it's a basic David Vs Goliath story, the little guy (albeit one with some hefty financial backing,) taking on a big corporate business, Pepsi co.

It's arguably a little slow and repetitive in parts, and four episodes was definitely too long, but I was never bored, there were plenty of interesting bits, including the insight from Avenatti, and the story in The Philippines, Pepsi did not come out of this looking too good.

Very interesting, 8/10.

In a perfect marketplace products win by offering the best mix of attributes for the consumer over the competition. When this is no longer the case things get more complicated. The consumer must be manipulated in some way the actual product takes a back seat. For perpetual underdog soda manufacturer Pepsi to dethrone Coca-Cola the answer was spending huge amounts of money on advertisements, and, as this film details, promotions.

It's interesting a billion-dollar corporation like Pepsi would not do all due diligence when creating and rolling out a major contest. You can be sure they were exacting enough to scrutinize the increased sales over the course of a promotion, but to not understand what they were offering and, more so, the rules where points could be purchased is beyond lax. The Pepsi Stuff promo, with a top prize of a Harrier jet, was such a gaff.

John Leonard, a young college student, bought into the idea of this contest. At first he tried collecting the points finding it rather futile. Then he read the contest rules after picking up a Pepsi Stuff catalog. Realizing enough points for the jet could be purchased at far below the value of the actual jet was the moment things began to get surreal. Having a very wealthy friend comes in now. The friend writes the check for the needed points and John fills out a winning points request for the jet and mails it to Pepsi with the check.

The whole thing sounds like a smart-aleck trick by a typical teenager. That, however, would dismiss the sma@$$ corporation trying to manipulate the buying behavior of the public, particularly the youngest who are likely most susceptible. The moral of this story is if your company is going to play this game you should prepare for all possible outcomes. Pepsi definitely got egg on their face, yet somehow came out of it with minor scratches. One can only imagine what the outcome may have been had this case received a trial by jury.

I find this case extremely interesting. The film did a good job of explaining the timeline of the case and explaining what decisions John Leonard made at various junctions. Truth is companies making the products we buy are master manipulators who dig right down into our pockets without very much moral fiber. In the current market Nike comes to mind recently taking their product out of thousands of smaller retailers. Their endgame can only be to extract more dollars from each sale, perhaps even making product availability less while raising that margin. It's kind of like if the company is big enough they get to write their own rules unless they make a major mis-step like Pepsi. That said, it doesn't look like Pepsi is hurting. This is an entertaining look at corporate shenanigans that is highly recommended.

This is a pretty good series! I know I was hooked as soon as I saw the trailer for the series, but the series lived up to my expectations.

Covering the Scandal and Court Case from the 1990's, Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc. This docuseries brings in both sides with John Leonard and his team speaking and Pepsi employees giving their takes from the corporate perspective. Both sides having their chance to speak and give their arguments although I won't ignore that this series is biased towards Leonard and rightfully so.

While I wish there was more to the series, it was the right length and kept you enthralled throughout each episode. Sometimes I feel a lot of the docuseries nowadays are overdone, but this was a solid series in everyway.

Be like John. Keep dreaming and working to achieve your dreams!

As far as documentaries go this one felt less one sided than most. It certainly keeps you rooting for John and his twenty year old dream to win a falsely advertised Harrier jet. But in the same token it really is a David VS Goliath story, and keeps it relatively light hearted. Pepsi is never overtly painted as the bad guy, and their Ad execs and creatives are allowed to chime in. John and his friend Todd share a great bond over climbing and it's heartwarming at times, especially the fourth and last episode.

If you don't know the end of the story DON'T look it up. I'm really glad I didn't!

As a docu-series goes it's fun , and has the usual twists and turns. Not a bad way to relax for an evening or two. It is not your average overdramatic drama, is mostly narrated by the actual people, with only a few scenes recreated. I dug it because I was a kid when it happened and never know the outcome.

Although I was in my twenties in the nineties, I didn't know this story (I'm from Europe). That means I didn't know the ending. Some people here commenting on how it could've been told in five minutes... I don't agree! I simply don't. Since it eventually became highly discussed law book material, it was complex matter.

I have to give kudos to the makers who did an amazing job in storytelling, crazy montage, chosing the music and making this a four episode fun and interesting to watch documentary. I dated a documentary maker so I watched first hand that making a documentary is a hatd and lengthy process. The makers definitely succeeded in making a good one.

As Episode 1 of "Pepsi, Where's My Jet" (2022 release; 4 episodes ranging from 36 to 43 min) opens, we are introduced to the cutting edge ad campaigns by Pepsi in the 90s, as the cola wars raged between Coke and Pepsi. In 1995, Pepsi launched the "Drink Pepsi, Get Stuff" campaign, including "7,000,000 points: Harrier Fight" (the military jet that can take off and land vertically). John Leonard, a 20 yo from Seattle, facies that jet and starts plotting a way to collect 7,000,000 Pepsi points. At this point we are 10 min into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from documentary producer/director Andrew Renzo )("Ready For War"). Here he looks back at the stranger than fiction story of how a 20 yo took on Pepsi over the promise/offer to give a military jet if one collects 7 million Pepsi points. Of course I'm not going to spoil how it all turns out, but let's just say that lawyers get involved. Lots of lawyers. The tone of this mini-series is firmly tongue-in-cheek, none more so than by the protagonist, John Leonard, who lives to tell the tale now a quarter century later, and his "can you believe this happened to me?" way of talking to us. That said, even though it runs only 4 episodes, there is quite a bit of fluff in this, in particularly as Renzi reflects on Leonard's ongoing friendship to this day with another protagonist in the story. Totally unrelated: I kept thinking to myself that Pepsi's ad campaigns in those days were indeed very much cutting edge. Whatever happened to that? We need a new cola war!

"Pepsi, Where's My Jet?" premiered on Netflix last week, and all 4 episodes are now streaming. If you are in the mood for a light=hearted "stranger than fiction" documentary, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Netflix documentaries strength is about telling a story about people. Whether he should or not should have a jet is an interesting topic, but that's not why it should be a 4 episode documentary. It needs that time for us to cozy down and immerse ourselves in the lives of the participants.

This a lovely ride to the 90s. A ride to make us remember when we were kids and looked at unattainable dreams in catalogues that offered prices to kids who seld magazines or collected bottlecaps.

I never got close to the big prizes, but my heart is with the kid who went for it.

You sell dreams you should deliver on them.

This is a rare gem of a docuseries! I don't usually watch feel-good documentaries but I'm really glad i watched this. It's often hilarious, the soundtrack is fantastic and perfectly timed, the editing and directing are so well done you can actually feel how much they enjoyed making this documentary, and how much fun they were having with it! If you're looking for a lighthearted story-time that asks it's audience for nothing but a few hours, look no further. You will not be disappointed!

(And now I'm filling space because i have no more words about the docuseries. I was stretching that review already 😅)

Of course, while everyone else saw this commercial and went on about their day, hoping one day to earn enough Pepsi points to get a T-shirt or duffle bag, there would be ONE teenager who would expect a freaking fighter jet, who just happened to know a man with money who could help him get it. Besides all that, the docuseries was a little more interesting than I expected. It's worth the watch to gather your own opinion. It showed the naïveté and ridiculous mistakes made from both sides, yet I was more surprised with the stunts that Pepsi pulled to cover their own mistakes. Plus, I can't believe that after all these years, many people still can't taste the difference between Coke vs. Pepsi.

I didn't like the show because it dragged too much. The whole story could be told in 1h or so. The friendship and adventures are nice, but the mountain climbing had too much screen time.

The advertising by Pepsi was cool and clever back then. They had a nice promotion to trade points for items. The items in the catalog seems cool, I would like to get some of that merchandise in a promo like that these days, but I would probably just buy coca-cola lol

The documentary also shows some problems they had in the Philippines that were much worse than the jet issue. I wish they showed more about the Philippines and how that played out, instead of fillers.

I'll just say it's incredible how NETFLIX picks up great stories, interesting subjects and presents us in 4 hours, 6-8-10 episodes. With people simply speaking and telling how something was. You are never sharing the excitement with them, you're getting bla-bla. Nothing relevant is seen, tasted. Reenactments are even worse.

Netflix would be great producing podcasts. IN this case, a 15-minute audio piece would suffice. It's a great story, but it doesn't mean it gets better because it's longer. That's a Netflix must - it treats lenght almost as Marvel movies.

I can only imagine people watching this in the ad-version.

The underlying 'David v Goliath' story in this documentary is interesting, and the subject matter makes the series a fun lark. But the series is ridiculously over stuffed with scenes about extraneous detail, long re-enactments and descriptions of minor events, and is way over-produced with pop-culture footage. There's one part where the producers want to emphasise that two characters had become friends, but instead of just having the characters say 'we became friends', the producers inserted a minutes-long montage of stock footage of friendships. I found myself getting super frustrated at the slow pace of the main story from the first episode.

This has to be one of the worst examples of a story that could've been a good 90 film, which Netflix stretched out so that it could fit into a 'series' format.

This was a fun and well designed and edited documentary. While I remember the Pepsi commercial in question, I was too young to understand or remember any news of the courtroom drama playing out in this David v. Goliath story. Overall the film presented the controversy in an engaging way that kept me entertained through the four episodes. If you were a child of the 1990s like me then this documentary is for you. I was surprised that in the end I had more sympathy for Pepsi than John Leonard and his team. When I saw the commercial as a kid I did not for even a fraction of second think the offer of a Harrier fighter jet was real. The real fun of this film is that after watching it, you can be your own judge about who was right or wrong.

I was around in the 90s and have no recollection of this story, so this was a nice surprise from Netflix. To me, it was a compelling documentary of a David vs. Goliath story that was just the right length. The inserts of the mountain climbing were used to great effect to illustrate the dual stories of climbing a mountain and gaining a close friend out of an unlikely situation.

Pepsi was wrong. The idea that they all thought that their little "joke" in their ad would be "gotten" by every single person that watched was absolutely proven wrong -- that's what disclaimers are for. The "executives" from that time period, shown throughout the documentary, are STILL mocking this notion, 25 years later. "Oh, we thought it was a joke and right in line with our sense of humor!" The documentary proves them wrong over and over. This is well worth the time!

When I first saw this documentary in my Netflix suggestions I was very entrigered by the title and I didn't knew this story so I took the risk and I immediatly started to see. After I finish it, I can tell this was a fantastic story very well narrated with some humour cleverly mixed. I love the way the story was told and the way keep pushing me to see more in the next episode.

I really enjoyed saw the perspective of a young kid vs one of the biggest companies in the world, and that inspired me a lot to never be afraid of battle for things we belive and want the most.

I think it's a story that everyone must see.

Four episodes. Mostly narrated by the actual kid, john leonard, who took on pepsi. When a joke in a pepsi commercial goes wrong, john takes pepsi to court. It's 1995, and pepsi hires an ad company to get folks to buy more pepsi. So as a joke, they show a harrier jet being offered for seven million pepsi points. With almost no fine print. The ad they show in this program near the start, at about 4:45, does state "offer not available in all areas. See details on specially marked packages." so john goes to a mountain climber friend todd, who had the financial backing to partner on the deal to actually purchase the points and redeem it for a jet shown in the commercial. We learn a lot about the ad company, and harrier jets. One interesting tidbit- michael avenatti got involved to help leonard's team. Avenatti was more recently in the headlines over president trump's alleged business dealings. To the producer's credit, they do interview jeff mordos, credited as the former coo of pepsi, as well as people on the advertising team. Apparently, there were problems with pepsi promotions in the past. Interesting stuff. Directed by andrew renzi, who does a lot of documentaries. It's an interesting watch, and we hear the actual decision at the end of episode four. Which apparently is now studied in some law schools.

It was one of those "weird facts" posts always bouncing around social media, the kid that saved up the Pepsi points and then demanded the harrier jet he'd seen in the commercial. It was a wild story and a humorous consequence of reckless advertising. You can find plenty of YouTube videos on the subject, and that's probably as far as you should take it.

"Pepsi, Where's My Jet?" a pretty good 60 minutes of material padded way the hell out to 157; a series of unnecessary reenactments and loads of extraneous characters, and I repeatedly wanted the filmmakers to get back to the main story. And there's way more Michael Avenatti than anyone deserves. Yuck.

And the kid's being twenty years old made it seem less like a consumer wanting what's promised than just some guy gaming the system. I did learn a few things (and that's always good) but enough to justify the overproduction and distracted storytelling?

Nah.

This is one of those situations that seems like it could only happen in the USA. The story starts off exciting and engaging, but it often gets bogged down by personal, slower-paced moments, like scenes of mountain climbing. These sections are meant to add depth or reflection to the characters, but in the end, they feel more like a distraction.

The film's structure, with its four episodes, feels excessive; the story could have easily been told in two episodes without losing much. While the pacing slows down at times, it does have its moments of intrigue and tension. However, it never quite reaches the level of intensity or excitement that would make it something you must see.

In terms of entertainment, it serves as a decent option for filling time when you're looking for something easy to watch, but it doesn't offer anything particularly groundbreaking or gripping. It's watchable, but not something that leaves a lasting impression.

Overall, I'd rate it 6/10. It has potential and some good moments, but the pacing and structure hold it back from being truly captivating.