Presented as a Netflix series, these four 30-40 minute episodes play more like a padded movie than anything else. It tells the story of a young man in 1995 who noticed a goofy Pepsi commercial was promising an actual Harrier jump jet in exchange for 7,00,000 “Pepsi points”… and he found a way to get those points and demanded his prize. Pepsi was confused… and litigious.

This doc has a light touch, not taking things too seriously. It lets these various characters spout wild ideas and theories and backs them up with amusing inserts of movie scenes as examples of what they are saying. And it digs up almost everyone involved in this fiasco… the kid, his weird business buddy, the Pepsi advertisers, the lawyers, and even Michael Avenatti who wormed his sway into the case before he was (in)famous.

I enjoyed in a rather skeptical way this doc. Skeptical because, yeah, I get the joke behind actually asking for a Harrier jet. It’s a good lark and it’s fun borderline satire to demand this huge corporation pay up because some schmo in the advertising department didn’t put a disclaimer in the commercial. But, to this day, the various people are still claiming they were hoodwinked by false advertising. To which I say… yeah, right. Some of them seem like nice guys but it was still a little annoying listening to their disingenuous complaints.

On the other hand, it is fun to stick it to The Man… the man, in this case, being a multibillion dollar sugar water peddler with a history of botching contests. You want to chortle at their come-uppance… but then I think about a basic mistake made by some random human being in the marketing department and I feel bad for them. Maybe this isn’t the evil machinations of a corporate monster bent on manipulating people into buying sugar water. I think that might be a character flaw on my part though.

This is a decent and fun doc that runs a little long, even at just four short episodes. Mainly that’s due to padding at the start and end of each episode that could have been eliminated by just making this a full length movie. But whatever… it’s good info about a story I only vaguely remember.

Score: 81