The year was 1996, and the cola wars were raging. Despite Pepsi’s celeb-soaked advertisements, Coke still held the bigger market share, so the second-place brand decided to roll out their biggest campaign ever: Called “Pepsi Stuff,” it featured a soon-to-be infamous commercial implying that if you just bought enough of their products, you could use “Pepsi Points” to purchase sunglasses, leather jackets… and maybe a Harrier jet? Pepsi execs assumed the astronomical “price” of the military plane was set high enough to indicate it was a joke, but college student John Leonard saw it as a challenge, and decided to call their bluff. Enlisting the help (and funding) of mountaineering buddy Todd Hoffman, Leonard hashed out a plan to score the grandest prize of all – even if it never existed in the first place. Shot in a rollicking, irreverent style and soaked in the music and culture of the mid-’90s, Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? sits down with Leonard, Hoffman, the commercial’s creative team, and a truly unexpected cast of tangentially-involved public figures to tell the legendary tale of the kid who sued Pepsi for a fighter jet, and became the hero of a new generation.
The documentary directed by Andrew Renzi will premiere on Netflix November 17, 2022.