March 24, 2020 • 53 mins
At multiple, pivotal moments in the Cold War, Pepsi and Coke waged Cola wars all their own. The guys team up for the first episode of Ridiculous History: Quarantine.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:30):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. We are coming to you
live under some very special circumstances. Through the power of technology.
We are continuing Ridiculous History during a no full and
quarantine him. I'm ben, I recognize you on the screen, sir.
(00:51):
I'm sorry. I was holding that in, holding that in
so hard. It's almost like with somebody yawns, you feel
compelled to yawn. And why is it that we go
when we take a sip of a refreshing drink. I'm
Noll by the way, Yeah, yeah, you're Noel. Uh. That's
a great question. I wonder if it's partially just because
of the advertising. Maybe it's kind of earworm dust to
(01:13):
expect that every time we hear that iconic click of
a can, it's like a Pavlovian dog drool effect kind
of something along those lines. Yeah, Or maybe it's even
like in the post smash Mouth era, every time you
hear somebody go some oh god wow. I just had
like a brain brain twitch when you did that. Uh.
(01:35):
I know you're absolutely you know, you're absolutely right. And
I've got another one that I think is a little
less less, uh, ubiquitous. But it's a she s got
me wakes up in the morning. Um, but no, it's true, man,
we are in quarantine. Super Producer Casey Pegraham is in
(01:56):
fact in his closet. I'm trapped in the closet. Guys,
should I Should I be talking more in this direction? Probably? Yeah,
that sounds a little bit. We're working live here. This
is all a grand experiment. You can talk in whichever
direction feels most natural to you. So when you say
you're trapped in the closet, not in an R Kelly
cancel has been completely canceled. No, I'm literally just trapped
(02:17):
in the closet in my apartment because this room has
the best acoustics for for what we're doing here. So
and no one has trapped you there. You're in the No. No, no,
I'm I'm here of my own volition. Um, everything's fine. Well,
it's it's not. But you know, as as far as
the world's burning down. But the closet is an oasis
of sanity in order. It's a sauna on the level
(02:39):
of the shipping container at the office. Actually, it's kind
of it's kind of a hot box in here. Super
producer Casey Pegram is going methods we record in quarantine.
Uh so, like methane, here we go, so uh so
here we are. We have been so grateful for everyone,
all of your fellow ridiculous historians listening. We know a
(03:02):
lot of people are in self isolation or maybe a quarantine,
and these are candidly uh very very uncertain times. But
the three of us wanted to keep this show going
no matter what it took. And for the next several episodes,
we don't know how long we might be coming to
(03:24):
you from our respective bunkers, which are just gonna get
weirder as we go. Right, Yeah, it's true. I mean
I'm in my bedroom. Um. I have a little home
studio with all my synthesizer NERD toys surrounding me, um,
which gives me some comfort at least if I if
you hear me like making a little beat on the side,
or hear a little deeple needle or kind of like
some bleeps and bloops, you'll know why. Um. But this
(03:46):
is our lives, you guys, and we're very very lucky.
I can't trust this enough to be uh in an
industry where we're able to keep working and keep putting
out these shows and hopefully giving you folks at home
some kind of comfort. It's some kind of company, you know.
Um uh. And and I I just want to say
to all my friends and and our listeners that work
(04:08):
in the service industry that are our retail that are
really getting hit hard by this, we see you, and
um we you know, just let us know if there's
anything that we can do, I don't know, other than
just kind of being there. Uh, and keep doing what
we're doing what we can do, but um, we we
see you, and uh it's the whole thing is just
kind of a mess. Um and I don't even That's
(04:29):
all I know how to say about them. Yeah, agreed.
So to emphasize that point before we get started today, Uh,
this show is and has always been, at least at
least for us, a community, you know, and the the
show doesn't stop when the episodes over. So I please
please come share your stories with us Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
(04:53):
We love our page Ridiculous Historians. Uh, we're all. Even
if we can't be physically here for each other, uh,
which we haven't been, if we're in podcasting, right, we
can be here mentally. Uh. And we can get through
this stuff together, especially because it's weird. You know, we're
a history show and we're we're at an historic moment
(05:15):
in time. Today we wanted to introduce you I'm laughing
because this is such a weird segue. UH. Today we
wanted to introduce you to a particularly strange bit of
ridiculous history that I don't know about. You know, this
was news to me when I was looking into it.
I I almost didn't believe it. I thought it was
(05:36):
an exaggeration. No, I mean I also like, I read
the headline and what the ultimate like story was didn't
match what in my mind the headline represented. Um, the
headline being the title today's episode, how Pepsi briefly became
the sixth largest navy in the world. And you know,
I don't actually know what I thought that it meant, um,
(05:59):
But no, it turned out that it's uh, some very
clever bartering, um, some very clever kind of quid pro
quo between the the Russian government and the Pepsi Corporation.
And it's ultimately a story of UH coming out from
behind the Iron curtain and kind of trying to try
on some American products for size. Uh. In terms of
(06:20):
Russia trying to like kind of join the rest of
the world after the end of the Cold War, right, yeah, absolutely,
and that's that's a great place for us to begin.
So the Cold War in the nineteen fifties, you know
that everybody knows kind of what the Cold War was.
Two hegemonic superpowers, the US and the USS are both
want to be the big dog on the planet, and
(06:44):
they both want to avoid an out and out direct confrontation,
so they wage proxy wars. Uh, you know, unethical diplomacy, propaganda. Uh.
Different countries that are full of innocent bystandards are being
used as as battle grounds. And the crux of it
is that that that both both countries are armed, uh
(07:07):
nuclearly right right right, so they can't Nobody wants an
escalation because of mad mutually a short destruction the theory
that says, if one person or one state launches a
nuclear weapon, then it will become increasingly easier for other
states to rationalize launching them. So no one wants to
tip the apple cart too far. It's kind of like
(07:29):
we we talked about this earlier, and in one way,
it's like if you're a kid and you were ever
trying to race one of your friends in school, but
you couldn't run because the teacher would get angry at you,
so you're kind of power walking. So they want right
or like around the pool. You know, you don't want
to be a kid that gets yelled up with a
life card for running and then your idiot friend is
(07:49):
the one who wins up cracking his skull on the
side of the shallow ends. So you know, he had
a coming in this hypothetical scenario, right, which maybe not
a one to one comparison to New Clear War, but
you see what we're getting at, folks. So at different times,
the US and the USS are would escalate things and
then they would try to ease things down. Uh. This story,
(08:12):
uh sort of begins when the U S s R.
In the U S we're in a period of easing tensions.
They started this thing they called cultural exchanges. And this
was like, hey, let's learn more about people as people,
learn more about the people of Russia as humans and
the people of US as humans. So it came to
pass in the summer of nineteen fifty nine, the Soviet
(08:34):
Union held this kind of like I guess we call
it a mini world fare I was thinking the same thing.
Ben is very much like, but highlighting American products. Everyone
was there, from IBM to dixie Cup, Disney of course,
you know, because at the end of the day, I
mean the folks on the ground in Russia. There was
always a desire for American culture from the actual you know,
(08:58):
people that live in in the Soviet Union. We did
an episode on those Russian hipsters that were bootlegging Elvis
Presley seventy eight on uh what was it x X
ray pronounced that they kind of dumpster dive from hospitals.
There was always a strong desire for American culture. So
this is a big deal, right, all of a sudden, Hey,
American culture is coming to Russia in the form of
(09:21):
the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow. And
like I said, we had IBM, we had Disney, we
had dixie Cup, we had all of these massive brands,
and that included Pepsi. Yes, that included Pepsi. Also, the
the Soviet Union held a similar exhibition in New York
City and they did the same thing with Russian displays.
(09:43):
So this was very quid pro quel Clarisse on July
at the American National Exhibition there in Sokolniki. The Soviet
Premier Khruschev visits this exposition and then he meets Richard Nixon,
who at this time is just vice president. He had
been sent uh you know, as a stand in for
(10:06):
Dwight Eisenhower, the president because you know, no spoilers, but
obviously the U. S. President wasn't going to travel there.
So they look around. Kruchevan Nixon are walking around. They're
looking at this model home, the US American Dream model home,
and then they start talking smack to each other. You know.
(10:26):
I picture it as a very caddy thing about capitalism
versus communism, throwing a little shade. There were changing some
barbs and then uh and they did it on the
air too, right, Yeah, So it's pretty cool. As a
as a technology nerd um, I can actually point out
that the microphone they stand in front of in this
model kitchen um is this very specific r C a
(10:49):
broadcast microphone that's a ribbon microphone, and it's very very sensitive.
So if you ever get your hands on a ribbon microphone,
don't drop it, because you can actually literally render one
of these very uh dell get pieces of technology completely useless. Um.
But yeah, they're standing in front of this microphone and
what has since become known as was it the Kitchen Debates?
And you you can get a gander at this yourself
(11:11):
on YouTube pretty easily. There's there's several versions of it
up right now. Um, and yeah it's true. I mean
they say things like here's a quote from from it.
Oh my gosh, Ben, and this is an opportunity we've
we've been waiting for for so long, our an opportunity
to do and a Nixon off which sounds like a
Russian word, a Nixon off. So I'll start, if you
(11:31):
don't mind, let's see. Oh I haven't done this in
so long. Um, let's see. I'm a little horse too,
so let me let me do my best here. Um,
you'll you'll, you'll plant on it. No, I can't do it,
and that's gone. I'm gonna let you do, all right.
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. Let's see. Uh I
am not a crook. No, I can't do I remember
(11:53):
that's I'm gonna make it a very lippy. Um, you'll
plan out trip hospital, taking all on the product, and
it could continues that wasn't really free ext I'm sorry
(12:17):
coming yeah it was translation, yeah yeah yeah. Uh. So
he's saying, you planned out strip is particularly in the
production and consumer goods. If this competition is to do
the best for both of our people's and for people everywhere,
there must be a free exchange of ideas. And then uh,
Kruschev is arguing back and Nixon says, you know you'll
never country eat anything, which is um fair, yeah, true,
(12:40):
but it's also weird coming from him from Nick no
big time. But this is also like Nixon when he
was still you know, sort of a human. Uh, he
was very young in this video, Like he really looks
like he's still had a few pieces of his soul remain, honestly,
Um and Krisschev, do you remember that episode we did
about what was the deal? Like he wanted to go
to Disneyland, and like they wouldn't let him go because
(13:02):
it was too much of a security risk. So I
think the fact that Disney was at this expo was
no accident. I think Karuschev was a big fan of Disney.
It's interesting that Krischev would have espoused any kind of
interest in an Americans. It is fascinating and I like
that you point out that it was probably not a
coincidence that Disney was there because a lot of things
(13:23):
that looked like happenstance were not actually happenstance. Here because
you see, we have tricked you into listening to another
con episode. It turns out that this entire kitchen debate, uh,
and or a lot of the Nixon Kruschev meeting was
part of a plot on the side of American capitalism,
(13:45):
good old fashioned hucksterism, is how the article on the
Daily Coast calls it. The night before Nixon and Kruschev meet,
one of the executives for Pepsi, guy named Donald M. Kendall,
visits Nixon the U. S. Embassy in Moscow, and he's
known Nixon for a long time outside of business relationships.
(14:06):
Like they they hang out, you know what I mean,
probably smokes cigars and drink brandies and and creepy back
rooms together. Yeah. That was that was the That was
the style of the day. Uh. You see Kendall is
he's kind of like he wants to be like the
Alexander the Great or the Jengas Khan of PepsiCo. He
wants to grow the company overseas, and the rest of
(14:30):
the Pepsi executive board is like, what are you doing,
man time in a place. You're crazy. They're nuclear weapons.
I don't know what the soda is worth it. But
he goes against them. He sponsors a booth at this exhibition,
and in that exhibition, the only thing they give you
is pepsi cola and uh, he gets a little bit
(14:50):
of juice, a little bit of help from President Nixon,
and they try to This is weird. I think that
stood out to all of us. This is weird. The
booth gives you two batches of pepsi. You can get
one that's made with water from the US, one one
name with water from Russia, and then slightly I'm sure
(15:11):
they did something on purpose, right, Uh. And then the
scoop is that when Kendall visits Nixon secretly, he says, look, uh,
look tricky, which is probably what he called him. He's like, look, Tricky,
I uh, I gotta make this trip worthwhile. We're old friends.
My jobs on the line. I need you to get
a pepsi in Kruschev's hand. That was the whole point. Yeah, yeah,
(15:35):
Because there are photographers, uh, you know, with their with
their flashbulbs a flash and this is obviously a big
photo op type moment um. All of this stuff is
is about optics, as they say, and in politics, right, Um,
And and here's the rub which I really really love.
It was set up for Krushchev to you know, lose
(15:56):
his cool and be like, you know, the Russian version
is better, Russian water tastes better because you know, to
Krishev of Russia is going to be superior in every
single way, in the same way that he got into
that uh you know, exchange of jabs with Nixon over
communism versus capitalism. Of course he's gonna say the Moscow
water is better. And essentially he he does take you know,
(16:19):
and in doing this, in getting kind of honey trapped
into picking up this thing to do this Pepsi challenge,
which is kind of what what was the Pepsi challenge
That's where you had to like do a blind taste test,
right brand X and pepsi. So this is sort of
a version of that. I wonder how this fits into
that chronology of the Pepsi challenge. Is a little bit
of an augmented Pepsi challenge. Um, but yeah, he definitely
(16:41):
gets the pepsi in his hand. I imagine there's some
branding on it, and they snap a picture, and he
likes the stuff, right, he's a big fan. Yeah, well
he he like he said, he wastes no time getting
honey trapped and say, you know, well, obviously the pepsi
with Moscow water is better. I don't know why I
fell into a little bit of a shnak sent there,
but I walked it back just to taste. Now is
(17:05):
not the time for caricatures, uh say, your favorite Nixon impersonators.
So this photographer, like he said, he catches Kruschev, you know,
taking that initial sip, and then Kendall is on the
other side and he pours another cup. Instantly people went
(17:25):
crazy for this. I guess he liked it because Kruschev's
son later says that the first thing Kruschev said, like
before he even drank the pepsi, he sniffed and he
was like, this smells like shoe wax. But he drank it. Anyway.
The press went crazy. This became like a like a
predecessor of a meme, and there were these pictures of
(17:46):
Kruschev everywhere with a with a pepsi saying Kruschev wants
to be sociable, and that was that that was actually
a reference to a pepsi marketing thing at the time,
right right, which was is the slogan be sociable, have
a pepsi. Right, Uh, definitely not be socialists. Um, be sociable,
(18:09):
have a pepsi. Uh. But that's the thing. Though, you
know I said he went crazy for it. I may
have overstated the case a little bit. I don't think
this was necessarily about Khruschev falling in love with the
sacranny um kind of sickly sweet taste of pepsi. I
obviously have a horse in this race. I am a
cokeman myself, as any red blooded at Lantin Georgian should be.
(18:33):
Coke is just far superior. I find pepsi to be
I find it to be cloying, lee sweet and uh
and just not pleasant to drink. That's just my two cents,
my hot take off. It's like, man, it is known,
it is known, it is known. But at the time,
when when? When when does this fall in in the
history of coke? Because I feel like that, you know,
coke and pepsi were head to head for a while,
(18:54):
So what do you think that that was part of
it where they wanted to really you know, get a
foot in the door and have this big culture a
moment to compete with coke. Well, they definitely, they definitely
wanted to expand overseas, and Pepsi and coke, you know,
both have their markets carved out even now, but they definitely,
like anytime you're in that kind of business, you want
(19:15):
to at the very least or ideally you want to
be the first soda that people in the country have
ever seen, because you set the standard. Remember we did
that episode about Fanta how that was like the German
coke during World War Two, and that they used like
apple scraps and like things they had left over and whatever.
Marketing genius figured out how to do that. On the
(19:37):
German side. He was like a hero, you know, because
he kept that going internationally and then it became like
a whole European explosion. So this was an example of
that on the Pepsi side. And like you said, I mean,
the optics of that photo op really set the world
on fire because it was sort of like everything's cool.
Kruschev and Nixon are kicking at sharing a ice cold
(19:58):
Pepsi together. What could be more America combat, right, And
meanwhile the folks at coke Er, you know, gnashing their teeth,
I'm sure, shaking their sticky soda fist at the sky. Uh. Kendall,
by the way, he is riding high. He is a
hero in pepsi culture, of course, but he is also
you know, he's becoming iconic in his own right in
(20:20):
the United States. And I think it's only six years
after this American National Exhibition. He becomes CEO and he says, Okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna continue uh this growth. Now we
know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Hey, guys, this just
(20:43):
sounds like a clever marketing kind of con thing. But
we were promised Navy, We're getting there. We're getting there
because you see, if we fast forward to nine two,
we find that Tricky Dick Nixon is President of the
United States and his old pal Kendall is serving as
CEO of Pepsi Cola, and their plans overlap once again.
(21:07):
What was Kendall's position when he made this genius marketing
move marketing he was he was in charge of their
marketing division, so this really catapulted him or at least
was the beginning of a very fortuitous career trajectory for
this guy. I imagine if he went from marketing to CEO.
Maybe that's a natural progression. I don't really follow these
(21:28):
kinds of corporate things, but either way, he's at the
top seat now right, like he fought his way to
the top and now here he is. Nixon is now
also in the top seat both and they've been pals
for a minute as well. Yeah, and uh, there's this
you know again, it's the Cold War, Remember how how
he described it earlier. Their their escalations and de escalations.
(21:51):
This is during a d escalation time or period, and
Nixon is saying, Okay, we want to ease the tensions.
We want to expand commerce with the USSR. Let's get
some Western brands in there. You know. Uh, this is
probably I don't know about the chronology, but some of
the thinking around the time here is similar to, uh,
(22:12):
that old theory about McDonald's and war. You guys have
heard that one, right, Nope, it's it's a it's a
now discredited are now no longer true? Uh international relations
theory that said countries that both have McDonald's tend to
go to war less often or not at all, And
for a long time it was kind of true. That
(22:33):
weird interesting, that is weird. Um, it's funny to have
just really quick to believe a backtrack to the Cold War.
I guess one thing that makes a Cold War cold
war is like nobody declares war. It's really not even
a war like on paper, right, So there's no like
formal end to it. It's just a series of escalation
and de escalation. So this is just kind of like
them dipping their toe back early when they have that
(22:56):
expo that was probably the biggest example of them, let's
dip our toe into like pal up and trying to
like put all this nasty business behind us. So cut
to thirteen years ish later, and Russia really wants to
exclusively bring pepsi to it's it's sure's um and in
order to do that, they look to uh, Richard Nixon
(23:20):
and our boy Kendall to to figure out how to
make that happen. Right, yeah, yeah, here's here's how it
goes down. So Kendall now is CEO and he is
in sort of a highlander situation with Coca Cola. There
can be only one, right, and he thinks the USSR
is gonna be this huge market. And he he gets
(23:42):
with Nixon, who you know again is now president, and
he uses that nepotism that influenced to negotiate a deal
with Bresnev, who is the Soviet premier at the time,
and say, Okay, we're going to give you a ton
of pepsi. We're gonna help you start pepsi factories in Russia.
(24:03):
Give you the means of production, right. Communism loves that,
which is the concentrate. By the way, it's just like
literally the secret ingredients. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, so they're
still used in the Russian water super important. But the
catch here is that pepsi would then get exclusive rights
within the U s s R, so no Coca cola
(24:24):
would be legal until at least they shipped, like you
were saying, to all that raw pepsi syrup to twenty
different bottling plants in Russia. That's where they carbonated, that's
where they put local water in it. And as the
New York Times put it, this meant that pepsi was
the first quote capitalistic product legally available in the USSR.
(24:45):
Man ben when you say that raw uncut, sweet and
pepsi concentrate makes it sound really nefarious. Um, but yeah, no,
it's true. Um. And here's the thing though, ben Uh,
the Russian currency, the ruble, didn't really the exchange rate
wasn't so good for that, So it was it was
not particularly feasible for the country to pay um with
(25:09):
their own currency. Uh. So what's the what's the country
to do? What's the country in need of some sweet sweet,
uncut pepsi? Goodness? To do you need some sweet sweet bartering? Right? Ultimately,
because you're right. Not only was the ruble worthless outside
of the USSR, but they didn't have a big secret
(25:33):
vault of American cash that they could use to pay pepsi.
So I don't know why, I'm thinking like robbing potato,
robbing pepsi to pay potatoes. I don't know. We'll work
on it. But anyway, here's what would happen. Uh, Pepsi
was gonna barter their products that raw and cut to
the Russians, and in exchange instead of US dollars, they
(25:56):
were going to get government produced vodka. What's that called?
What we call it slowly here? We call it slowly
for good reason. Because it's I've never been successful in
pronouncing the full name Casey pegram be being our resident
language of a file, I am now broadening your your
title to all languages. I want to give it a go.
(26:17):
How about maybe yes, yes, Casey on the case, Casey
big time on the case. Yeah that Naia. That really
is the kind of melodious part of it that really
makes you want to get tanked. Yeah right, it's you
feel like you're drinking a song. Weird killing it with
(26:37):
these alcohol taglines. So so they're gonna get paid in vodka.
And then when they take possession of all this vodka,
the Pepsi company gets the exclusive right to sell slowly
in the States. What happens here is is interesting because, uh,
the Soviet government begins creating Pepsi, and Pepsi begins selling
(27:00):
this vodka in the US, and in time it becomes
the second largest vodka brand in the country in the
United States. I mean, obviously this was a successful exchange
because Pepsi is still kicking. Ken Stoley is is one
of the Uh this is considered what is it a
midshelf vodka. It's not quite top shelf. It's not like
a gray goose. People do like a Stoley on the rocks.
(27:23):
I mean, I've seen fancy people order that at bars.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I've seen somebody with like a monocle
or a mink stole order a stoly and that also
doubles as a sword. I have one of those. Yeah, yeah,
I do. Yeah, actually we could, we could see each other.
I'll have to. I'll have to get it out next
time we record, please do. But the you know, Stoley
is definitely not that bottom shelf Mr. Boston kind of stuff.
(27:47):
Here's the thing, though, what pepsi was, Sully was real vodka,
genuine vodka. But what the Soviet government was selling as
pepsi was not this same thing that we would consider
pepsi today. It was it was apparently perceived by people
(28:08):
as being a Soviet product. And yeah, and then people
in Russia and in the USSR at the time, all
kind of the conventional wisdom was Soviet products are terrible,
so they thought it wasn't as good. They do still
have kind of a rap for that in those days.
Like there's some really interesting Soviet synthesizers. For example, um
(28:31):
to to put put my synth nerd hat back on
but they are a lot of them considered a little
bit problematic and buggy kind of. But there are a
few very sought after Soviet products and they're considered a
little bit inexpensive and kind of cheaply made, but pretty cool.
It's the same thing, dude, It's the same thing with automobiles.
Did a show a while back on cars behind the
(28:53):
Iron Kurt of course with Scott Benjamin on car stuff. Yep,
that's true. And uh that that episode is still out
and kicking somewhere if you want to learn more, and
then you can always dive into some sense the nursery
with my palkoll here. Uh, you've built us? Did you
build up? What did you build? Was about? I was
about to hold it up like the podcast listeners can
(29:15):
can can hear it, but you guys can see it's
right here. Yeah, it's this little mug uh d fam
drummer from another mother. I went to mog Fest a
few years ago when this was a prototype and there
was a little class where you were able to like
build one and sought her all the points and it works.
I I did successfully sought her all the points. Good
job man, and uh, and so we we know that
(29:37):
there was this reputation, uh that for Soviet made products
that continues even in the modern day, even actually down
to some of their m R. E S. For anyone
who listened to our earlier episode with Jacqueline ropos So.
And so there we go. They pulled off a coup.
They have made this huge deal to sell vodka. They
(29:58):
being Pepsi and the of your government has made this
huge deal to legally have this capitalistic product. But again
you might be saying to yourself, Casey nol Ben, you
told me that there was gonna be a navy at
some point, and you keep saying that there is. But
now you guys are just talking about like vodka and
(30:19):
weird photo ops. Well, here's the twist, ridiculous historians. You see,
Pepsi cuts a third deal with Russia, and this is
where I would say, maybe not the rubber hit the road, Uh,
maybe the soda hits the straw. By the late nineteen eighties,
Russians are drinking about a billion servings of pepsi per year.
(30:42):
What's a serving is that is is one can of serving?
Are they single serving? There like two servings in it can?
I don't uh, you know, for right now I'm looking
at I'm actually looking at my trustee can of Coca
cola here, no shade, I'm looking at a twelve floral
ounce or thirty five million leader floral ounce fluid. Yeah,
(31:03):
the floral No, keep it, keep it. I like the
idea of floral I like it too. It sounds very pleasant.
Maybe the world would be a better place if we
just measure things and flower. I don't I'm not hippy
enough for that to work. But but yeah, so one
one twelve fluid ounce can or three million leaders is
one serving. So so so let's just assume that that
(31:26):
holds true. Approximately a billion cans of pepsi a year.
Uh So, by nineteen eighty eight they'd reached peep peek pepsi,
let's call it um and they started running commercials. This
is also in the years uh when Michael Jackson was
like really making a splash in the pepsi ads. And
I think there was that one ad in the States
(31:49):
where he burned his hair quite badly. Um. But yeah,
he was huge in Russia as well, and a lot
of these ads got were starring the King of pop himself. Um.
So the demand was just really, really really high, and
the bartering situation was fine because Stoly was doing well
in the US. Like we said, um, but here's the problem.
(32:10):
That demand for the product pepsi on the Russian side
was higher than they had vodka to barter with. Let's
let's call it all the vodka in Russia, you know,
couldn't buy them the amount of pepsi cola they they're
people needed to consume. And add to that, there was
a US boycott of Stoly as a response to the
(32:32):
Soviet Afghan War, and and Pepsi needed something else because
people weren't buying vodka. The vodka agreement by this point
is set to expire in nineteen eighty nine, so just
to just to recap their pepsi had exclusivity until nine,
but they had vodka until nineteen eighty nine, and they
(32:55):
were they were worried because the Soviet Union over this time,
it changed fundamentally. You know, Gorbachev is now the premier,
and he has these domestic reforms that are meant to
save the USSR and a bunch of restructuring, transparency, moves, arms,
controlled deals, and he wants to give new capitalist consumer
(33:20):
goods to the economy to try to improve the standard
of living, and PEPSI is like you said, man, they're
going gangbusters. They're selling uh three million rubles a year
worth of soda in the USSR. They want to expand,
they want to have like twenty six new bottling plants.
They think their sales are probably gonna top over the
equivalent of three billion dollars US. And then they were
(33:44):
also you know, they were brainstorming. They were like, hey,
you know what Moscow and St. Petersburg could use, maybe
some pizza huts. This is back when pizza huts were classy,
you know what I mean, where you could sit down
in the restaurant. They have salabar and stuff, really nice
salad bar, really cool movie high ends. I remember getting
Back to the Future sunglasses that you get you could
(34:04):
only get it pizza hut, you know with your order.
It was like way cooler than a happy meal toy.
It felt like a real item, like of like you know,
cultural importance. Yeah, agreed. Do you guys remember the book
at program? Yes, I have a shirt from book It.
That's my Pizza Hut association is just going there after
school and like getting the free pizza and reading books.
Holy crafty. You gotta wonder light who struck up that?
(34:27):
You'll talk about exclusivity, right, book It and pizza parties
in general. Pizza Hut kind of had the racket, ran
the gamut on pizza parties for kids. There were no
Domino's pizza parties. It was always the Hut. Yeah, Yeah,
Domino's was home pizza. Pizza Hut was social event. Pizza casey,
I'm so glad that you mentioned book It. Uh. I
(34:47):
want to shout out that program for anybody who is unfamiliar.
Book It was wasn't I think is because they're still
on Twitter and I actually communicate with them on Twitter.
Book It was this program for children here in the
US for sure, maybe in other parts of the world,
wherein you would have a set amount of books that
(35:08):
you would read and you would be rewarded with different levels. Right,
you would get a button, you might get a T shirt.
But the big thing was if you mind, if you
minded your p's and ques, you could get your own
pizza calling a tiny pizza a personal pan pizza, by
the way, stroke of genius and by the way, one
serving size personal pan. It's for you. You can beat
(35:31):
the whole thing. One serving. Yeah, this isn't like it's
not one of those situations where you order fries and
someone snags one. It's true. Hang on, guys, I gotta
let my cat out. You might hear some mewing. Hang on,
this this is just real. This is real life. We're
gonna leave this in. Yeah, I hear him. Yeah, well
that might be. I can't tell that's his cat or
(35:52):
my cat was Okay, hang on, no, my cat's going
to They must have heard yours. What really, I've got
two cats, Yeah, one super chunk and then Dr Vankman,
who is the louder one, So the scientist of the two, right, right,
he's he's our Bill Murray. But if you guys hear him,
just let me know and I'll I'll handle it. So,
(36:15):
so here we go. They want to open a pizza hut.
Pizza Hut is awesome, or pizza Hut was at least
awesome back in the day, pepsi exclusively if I'm not mistaken, right,
wasn't that the thing? Well? There they have the same owner,
that's right, Yeah, exactly. Uh, and so things are going gangbusters.
But there's a complication. There's another complication. The problem is
(36:35):
the Soviet ruble still worthless on the international currency market,
and selling that vodka it no longer makes enough scratch
to cover the amount of Pepsi that the company wants
to sell. So they go back to the drawing board,
go back to the bartering table, and they say, look,
the Soviet government is going to have to come up
(36:58):
with something else to pay us, with something other than
vodka that we can sell on the international market. And
it can't be money because the money doesn't work in
the rest of the world, and it can't be vodka
because of the boycott. But it has to be something.
So they start thinking outside the pizza box. Yeah, they
sure do, uh, And in the spring of ninety nine
(37:19):
they come to an agreement. Pepsi becomes the proud owner
of seventeen UH Soviet submarines, three warships UM, including a
decommissioned frigate which I love, I love a frigate, a cruiser,
and a destroyer UM. And the idea here was obviously,
(37:41):
you know, very cute, and in the way this episode
was named, you know that that Pepsi had this big navy.
They were not intending to take over the world with
their navy. They just needed something that they could liquidate, right,
and their goal for this stuff was to sell it
as scrap. These were not new, These were outdated a
decommissioned military vessels. Correct, Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Uh. The
(38:07):
frigate was decommissioned, as you said. Even the stuff that
wasn't decommissioned was old and outdated. Pepsi also got some
Soviet oil tankers and those they either least or they
sold out right, uh, in partnership with the company in Norway.
And so technically, yes, they did have a navy for
(38:30):
a second, but they had no no plans to wage
war on Coca Cola or something that we're going to
invade Atlanta, Georgia, which would have been interesting. But they
did meet their bottom line because now with the money
they make for scrapping this flotilla, they sold it in Sweden, right, Uh,
And the money they make from leasing or selling these
(38:52):
oil tankers lets them double the more than double actually
the Pepsi bottling plants in the Soviet Union. And then,
of course, instantly, because people back then loved weird jokes
as much as we do now in people immediately started
joking about the coal awards on the high seas and uh,
(39:16):
this guy Kendall, who was of course still in in
the mix. He is buddied up so deep with the
presidential administration. He's like talking to Brent Snowcroft, who was
the National Security Advisor at the time, and he's like, Hey,
we're disarmed in the Soviet Union faster than you are.
Very clever, very clever. Kendall was his name, Brent. He
(39:40):
seems like a Brent to me. Brent is the National
Security Advisor. Okay, what was Kendall's first name? He still
seems that Donald's. I'm gonna call him don I'm gonna
call him Donnie, real clever Donnie. He's like a child
that walks in in the middle of a movie. That's
a that's a big Lebowskie reference to step as Himmy's
character Donnie. R I p Donnie unless he was actually
(40:02):
a figment of the dude's imagination. That is a theory
floating out out there in the in the internet atmosphere.
But I personally believe Donnie was real. You know, I
I've got opinions. They've got opinions, but okay, save them. Well,
I I think there's I think that big Lebowski is
(40:23):
purposely written in this sort of um uber medicognitive way,
so so that it's designed to have those theories that
can't really be disproven, but can't really be proven it's
fun to think about. I can see that. Yeah, I see.
I would describe what you're saying is like it's it's
almost hyper stylized to the point where you can't quite
(40:46):
you have to suspend disbelief the whole time. The whole
thing is almost feels like a farce, and it doesn't
feel very like cinema verity. It's very much like absurdist
and kind of all bets are off because you don't
really have a sense of like the timeline or you know,
people's relationships exactly Like, it's all very kind of up
in the air. I see what you're saying, man, and
I like it. Thanks man, uh and shout out to
(41:08):
an old friend of mine that I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna site by name who once uh told me
to get my life together and to regard the Big
Lebowski as quote a cautionary tale. Yeah, I remember, that's
pretty rough. Was it the dude? No, No, it's not
the dude as I'm sure the dude would be fine
with with the way we live our lives, right, he abides,
(41:36):
We are making an exception today. In addition to to
our exceptional recording circumstances, today's tale is going into the
nineteen nineties, which no long time listeners. We rarely do.
We only do it when it's important. We have one
rule on our show, which is that we we want
to consider history before the nineteen nineties. But this, this
(41:58):
tale takes us just a little past that. Well, I
thought our cut off was like ninety three because of
a part time Oh yeah, okay, so we're we're with him.
We're worth the limits here where this is. Yeah, we're
on the border. Fine, yeah, okay, yeah, good call. So
the Soviet Union collapses in and with that, the Pepsi
(42:19):
deal collapses, and they've gone from having this you know,
decades long balancing act that that is very profitable for
them at times into this mad dash to try to
get all of their stuff back before it is taken
away by the different governments pro that are popping up.
(42:42):
Uh So, the l A Times has this interesting article
where they talk about how pizza huts are you know,
kind of turned into garbage or they're made much less
cool because of how their supply chains, like how the
how their supply chains get complicated by these redrawn borders
(43:05):
that start getting mozzarella from Lithuania and stuff like that.
And they're partially those those ships that they had were
stranded in Ukraine, and now the country of Ukraine says
we want to cut We want a piece of the
pie if you want these ships. And this UH to
(43:25):
our boy Donnie Kendall, by the way, is retired, and
he is still sore about it. He says, oh my gosh,
the USSR has gone out of business, because that's the
way he thinks about things exactly. I can understand that.
And so like we said, I mean, PEPSI did have
this pretty sweetheart deal exclusive agreement with UH with with Russia. UM,
(43:47):
but you know, like all good things, they must come
to an end. And eventually, UM their biggest competition Coca Cola.
And I believe I can speak for you as well,
Ben when I say the superior cola, UH came rushing
in and wanted to get a piece of that action
came rushing in. Yes, yes, that is I intended that
from the from from the moment ago. So yeah, it's
(44:10):
it's correct. They're aggressive and they are the new kid
on town. Uh, they don't have maybe some of the
association's uh cultural associations that Pepsi had, you know, accumulated
during its time in the USSR. And Pepsi tries a
bunch of different marketing campaigns. You know, they've always been
(44:31):
pretty um, pretty original with their marketing campaigns, sometimes for
better or for worse. But Coca Cola is very good
at marketing too. Right now, the world as it stands,
if you go to Russia, it'll be easy to find
Pepsi because Russia is still Pepsi's second biggest market outside
(44:51):
of the US. However, Coca Cola, after just a few
years after you know, quote unquote entering the chat, entering
the game, Coca Cola, uh, beats Pepsi out. And so
now even though Russia is Pepsi's second biggest market, coke
is the most popular soda in Russia, thank god, right. Uh.
(45:15):
And in the famous Pepsi billboards over Pushkin Square were
actually torn down, leading the author of fantastic Atlas Obscura
article to conclude maybe Pepsi should have held onto that
destroyer after all, so they could have went like strong
arm their way back into the market place. I don't, yeah,
(45:37):
I don't. I don't get you know, studies show it's
it's pretty difficult to wage war on an idea. And
uh and I gotta say, man, coke is just great.
I I gotta say to ben Um. I think this
story ultimately has a happy ending because Pepsi's reign of
terror over the poor, hapless people of Russia who were
unaware of the superior product cocacola. Uh I had gone
(46:00):
on too long, my friend, and I'm glad to see
it finally come to an end. Well, you know, I
am very much ado as Thou wilt kind of person,
and I know that there are a ton of people
who like Pepsi and that's great, you know, because that's
less Pepsi that I have to run into in the field.
And uh, I appreciate everybody taking the hit for me,
and I already have enough friends, so it's fine. There
(46:22):
we go. I do want to say, I do want
to say one other thing though, just as a as
a wrap up about this is something I wanted to
check with you guys. Uh. We mentioned Pepsi's crazy marketing campaigns.
Do you guys remember Pepsi points. There was this huge
commercial campaign, um, I think back in the late nineties
(46:44):
where Pepsi was. This was all over TV. They said,
Pepsi was like, save up your Pepsi points, look at
all this cool stuff you can get. And one of
their things that you could allegedly get was for seven
million Pepsi points. You could have of this commercial implied
an a V eight Harrier to jump jet. Do you
(47:05):
think they made they got that as a barner with
some other weird backroom dealing with another country I trying
to offload. Do you think they have like a secret
storehouse full of like decommissioned war equipment. Wouldn't that be cool?
Maybe secretly an army this whole time. This actually went
to court because a guy named John Leonard sued PepsiCo
(47:28):
and tried to enforce their offer to give him the jet.
Long story short, he didn't actually get seven million Pepsi points.
He read the fine print of the contest and he
sent a certified check for seven hundred thousand, eight dollars
and fifty cents. That would be the cash value of
those pepsi points and uh then he also paid a
(47:49):
ten dollar shipping in handling fee. They they ultimately, uh,
they ultimately rejected his claims though, but he did go
to court. He just didn't get the jet. So that
that I guess that concludes today's episode. Um, you know, Casey,
(48:09):
you have been sitting patient and taciturn while well my
co host and I are clearly being pretty pretty anti
pepsi and I wonder do you have a do you
have a can in this race? Do you have a
candy kick here? Oh? Yeah, I'm I'm completely in the
coke camp. So we are a thoroughly coke friendly podcast.
(48:32):
Casey on the case of Coca Cola. You can even
buy it by the case. What is a case? So, like,
what are the units? You got like a like twelve right,
you get like the thing where it's like the there
it's two levels and they're stacked on top of each
other and it's kind of uh like a like a
rectanging sort of shape. Yeah, that's a case. That's a case. Okay,
(48:54):
So what's the step about it? I guess that could
also be a case. I guess a brick maybe, Yeah,
because that's twenty four. You can see that. That's twenty
four kids. You can see those at Costco and stuff.
That's true. Okay, well, well we'll get to the bottom
of these uh these numbers eventually, but in the meantime,
huge thanks to super producer Casey Pagraham. Thank god you'
a cokesman, because I didn't want to have to disown you. Um,
(49:17):
so we're good. Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
our theme. Gabe Losier, hero of the day, who hipped
us to this incredible topic. We would never have known
about this if it wasn't for Gabe. Thank you Gabe. Um.
Despite Quarantine's aside, um, we will still have Gabe joining
us on this party eventually, um, hopefully sooner than later.
(49:38):
What do you say, man, Yeah, absolutely, we are in
contact with Gabe, who is real. You can hear him
on Part Time Genius and we're excited to get him
on the show. Finally. Additionally, we'd like to thank Christopher
hasci Otis. We would like to thank Eve's Jeff Cote
I have saying we would like to let's just say it,
thank you, Chris, thank you Eves. Oh. Speaking of Christopher
(50:00):
Sciotas quick Plug you, and I appeared on one of
Christopher's new food podcasts, Food Court with Richard Blaze, which
I think you can find right now out there in
the in the podcast usphere where we debate the merits
of sausage versus bacon. Um. And it's a really fun show.
Yeah yeah, yeah, and uh, you can hear you can
(50:21):
hear that episode. You can also hear some other folks
in our network. I believe that the host of our
sister podcast, Saver are are going to be weighing in.
Uh spoiler alert. I think their debate is cake versus pie,
so please listen. We're surprised that these are intense debates. Uh.
Richard Blaze is an awesome host. It's really cool show.
(50:43):
I actually hope to see it live one day, but
check it out now. It's available wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. UM. Are very last note, you know,
whether whatever you drink, whether it's uh soda slowly pepsi
or coke. Uh, we're very very glad that you tuned
to and we hope that you are weathering these strange times. Uh,
(51:04):
and we hope that you you know, we hope that
you reach out to us. Of course, as we always
say as a show, we are a community. You can
find us on all the places we named at the
top of the show, but you can also find us
as people because to steal a line from Fox News,
now more than ever, it's important to remember that we're
We're all human. Every every person, no matter where they are,
(51:26):
is still a person. So you can find us, uh
Noel and myself as individuals on the internet. Yeah, you
can find me on Instagram exclusively where I am storying
the hell out of this quarantine experience just to keep
from going completely insane. Um at how now Noel Brown.
And you can find me on Twitter at ben Bulan
(51:48):
hs W. You can also find me on Instagram at
ben Bolan Uh Noel. I will say that I will
say that I've been keeping an eye on your stories
because I got a little concerned when was actually there
was construction in front of this students driveway and it
was it was like you couldn't get out physically, right,
I couldn't get out. Thankfully, there was a dude in
(52:09):
a hole in the street right at the foot of
my driveway, um that had been covered up with a
giant steel plate. Thankfully, I wanted to yell at the
contractors because you coul tell them they were They were
the two guys in Puffy Patagonia vs. There's a new
house being built across the street, but thankfully it was
wrapped and cleaned up by the end of the day.
And hopefully those are the people who had to work
(52:30):
during that time, right kay uh speaking in the employees. Uh.
In these strange and troubling times. Uh, let us know
what things are like in your neck of the global woods. Uh.
And and stay tuned because we are we we figured
out this quarantine thing. Actually feel really close to you
guys right now, nor only Casey and you look great. Uh.
(52:50):
We're figuring this out and we plan to keep making shows.
So let us know the ridiculous stories that caught your eye.
This We will absolutely see your next tax books. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
(53:11):
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:30):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. We are coming to you
live under some very special circumstances. Through the power of technology.
We are continuing Ridiculous History during a no full and
quarantine him. I'm ben, I recognize you on the screen, sir.
(00:51):
I'm sorry. I was holding that in, holding that in
so hard. It's almost like with somebody yawns, you feel
compelled to yawn. And why is it that we go
when we take a sip of a refreshing drink. I'm
Noll by the way, Yeah, yeah, you're Noel. Uh. That's
a great question. I wonder if it's partially just because
of the advertising. Maybe it's kind of earworm dust to
(01:13):
expect that every time we hear that iconic click of
a can, it's like a Pavlovian dog drool effect kind
of something along those lines. Yeah, Or maybe it's even
like in the post smash Mouth era, every time you
hear somebody go some oh god wow. I just had
like a brain brain twitch when you did that. Uh.
(01:35):
I know you're absolutely you know, you're absolutely right. And
I've got another one that I think is a little
less less, uh, ubiquitous. But it's a she s got
me wakes up in the morning. Um, but no, it's true, man,
we are in quarantine. Super Producer Casey Pegraham is in
(01:56):
fact in his closet. I'm trapped in the closet. Guys,
should I Should I be talking more in this direction? Probably? Yeah,
that sounds a little bit. We're working live here. This
is all a grand experiment. You can talk in whichever
direction feels most natural to you. So when you say
you're trapped in the closet, not in an R Kelly
cancel has been completely canceled. No, I'm literally just trapped
(02:17):
in the closet in my apartment because this room has
the best acoustics for for what we're doing here. So
and no one has trapped you there. You're in the No. No, no,
I'm I'm here of my own volition. Um, everything's fine. Well,
it's it's not. But you know, as as far as
the world's burning down. But the closet is an oasis
of sanity in order. It's a sauna on the level
(02:39):
of the shipping container at the office. Actually, it's kind
of it's kind of a hot box in here. Super
producer Casey Pegram is going methods we record in quarantine.
Uh so, like methane, here we go, so uh so
here we are. We have been so grateful for everyone,
all of your fellow ridiculous historians listening. We know a
(03:02):
lot of people are in self isolation or maybe a quarantine,
and these are candidly uh very very uncertain times. But
the three of us wanted to keep this show going
no matter what it took. And for the next several episodes,
we don't know how long we might be coming to
(03:24):
you from our respective bunkers, which are just gonna get
weirder as we go. Right, Yeah, it's true. I mean
I'm in my bedroom. Um. I have a little home
studio with all my synthesizer NERD toys surrounding me, um,
which gives me some comfort at least if I if
you hear me like making a little beat on the side,
or hear a little deeple needle or kind of like
some bleeps and bloops, you'll know why. Um. But this
(03:46):
is our lives, you guys, and we're very very lucky.
I can't trust this enough to be uh in an
industry where we're able to keep working and keep putting
out these shows and hopefully giving you folks at home
some kind of comfort. It's some kind of company, you know.
Um uh. And and I I just want to say
to all my friends and and our listeners that work
(04:08):
in the service industry that are our retail that are
really getting hit hard by this, we see you, and
um we you know, just let us know if there's
anything that we can do, I don't know, other than
just kind of being there. Uh, and keep doing what
we're doing what we can do, but um, we we
see you, and uh it's the whole thing is just
kind of a mess. Um and I don't even That's
(04:29):
all I know how to say about them. Yeah, agreed.
So to emphasize that point before we get started today, Uh,
this show is and has always been, at least at
least for us, a community, you know, and the the
show doesn't stop when the episodes over. So I please
please come share your stories with us Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
(04:53):
We love our page Ridiculous Historians. Uh, we're all. Even
if we can't be physically here for each other, uh,
which we haven't been, if we're in podcasting, right, we
can be here mentally. Uh. And we can get through
this stuff together, especially because it's weird. You know, we're
a history show and we're we're at an historic moment
(05:15):
in time. Today we wanted to introduce you I'm laughing
because this is such a weird segue. UH. Today we
wanted to introduce you to a particularly strange bit of
ridiculous history that I don't know about. You know, this
was news to me when I was looking into it.
I I almost didn't believe it. I thought it was
(05:36):
an exaggeration. No, I mean I also like, I read
the headline and what the ultimate like story was didn't
match what in my mind the headline represented. Um, the
headline being the title today's episode, how Pepsi briefly became
the sixth largest navy in the world. And you know,
I don't actually know what I thought that it meant, um,
(05:59):
But no, it turned out that it's uh, some very
clever bartering, um, some very clever kind of quid pro
quo between the the Russian government and the Pepsi Corporation.
And it's ultimately a story of UH coming out from
behind the Iron curtain and kind of trying to try
on some American products for size. Uh. In terms of
(06:20):
Russia trying to like kind of join the rest of
the world after the end of the Cold War, right, yeah, absolutely,
and that's that's a great place for us to begin.
So the Cold War in the nineteen fifties, you know
that everybody knows kind of what the Cold War was.
Two hegemonic superpowers, the US and the USS are both
want to be the big dog on the planet, and
(06:44):
they both want to avoid an out and out direct confrontation,
so they wage proxy wars. Uh, you know, unethical diplomacy, propaganda. Uh.
Different countries that are full of innocent bystandards are being
used as as battle grounds. And the crux of it
is that that that both both countries are armed, uh
(07:07):
nuclearly right right right, so they can't Nobody wants an
escalation because of mad mutually a short destruction the theory
that says, if one person or one state launches a
nuclear weapon, then it will become increasingly easier for other
states to rationalize launching them. So no one wants to
tip the apple cart too far. It's kind of like
(07:29):
we we talked about this earlier, and in one way,
it's like if you're a kid and you were ever
trying to race one of your friends in school, but
you couldn't run because the teacher would get angry at you,
so you're kind of power walking. So they want right
or like around the pool. You know, you don't want
to be a kid that gets yelled up with a
life card for running and then your idiot friend is
(07:49):
the one who wins up cracking his skull on the
side of the shallow ends. So you know, he had
a coming in this hypothetical scenario, right, which maybe not
a one to one comparison to New Clear War, but
you see what we're getting at, folks. So at different times,
the US and the USS are would escalate things and
then they would try to ease things down. Uh. This story,
(08:12):
uh sort of begins when the U S s R.
In the U S we're in a period of easing tensions.
They started this thing they called cultural exchanges. And this
was like, hey, let's learn more about people as people,
learn more about the people of Russia as humans and
the people of US as humans. So it came to
pass in the summer of nineteen fifty nine, the Soviet
(08:34):
Union held this kind of like I guess we call
it a mini world fare I was thinking the same thing.
Ben is very much like, but highlighting American products. Everyone
was there, from IBM to dixie Cup, Disney of course,
you know, because at the end of the day, I
mean the folks on the ground in Russia. There was
always a desire for American culture from the actual you know,
(08:58):
people that live in in the Soviet Union. We did
an episode on those Russian hipsters that were bootlegging Elvis
Presley seventy eight on uh what was it x X
ray pronounced that they kind of dumpster dive from hospitals.
There was always a strong desire for American culture. So
this is a big deal, right, all of a sudden, Hey,
American culture is coming to Russia in the form of
(09:21):
the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow. And
like I said, we had IBM, we had Disney, we
had dixie Cup, we had all of these massive brands,
and that included Pepsi. Yes, that included Pepsi. Also, the
the Soviet Union held a similar exhibition in New York
City and they did the same thing with Russian displays.
(09:43):
So this was very quid pro quel Clarisse on July
at the American National Exhibition there in Sokolniki. The Soviet
Premier Khruschev visits this exposition and then he meets Richard Nixon,
who at this time is just vice president. He had
been sent uh you know, as a stand in for
(10:06):
Dwight Eisenhower, the president because you know, no spoilers, but
obviously the U. S. President wasn't going to travel there.
So they look around. Kruchevan Nixon are walking around. They're
looking at this model home, the US American Dream model home,
and then they start talking smack to each other. You know.
(10:26):
I picture it as a very caddy thing about capitalism
versus communism, throwing a little shade. There were changing some
barbs and then uh and they did it on the
air too, right, Yeah, So it's pretty cool. As a
as a technology nerd um, I can actually point out
that the microphone they stand in front of in this
model kitchen um is this very specific r C a
(10:49):
broadcast microphone that's a ribbon microphone, and it's very very sensitive.
So if you ever get your hands on a ribbon microphone,
don't drop it, because you can actually literally render one
of these very uh dell get pieces of technology completely useless. Um.
But yeah, they're standing in front of this microphone and
what has since become known as was it the Kitchen Debates?
And you you can get a gander at this yourself
(11:11):
on YouTube pretty easily. There's there's several versions of it
up right now. Um, and yeah it's true. I mean
they say things like here's a quote from from it.
Oh my gosh, Ben, and this is an opportunity we've
we've been waiting for for so long, our an opportunity
to do and a Nixon off which sounds like a
Russian word, a Nixon off. So I'll start, if you
(11:31):
don't mind, let's see. Oh I haven't done this in
so long. Um, let's see. I'm a little horse too,
so let me let me do my best here. Um,
you'll you'll, you'll plant on it. No, I can't do it,
and that's gone. I'm gonna let you do, all right.
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. Let's see. Uh I
am not a crook. No, I can't do I remember
(11:53):
that's I'm gonna make it a very lippy. Um, you'll
plan out trip hospital, taking all on the product, and
it could continues that wasn't really free ext I'm sorry
(12:17):
coming yeah it was translation, yeah yeah yeah. Uh. So
he's saying, you planned out strip is particularly in the
production and consumer goods. If this competition is to do
the best for both of our people's and for people everywhere,
there must be a free exchange of ideas. And then uh,
Kruschev is arguing back and Nixon says, you know you'll
never country eat anything, which is um fair, yeah, true,
(12:40):
but it's also weird coming from him from Nick no
big time. But this is also like Nixon when he
was still you know, sort of a human. Uh, he
was very young in this video, Like he really looks
like he's still had a few pieces of his soul remain, honestly,
Um and Krisschev, do you remember that episode we did
about what was the deal? Like he wanted to go
to Disneyland, and like they wouldn't let him go because
(13:02):
it was too much of a security risk. So I
think the fact that Disney was at this expo was
no accident. I think Karuschev was a big fan of Disney.
It's interesting that Krischev would have espoused any kind of
interest in an Americans. It is fascinating and I like
that you point out that it was probably not a
coincidence that Disney was there because a lot of things
(13:23):
that looked like happenstance were not actually happenstance. Here because
you see, we have tricked you into listening to another
con episode. It turns out that this entire kitchen debate, uh,
and or a lot of the Nixon Kruschev meeting was
part of a plot on the side of American capitalism,
(13:45):
good old fashioned hucksterism, is how the article on the
Daily Coast calls it. The night before Nixon and Kruschev meet,
one of the executives for Pepsi, guy named Donald M. Kendall,
visits Nixon the U. S. Embassy in Moscow, and he's
known Nixon for a long time outside of business relationships.
(14:06):
Like they they hang out, you know what I mean,
probably smokes cigars and drink brandies and and creepy back
rooms together. Yeah. That was that was the That was
the style of the day. Uh. You see Kendall is
he's kind of like he wants to be like the
Alexander the Great or the Jengas Khan of PepsiCo. He
wants to grow the company overseas, and the rest of
(14:30):
the Pepsi executive board is like, what are you doing,
man time in a place. You're crazy. They're nuclear weapons.
I don't know what the soda is worth it. But
he goes against them. He sponsors a booth at this exhibition,
and in that exhibition, the only thing they give you
is pepsi cola and uh, he gets a little bit
(14:50):
of juice, a little bit of help from President Nixon,
and they try to This is weird. I think that
stood out to all of us. This is weird. The
booth gives you two batches of pepsi. You can get
one that's made with water from the US, one one
name with water from Russia, and then slightly I'm sure
(15:11):
they did something on purpose, right, Uh. And then the
scoop is that when Kendall visits Nixon secretly, he says, look, uh,
look tricky, which is probably what he called him. He's like, look, Tricky,
I uh, I gotta make this trip worthwhile. We're old friends.
My jobs on the line. I need you to get
a pepsi in Kruschev's hand. That was the whole point. Yeah, yeah,
(15:35):
Because there are photographers, uh, you know, with their with
their flashbulbs a flash and this is obviously a big
photo op type moment um. All of this stuff is
is about optics, as they say, and in politics, right, Um,
And and here's the rub which I really really love.
It was set up for Krushchev to you know, lose
(15:56):
his cool and be like, you know, the Russian version
is better, Russian water tastes better because you know, to
Krishev of Russia is going to be superior in every
single way, in the same way that he got into
that uh you know, exchange of jabs with Nixon over
communism versus capitalism. Of course he's gonna say the Moscow
water is better. And essentially he he does take you know,
(16:19):
and in doing this, in getting kind of honey trapped
into picking up this thing to do this Pepsi challenge,
which is kind of what what was the Pepsi challenge
That's where you had to like do a blind taste test,
right brand X and pepsi. So this is sort of
a version of that. I wonder how this fits into
that chronology of the Pepsi challenge. Is a little bit
of an augmented Pepsi challenge. Um, but yeah, he definitely
(16:41):
gets the pepsi in his hand. I imagine there's some
branding on it, and they snap a picture, and he
likes the stuff, right, he's a big fan. Yeah, well
he he like he said, he wastes no time getting
honey trapped and say, you know, well, obviously the pepsi
with Moscow water is better. I don't know why I
fell into a little bit of a shnak sent there,
but I walked it back just to taste. Now is
(17:05):
not the time for caricatures, uh say, your favorite Nixon impersonators.
So this photographer, like he said, he catches Kruschev, you know,
taking that initial sip, and then Kendall is on the
other side and he pours another cup. Instantly people went
(17:25):
crazy for this. I guess he liked it because Kruschev's
son later says that the first thing Kruschev said, like
before he even drank the pepsi, he sniffed and he
was like, this smells like shoe wax. But he drank it. Anyway.
The press went crazy. This became like a like a
predecessor of a meme, and there were these pictures of
(17:46):
Kruschev everywhere with a with a pepsi saying Kruschev wants
to be sociable, and that was that that was actually
a reference to a pepsi marketing thing at the time,
right right, which was is the slogan be sociable, have
a pepsi. Right, Uh, definitely not be socialists. Um, be sociable,
(18:09):
have a pepsi. Uh. But that's the thing. Though, you
know I said he went crazy for it. I may
have overstated the case a little bit. I don't think
this was necessarily about Khruschev falling in love with the
sacranny um kind of sickly sweet taste of pepsi. I
obviously have a horse in this race. I am a
cokeman myself, as any red blooded at Lantin Georgian should be.
(18:33):
Coke is just far superior. I find pepsi to be
I find it to be cloying, lee sweet and uh
and just not pleasant to drink. That's just my two cents,
my hot take off. It's like, man, it is known,
it is known, it is known. But at the time,
when when? When when does this fall in in the
history of coke? Because I feel like that, you know,
coke and pepsi were head to head for a while,
(18:54):
So what do you think that that was part of
it where they wanted to really you know, get a
foot in the door and have this big culture a
moment to compete with coke. Well, they definitely, they definitely
wanted to expand overseas, and Pepsi and coke, you know,
both have their markets carved out even now, but they definitely,
like anytime you're in that kind of business, you want
(19:15):
to at the very least or ideally you want to
be the first soda that people in the country have
ever seen, because you set the standard. Remember we did
that episode about Fanta how that was like the German
coke during World War Two, and that they used like
apple scraps and like things they had left over and whatever.
Marketing genius figured out how to do that. On the
(19:37):
German side. He was like a hero, you know, because
he kept that going internationally and then it became like
a whole European explosion. So this was an example of
that on the Pepsi side. And like you said, I mean,
the optics of that photo op really set the world
on fire because it was sort of like everything's cool.
Kruschev and Nixon are kicking at sharing a ice cold
(19:58):
Pepsi together. What could be more America combat, right, And
meanwhile the folks at coke Er, you know, gnashing their teeth,
I'm sure, shaking their sticky soda fist at the sky. Uh. Kendall,
by the way, he is riding high. He is a
hero in pepsi culture, of course, but he is also
you know, he's becoming iconic in his own right in
(20:20):
the United States. And I think it's only six years
after this American National Exhibition. He becomes CEO and he says, Okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna continue uh this growth. Now we
know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Hey, guys, this just
(20:43):
sounds like a clever marketing kind of con thing. But
we were promised Navy, We're getting there. We're getting there
because you see, if we fast forward to nine two,
we find that Tricky Dick Nixon is President of the
United States and his old pal Kendall is serving as
CEO of Pepsi Cola, and their plans overlap once again.
(21:07):
What was Kendall's position when he made this genius marketing
move marketing he was he was in charge of their
marketing division, so this really catapulted him or at least
was the beginning of a very fortuitous career trajectory for
this guy. I imagine if he went from marketing to CEO.
Maybe that's a natural progression. I don't really follow these
(21:28):
kinds of corporate things, but either way, he's at the
top seat now right, like he fought his way to
the top and now here he is. Nixon is now
also in the top seat both and they've been pals
for a minute as well. Yeah, and uh, there's this
you know again, it's the Cold War, Remember how how
he described it earlier. Their their escalations and de escalations.
(21:51):
This is during a d escalation time or period, and
Nixon is saying, Okay, we want to ease the tensions.
We want to expand commerce with the USSR. Let's get
some Western brands in there. You know. Uh, this is
probably I don't know about the chronology, but some of
the thinking around the time here is similar to, uh,
(22:12):
that old theory about McDonald's and war. You guys have
heard that one, right, Nope, it's it's a it's a
now discredited are now no longer true? Uh international relations
theory that said countries that both have McDonald's tend to
go to war less often or not at all, And
for a long time it was kind of true. That
(22:33):
weird interesting, that is weird. Um, it's funny to have
just really quick to believe a backtrack to the Cold War.
I guess one thing that makes a Cold War cold
war is like nobody declares war. It's really not even
a war like on paper, right, So there's no like
formal end to it. It's just a series of escalation
and de escalation. So this is just kind of like
them dipping their toe back early when they have that
(22:56):
expo that was probably the biggest example of them, let's
dip our toe into like pal up and trying to
like put all this nasty business behind us. So cut
to thirteen years ish later, and Russia really wants to
exclusively bring pepsi to it's it's sure's um and in
order to do that, they look to uh, Richard Nixon
(23:20):
and our boy Kendall to to figure out how to
make that happen. Right, yeah, yeah, here's here's how it
goes down. So Kendall now is CEO and he is
in sort of a highlander situation with Coca Cola. There
can be only one, right, and he thinks the USSR
is gonna be this huge market. And he he gets
(23:42):
with Nixon, who you know again is now president, and
he uses that nepotism that influenced to negotiate a deal
with Bresnev, who is the Soviet premier at the time,
and say, Okay, we're going to give you a ton
of pepsi. We're gonna help you start pepsi factories in Russia.
(24:03):
Give you the means of production, right. Communism loves that,
which is the concentrate. By the way, it's just like
literally the secret ingredients. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, so they're
still used in the Russian water super important. But the
catch here is that pepsi would then get exclusive rights
within the U s s R, so no Coca cola
(24:24):
would be legal until at least they shipped, like you
were saying, to all that raw pepsi syrup to twenty
different bottling plants in Russia. That's where they carbonated, that's
where they put local water in it. And as the
New York Times put it, this meant that pepsi was
the first quote capitalistic product legally available in the USSR.
(24:45):
Man ben when you say that raw uncut, sweet and
pepsi concentrate makes it sound really nefarious. Um, but yeah, no,
it's true. Um. And here's the thing though, ben Uh,
the Russian currency, the ruble, didn't really the exchange rate
wasn't so good for that, So it was it was
not particularly feasible for the country to pay um with
(25:09):
their own currency. Uh. So what's the what's the country
to do? What's the country in need of some sweet sweet,
uncut pepsi? Goodness? To do you need some sweet sweet bartering? Right? Ultimately,
because you're right. Not only was the ruble worthless outside
of the USSR, but they didn't have a big secret
(25:33):
vault of American cash that they could use to pay pepsi.
So I don't know why, I'm thinking like robbing potato,
robbing pepsi to pay potatoes. I don't know. We'll work
on it. But anyway, here's what would happen. Uh, Pepsi
was gonna barter their products that raw and cut to
the Russians, and in exchange instead of US dollars, they
(25:56):
were going to get government produced vodka. What's that called?
What we call it slowly here? We call it slowly
for good reason. Because it's I've never been successful in
pronouncing the full name Casey pegram be being our resident
language of a file, I am now broadening your your
title to all languages. I want to give it a go.
(26:17):
How about maybe yes, yes, Casey on the case, Casey
big time on the case. Yeah that Naia. That really
is the kind of melodious part of it that really
makes you want to get tanked. Yeah right, it's you
feel like you're drinking a song. Weird killing it with
(26:37):
these alcohol taglines. So so they're gonna get paid in vodka.
And then when they take possession of all this vodka,
the Pepsi company gets the exclusive right to sell slowly
in the States. What happens here is is interesting because, uh,
the Soviet government begins creating Pepsi, and Pepsi begins selling
(27:00):
this vodka in the US, and in time it becomes
the second largest vodka brand in the country in the
United States. I mean, obviously this was a successful exchange
because Pepsi is still kicking. Ken Stoley is is one
of the Uh this is considered what is it a
midshelf vodka. It's not quite top shelf. It's not like
a gray goose. People do like a Stoley on the rocks.
(27:23):
I mean, I've seen fancy people order that at bars.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I've seen somebody with like a monocle
or a mink stole order a stoly and that also
doubles as a sword. I have one of those. Yeah, yeah,
I do. Yeah, actually we could, we could see each other.
I'll have to. I'll have to get it out next
time we record, please do. But the you know, Stoley
is definitely not that bottom shelf Mr. Boston kind of stuff.
(27:47):
Here's the thing, though, what pepsi was, Sully was real vodka,
genuine vodka. But what the Soviet government was selling as
pepsi was not this same thing that we would consider
pepsi today. It was it was apparently perceived by people
(28:08):
as being a Soviet product. And yeah, and then people
in Russia and in the USSR at the time, all
kind of the conventional wisdom was Soviet products are terrible,
so they thought it wasn't as good. They do still
have kind of a rap for that in those days.
Like there's some really interesting Soviet synthesizers. For example, um
(28:31):
to to put put my synth nerd hat back on
but they are a lot of them considered a little
bit problematic and buggy kind of. But there are a
few very sought after Soviet products and they're considered a
little bit inexpensive and kind of cheaply made, but pretty cool.
It's the same thing, dude, It's the same thing with automobiles.
Did a show a while back on cars behind the
(28:53):
Iron Kurt of course with Scott Benjamin on car stuff. Yep,
that's true. And uh that that episode is still out
and kicking somewhere if you want to learn more, and
then you can always dive into some sense the nursery
with my palkoll here. Uh, you've built us? Did you
build up? What did you build? Was about? I was
about to hold it up like the podcast listeners can
(29:15):
can can hear it, but you guys can see it's
right here. Yeah, it's this little mug uh d fam
drummer from another mother. I went to mog Fest a
few years ago when this was a prototype and there
was a little class where you were able to like
build one and sought her all the points and it works.
I I did successfully sought her all the points. Good
job man, and uh, and so we we know that
(29:37):
there was this reputation, uh that for Soviet made products
that continues even in the modern day, even actually down
to some of their m R. E S. For anyone
who listened to our earlier episode with Jacqueline ropos So.
And so there we go. They pulled off a coup.
They have made this huge deal to sell vodka. They
(29:58):
being Pepsi and the of your government has made this
huge deal to legally have this capitalistic product. But again
you might be saying to yourself, Casey nol Ben, you
told me that there was gonna be a navy at
some point, and you keep saying that there is. But
now you guys are just talking about like vodka and
(30:19):
weird photo ops. Well, here's the twist, ridiculous historians. You see,
Pepsi cuts a third deal with Russia, and this is
where I would say, maybe not the rubber hit the road, Uh,
maybe the soda hits the straw. By the late nineteen eighties,
Russians are drinking about a billion servings of pepsi per year.
(30:42):
What's a serving is that is is one can of serving?
Are they single serving? There like two servings in it can?
I don't uh, you know, for right now I'm looking
at I'm actually looking at my trustee can of Coca
cola here, no shade, I'm looking at a twelve floral
ounce or thirty five million leader floral ounce fluid. Yeah,
(31:03):
the floral No, keep it, keep it. I like the
idea of floral I like it too. It sounds very pleasant.
Maybe the world would be a better place if we
just measure things and flower. I don't I'm not hippy
enough for that to work. But but yeah, so one
one twelve fluid ounce can or three million leaders is
one serving. So so so let's just assume that that
(31:26):
holds true. Approximately a billion cans of pepsi a year.
Uh So, by nineteen eighty eight they'd reached peep peek pepsi,
let's call it um and they started running commercials. This
is also in the years uh when Michael Jackson was
like really making a splash in the pepsi ads. And
I think there was that one ad in the States
(31:49):
where he burned his hair quite badly. Um. But yeah,
he was huge in Russia as well, and a lot
of these ads got were starring the King of pop himself. Um.
So the demand was just really, really really high, and
the bartering situation was fine because Stoly was doing well
in the US. Like we said, um, but here's the problem.
(32:10):
That demand for the product pepsi on the Russian side
was higher than they had vodka to barter with. Let's
let's call it all the vodka in Russia, you know,
couldn't buy them the amount of pepsi cola they they're
people needed to consume. And add to that, there was
a US boycott of Stoly as a response to the
(32:32):
Soviet Afghan War, and and Pepsi needed something else because
people weren't buying vodka. The vodka agreement by this point
is set to expire in nineteen eighty nine, so just
to just to recap their pepsi had exclusivity until nine,
but they had vodka until nineteen eighty nine, and they
(32:55):
were they were worried because the Soviet Union over this time,
it changed fundamentally. You know, Gorbachev is now the premier,
and he has these domestic reforms that are meant to
save the USSR and a bunch of restructuring, transparency, moves, arms,
controlled deals, and he wants to give new capitalist consumer
(33:20):
goods to the economy to try to improve the standard
of living, and PEPSI is like you said, man, they're
going gangbusters. They're selling uh three million rubles a year
worth of soda in the USSR. They want to expand,
they want to have like twenty six new bottling plants.
They think their sales are probably gonna top over the
equivalent of three billion dollars US. And then they were
(33:44):
also you know, they were brainstorming. They were like, hey,
you know what Moscow and St. Petersburg could use, maybe
some pizza huts. This is back when pizza huts were classy,
you know what I mean, where you could sit down
in the restaurant. They have salabar and stuff, really nice
salad bar, really cool movie high ends. I remember getting
Back to the Future sunglasses that you get you could
(34:04):
only get it pizza hut, you know with your order.
It was like way cooler than a happy meal toy.
It felt like a real item, like of like you know,
cultural importance. Yeah, agreed. Do you guys remember the book
at program? Yes, I have a shirt from book It.
That's my Pizza Hut association is just going there after
school and like getting the free pizza and reading books.
Holy crafty. You gotta wonder light who struck up that?
(34:27):
You'll talk about exclusivity, right, book It and pizza parties
in general. Pizza Hut kind of had the racket, ran
the gamut on pizza parties for kids. There were no
Domino's pizza parties. It was always the Hut. Yeah, Yeah,
Domino's was home pizza. Pizza Hut was social event. Pizza casey,
I'm so glad that you mentioned book It. Uh. I
(34:47):
want to shout out that program for anybody who is unfamiliar.
Book It was wasn't I think is because they're still
on Twitter and I actually communicate with them on Twitter.
Book It was this program for children here in the
US for sure, maybe in other parts of the world,
wherein you would have a set amount of books that
(35:08):
you would read and you would be rewarded with different levels. Right,
you would get a button, you might get a T shirt.
But the big thing was if you mind, if you
minded your p's and ques, you could get your own
pizza calling a tiny pizza a personal pan pizza, by
the way, stroke of genius and by the way, one
serving size personal pan. It's for you. You can beat
(35:31):
the whole thing. One serving. Yeah, this isn't like it's
not one of those situations where you order fries and
someone snags one. It's true. Hang on, guys, I gotta
let my cat out. You might hear some mewing. Hang on,
this this is just real. This is real life. We're
gonna leave this in. Yeah, I hear him. Yeah, well
that might be. I can't tell that's his cat or
(35:52):
my cat was Okay, hang on, no, my cat's going
to They must have heard yours. What really, I've got
two cats, Yeah, one super chunk and then Dr Vankman,
who is the louder one, So the scientist of the two, right, right,
he's he's our Bill Murray. But if you guys hear him,
just let me know and I'll I'll handle it. So,
(36:15):
so here we go. They want to open a pizza hut.
Pizza Hut is awesome, or pizza Hut was at least
awesome back in the day, pepsi exclusively if I'm not mistaken, right,
wasn't that the thing? Well? There they have the same owner,
that's right, Yeah, exactly. Uh, and so things are going gangbusters.
But there's a complication. There's another complication. The problem is
(36:35):
the Soviet ruble still worthless on the international currency market,
and selling that vodka it no longer makes enough scratch
to cover the amount of Pepsi that the company wants
to sell. So they go back to the drawing board,
go back to the bartering table, and they say, look,
the Soviet government is going to have to come up
(36:58):
with something else to pay us, with something other than
vodka that we can sell on the international market. And
it can't be money because the money doesn't work in
the rest of the world, and it can't be vodka
because of the boycott. But it has to be something.
So they start thinking outside the pizza box. Yeah, they
sure do, uh, And in the spring of ninety nine
(37:19):
they come to an agreement. Pepsi becomes the proud owner
of seventeen UH Soviet submarines, three warships UM, including a
decommissioned frigate which I love, I love a frigate, a cruiser,
and a destroyer UM. And the idea here was obviously,
(37:41):
you know, very cute, and in the way this episode
was named, you know that that Pepsi had this big navy.
They were not intending to take over the world with
their navy. They just needed something that they could liquidate, right,
and their goal for this stuff was to sell it
as scrap. These were not new, These were outdated a
decommissioned military vessels. Correct, Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Uh. The
(38:07):
frigate was decommissioned, as you said. Even the stuff that
wasn't decommissioned was old and outdated. Pepsi also got some
Soviet oil tankers and those they either least or they
sold out right, uh, in partnership with the company in Norway.
And so technically, yes, they did have a navy for
(38:30):
a second, but they had no no plans to wage
war on Coca Cola or something that we're going to
invade Atlanta, Georgia, which would have been interesting. But they
did meet their bottom line because now with the money
they make for scrapping this flotilla, they sold it in Sweden, right, Uh,
And the money they make from leasing or selling these
(38:52):
oil tankers lets them double the more than double actually
the Pepsi bottling plants in the Soviet Union. And then,
of course, instantly, because people back then loved weird jokes
as much as we do now in people immediately started
joking about the coal awards on the high seas and uh,
(39:16):
this guy Kendall, who was of course still in in
the mix. He is buddied up so deep with the
presidential administration. He's like talking to Brent Snowcroft, who was
the National Security Advisor at the time, and he's like, Hey,
we're disarmed in the Soviet Union faster than you are.
Very clever, very clever. Kendall was his name, Brent. He
(39:40):
seems like a Brent to me. Brent is the National
Security Advisor. Okay, what was Kendall's first name? He still
seems that Donald's. I'm gonna call him don I'm gonna
call him Donnie, real clever Donnie. He's like a child
that walks in in the middle of a movie. That's
a that's a big Lebowskie reference to step as Himmy's
character Donnie. R I p Donnie unless he was actually
(40:02):
a figment of the dude's imagination. That is a theory
floating out out there in the in the internet atmosphere.
But I personally believe Donnie was real. You know, I
I've got opinions. They've got opinions, but okay, save them. Well,
I I think there's I think that big Lebowski is
(40:23):
purposely written in this sort of um uber medicognitive way,
so so that it's designed to have those theories that
can't really be disproven, but can't really be proven it's
fun to think about. I can see that. Yeah, I see.
I would describe what you're saying is like it's it's
almost hyper stylized to the point where you can't quite
(40:46):
you have to suspend disbelief the whole time. The whole
thing is almost feels like a farce, and it doesn't
feel very like cinema verity. It's very much like absurdist
and kind of all bets are off because you don't
really have a sense of like the timeline or you know,
people's relationships exactly Like, it's all very kind of up
in the air. I see what you're saying, man, and
I like it. Thanks man, uh and shout out to
(41:08):
an old friend of mine that I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna site by name who once uh told me
to get my life together and to regard the Big
Lebowski as quote a cautionary tale. Yeah, I remember, that's
pretty rough. Was it the dude? No, No, it's not
the dude as I'm sure the dude would be fine
with with the way we live our lives, right, he abides,
(41:36):
We are making an exception today. In addition to to
our exceptional recording circumstances, today's tale is going into the
nineteen nineties, which no long time listeners. We rarely do.
We only do it when it's important. We have one
rule on our show, which is that we we want
to consider history before the nineteen nineties. But this, this
(41:58):
tale takes us just a little past that. Well, I
thought our cut off was like ninety three because of
a part time Oh yeah, okay, so we're we're with him.
We're worth the limits here where this is. Yeah, we're
on the border. Fine, yeah, okay, yeah, good call. So
the Soviet Union collapses in and with that, the Pepsi
(42:19):
deal collapses, and they've gone from having this you know,
decades long balancing act that that is very profitable for
them at times into this mad dash to try to
get all of their stuff back before it is taken
away by the different governments pro that are popping up.
(42:42):
Uh So, the l A Times has this interesting article
where they talk about how pizza huts are you know,
kind of turned into garbage or they're made much less
cool because of how their supply chains, like how the
how their supply chains get complicated by these redrawn borders
(43:05):
that start getting mozzarella from Lithuania and stuff like that.
And they're partially those those ships that they had were
stranded in Ukraine, and now the country of Ukraine says
we want to cut We want a piece of the
pie if you want these ships. And this UH to
(43:25):
our boy Donnie Kendall, by the way, is retired, and
he is still sore about it. He says, oh my gosh,
the USSR has gone out of business, because that's the
way he thinks about things exactly. I can understand that.
And so like we said, I mean, PEPSI did have
this pretty sweetheart deal exclusive agreement with UH with with Russia. UM,
(43:47):
but you know, like all good things, they must come
to an end. And eventually, UM their biggest competition Coca Cola.
And I believe I can speak for you as well,
Ben when I say the superior cola, UH came rushing
in and wanted to get a piece of that action
came rushing in. Yes, yes, that is I intended that
from the from from the moment ago. So yeah, it's
(44:10):
it's correct. They're aggressive and they are the new kid
on town. Uh, they don't have maybe some of the
association's uh cultural associations that Pepsi had, you know, accumulated
during its time in the USSR. And Pepsi tries a
bunch of different marketing campaigns. You know, they've always been
(44:31):
pretty um, pretty original with their marketing campaigns, sometimes for
better or for worse. But Coca Cola is very good
at marketing too. Right now, the world as it stands,
if you go to Russia, it'll be easy to find
Pepsi because Russia is still Pepsi's second biggest market outside
(44:51):
of the US. However, Coca Cola, after just a few
years after you know, quote unquote entering the chat, entering
the game, Coca Cola, uh, beats Pepsi out. And so
now even though Russia is Pepsi's second biggest market, coke
is the most popular soda in Russia, thank god, right. Uh.
(45:15):
And in the famous Pepsi billboards over Pushkin Square were
actually torn down, leading the author of fantastic Atlas Obscura
article to conclude maybe Pepsi should have held onto that
destroyer after all, so they could have went like strong
arm their way back into the market place. I don't, yeah,
(45:37):
I don't. I don't get you know, studies show it's
it's pretty difficult to wage war on an idea. And
uh and I gotta say, man, coke is just great.
I I gotta say to ben Um. I think this
story ultimately has a happy ending because Pepsi's reign of
terror over the poor, hapless people of Russia who were
unaware of the superior product cocacola. Uh I had gone
(46:00):
on too long, my friend, and I'm glad to see
it finally come to an end. Well, you know, I
am very much ado as Thou wilt kind of person,
and I know that there are a ton of people
who like Pepsi and that's great, you know, because that's
less Pepsi that I have to run into in the field.
And uh, I appreciate everybody taking the hit for me,
and I already have enough friends, so it's fine. There
(46:22):
we go. I do want to say, I do want
to say one other thing though, just as a as
a wrap up about this is something I wanted to
check with you guys. Uh. We mentioned Pepsi's crazy marketing campaigns.
Do you guys remember Pepsi points. There was this huge
commercial campaign, um, I think back in the late nineties
(46:44):
where Pepsi was. This was all over TV. They said,
Pepsi was like, save up your Pepsi points, look at
all this cool stuff you can get. And one of
their things that you could allegedly get was for seven
million Pepsi points. You could have of this commercial implied
an a V eight Harrier to jump jet. Do you
(47:05):
think they made they got that as a barner with
some other weird backroom dealing with another country I trying
to offload. Do you think they have like a secret
storehouse full of like decommissioned war equipment. Wouldn't that be cool?
Maybe secretly an army this whole time. This actually went
to court because a guy named John Leonard sued PepsiCo
(47:28):
and tried to enforce their offer to give him the jet.
Long story short, he didn't actually get seven million Pepsi points.
He read the fine print of the contest and he
sent a certified check for seven hundred thousand, eight dollars
and fifty cents. That would be the cash value of
those pepsi points and uh then he also paid a
(47:49):
ten dollar shipping in handling fee. They they ultimately, uh,
they ultimately rejected his claims though, but he did go
to court. He just didn't get the jet. So that
that I guess that concludes today's episode. Um, you know, Casey,
(48:09):
you have been sitting patient and taciturn while well my
co host and I are clearly being pretty pretty anti
pepsi and I wonder do you have a do you
have a can in this race? Do you have a
candy kick here? Oh? Yeah, I'm I'm completely in the
coke camp. So we are a thoroughly coke friendly podcast.
(48:32):
Casey on the case of Coca Cola. You can even
buy it by the case. What is a case? So, like,
what are the units? You got like a like twelve right,
you get like the thing where it's like the there
it's two levels and they're stacked on top of each
other and it's kind of uh like a like a
rectanging sort of shape. Yeah, that's a case. That's a case. Okay,
(48:54):
So what's the step about it? I guess that could
also be a case. I guess a brick maybe, Yeah,
because that's twenty four. You can see that. That's twenty
four kids. You can see those at Costco and stuff.
That's true. Okay, well, well we'll get to the bottom
of these uh these numbers eventually, but in the meantime,
huge thanks to super producer Casey Pagraham. Thank god you'
a cokesman, because I didn't want to have to disown you. Um,
(49:17):
so we're good. Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
our theme. Gabe Losier, hero of the day, who hipped
us to this incredible topic. We would never have known
about this if it wasn't for Gabe. Thank you Gabe. Um.
Despite Quarantine's aside, um, we will still have Gabe joining
us on this party eventually, um, hopefully sooner than later.
(49:38):
What do you say, man, Yeah, absolutely, we are in
contact with Gabe, who is real. You can hear him
on Part Time Genius and we're excited to get him
on the show. Finally. Additionally, we'd like to thank Christopher
hasci Otis. We would like to thank Eve's Jeff Cote
I have saying we would like to let's just say it,
thank you, Chris, thank you Eves. Oh. Speaking of Christopher
(50:00):
Sciotas quick Plug you, and I appeared on one of
Christopher's new food podcasts, Food Court with Richard Blaze, which
I think you can find right now out there in
the in the podcast usphere where we debate the merits
of sausage versus bacon. Um. And it's a really fun show.
Yeah yeah, yeah, and uh, you can hear you can
(50:21):
hear that episode. You can also hear some other folks
in our network. I believe that the host of our
sister podcast, Saver are are going to be weighing in.
Uh spoiler alert. I think their debate is cake versus pie,
so please listen. We're surprised that these are intense debates. Uh.
Richard Blaze is an awesome host. It's really cool show.
(50:43):
I actually hope to see it live one day, but
check it out now. It's available wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. UM. Are very last note, you know,
whether whatever you drink, whether it's uh soda slowly pepsi
or coke. Uh, we're very very glad that you tuned
to and we hope that you are weathering these strange times. Uh,
(51:04):
and we hope that you you know, we hope that
you reach out to us. Of course, as we always
say as a show, we are a community. You can
find us on all the places we named at the
top of the show, but you can also find us
as people because to steal a line from Fox News,
now more than ever, it's important to remember that we're
We're all human. Every every person, no matter where they are,
(51:26):
is still a person. So you can find us, uh
Noel and myself as individuals on the internet. Yeah, you
can find me on Instagram exclusively where I am storying
the hell out of this quarantine experience just to keep
from going completely insane. Um at how now Noel Brown.
And you can find me on Twitter at ben Bulan
(51:48):
hs W. You can also find me on Instagram at
ben Bolan Uh Noel. I will say that I will
say that I've been keeping an eye on your stories
because I got a little concerned when was actually there
was construction in front of this students driveway and it
was it was like you couldn't get out physically, right,
I couldn't get out. Thankfully, there was a dude in
(52:09):
a hole in the street right at the foot of
my driveway, um that had been covered up with a
giant steel plate. Thankfully, I wanted to yell at the
contractors because you coul tell them they were They were
the two guys in Puffy Patagonia vs. There's a new
house being built across the street, but thankfully it was
wrapped and cleaned up by the end of the day.
And hopefully those are the people who had to work
(52:30):
during that time, right kay uh speaking in the employees. Uh.
In these strange and troubling times. Uh, let us know
what things are like in your neck of the global woods. Uh.
And and stay tuned because we are we we figured
out this quarantine thing. Actually feel really close to you
guys right now, nor only Casey and you look great. Uh.
(52:50):
We're figuring this out and we plan to keep making shows.
So let us know the ridiculous stories that caught your eye.
This We will absolutely see your next tax books. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
(53:11):
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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