Friday night I got a little too invested in a new Netflix series, Pepsi, Where's My Jet? which in and of itself is pretty interesting, at least for me. But there is a Minnesota connection to the story, that is brief but a small Minnesota town was playing a big part in the Pepsi Points/Harrier Jet story.

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Before letting you know what the Minnesota connection is, you have to understand what happened. Back in the mid-90s Pepsi began a promotion where you could accumulate points by purchasing Pepsi products, and then turn those points in for some Pepsi SWAG. It was a pretty awesome promotion that was heavily advertised. One commercial for the promotion listed some of the standard Pepsi swag that you could get in exchange for your points, like a leather jacket, sunglasses, and a t-shirt.

Well, at the end of the commercial it listed a Harrier Jet, for 7 million Pepsi points. (that number was then changed to a larger amount later on) The entire time the ad was played early on, there was NO fine print, so one person, a 20-year-old from Washington purchased 7,000,000 Pepsi points for $700,000 and called Pepsi to the carpet, wanting his jet.

This is where the Minnesota connection comes in. The fulfillment center for the promotion had a PO Box in Young America, Minnesota.

TVShowTranscripts.com has a direct quote from the documentary when they reference Young America.

In the Pepsi Points catalog, there was an address for a PO box in Young America, Minnesota. Young America, Minnesota is the fulfillment house for a lot of these different competitions, whether it's Camel Bucks, the Marlboro Man, or Pepsi Points. - John in the Netflix Documentary Pepsi, Where's My Jet

Ultimately John went and hand-delivered the $700,000 check to the PO Box in Young America as he didn't want it to get lost in the mail.

Not wanting to spoil the ending, if you don't know how this saga ends, I won't get into that, but it is only 4 episodes, about 40-50 minutes each in length, and I thought it was pretty cool Minnesota played a small part in the real-life story and got a 'shout-out' during the series.

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