Limerick of the Week: Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.

As most readers of this blog likely know, John Leonard saw a Pepsi commercial and then attempted to accept what he took to be Pepsi's offer of a Harrier Jet.  The commercial seemed to indicate that one could get a Harrier in exchange for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points.  Relying on the Pepsi Stuff catalogue, Leonard learned that he could turn in 15 Pepsi Points and provide the remaining consideration in cash, so he attempted to accept Pepsi's purported offer with 15 Pepsi Points and just over $700,000 in cash.

Judge Kimba Wood found that the ad was not an offer, distinguishing it from the advertisments discussed in the last two Limericks cases, Lefkowitz and Izadi.  The ad, said Judge Wood, was not an offer, largely because the Harrier Jet was not included in the Pepsi Stuff Catalogue that provides further information about the Pepsi Points program. Moreover, Judge Wood added, the ad was a joke, and anybody who didn't recognize it as such was simply past help.  Explaining why a joke is funny defeats the purpose of jokes, Judge Wood opined. 

At least some of my students agreed.  They felt that, while both Lefkowitz and Izadi were taken in by intentionally misleading advertisements, Leonard must have known that the Harrier commercial was just supposed to be absurd.  Among other things, my students pointed out that Pepsico was unlikely to have access to a piece of military hardware like the Harrier.  They also deemed it unlikely that the high school kid featured in the commercial would have been able to get a license to fly a Harrier in any case.  

They are probably right, and yet, as far as we can tell, Lefkowitz was the only person to come forward to complain about having been mislead by the Great Minneapolis Surplus Store's ad.  Izadi seems to have been the only one who tried to trade in a matchbox car in order to get $3000 off a new Ford truck.  But Leonard was not alone.  He did not just happen to have $700,000 lying around; he raised the money necessary to accept Pepsi's "offer" by finding interested investors who thought his interpretation of the commercial as an offer had merit.

Interestingly enough, Pepsi released a second version of the commercial.  It contains only one change.  Now the "offer" requires 700,000,000 Pepsi points for a Harrier jet.  There is also a third version, which ads the additional verbiage: "Just kidding."  Apparently Pepsi's non-offer was not as clearly not an offer as it could have been.

Leonard v. Pepsico

Intent to be bound was a barrier
To Leonard's acquiring a Harrier.
Now he only drinks Coke,
And he gets every joke
But I would not say he's much merrier.

[Jeremy Telman]