That oversight is now the basis for a highly entertaining Netflix series called Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? It tells the story of John Leonard, a college student in Washington state who decided to accept Pepsi. After quickly realizing that buying 7 million cans or bottles of Pepsi would be prohibitively expensive, Leonard saw a disclaimer that revealed that instead of collecting labels, consumers could buy Pepsi points for 10 cents each. A $23 million Harrier jet for just $700,000? This was the deal of the century. In four episodes, the series tells the story of a young man’s determination to take on a multinational company to get what he was promised in an advertisement. “John had this kind of Spielbergian quality about him when he was younger, where anything was possible,” Andrew Renzi, the show’s director, recounts after a frantic Zoom call with Leonard and Todd Hoffman (more on him later). “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie Being There,” Renzi adds, referring to Peter Sellers’ satire about a gardener who accidentally steps into the corridors of power, “but I had this thing in my head where John Leonard at 19 his is Peter Sellers.” “Yeah. So it’s pretty close to accurate,” Leonard interrupts. Renji sighs. “I forgot to mention that John has an opinion,” she says. Renzi was initially offered Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? as a work of fiction. But after finding Leonard, in his 40s and working as a park ranger in Alaska, he realized the truth would be more fun. Michael Davis as John Leonard in Pepsi Where’s My Jet?. Photo: Netflix “It was a long time ago,” Leonard continues. “And I just wanted to keep it there, as something funny that happened a long time ago.” That changed when the Netflix series Tiger King became a big hit and people started looking for weirder historical stories to turn into documentaries. various producers came sniffing around. “There were some real crooks who would lie for this really fat, Hollywood-type used car salesman. But Renzi sent me an email. And of all the different emails I received, it felt really honest. It didn’t seem like it was the same old, you know, blowing smoke up your ass. But at the same time, Todd and I had a conversation. He said something like, “That’s a nice story. It needs to be said, and it needs to be said by the right person.’ He said: “When I die, I’d be happy to have that on my epitaph.” Now let’s introduce Hoffman, the secret sauce of all the crazy shape. A charismatic millionaire, then in his 40s, Hoffman had befriended Leonard on a mountaineering trip. And when Leonard realized he needed $700,000 to force a fighter jet out of a soda company, Hoffman was the first person he turned to. To everyone’s surprise, Hoffman was willing. “John brought this to me and told me the story,” he recalls. “We watched the videotape of the ad and I just kept watching it over and over and over and over and over and over again and I’m like, ‘That’s an absolutely reckless ad put out there by a big company that knows better.’ After that point, it was game on. Pepsi’s defense throughout was that the ad was clearly a joke. At one point during the series, a Pepsi representative reports that while millions of people watched the ad, only one person actually tried to redeem the jet offer. It’s possible no one else has gone as far as Leonard in his efforts to claim the prize, but he points out that he first heard about Pepsi Points when a father on the Little League baseball team he coached mentioned it was part of a jet-buying syndicate. Leonard was unique in that he was the only viewer with access to Hoffman, a like-minded renegade with the money to back it up. John was the Pepsi generation. They landed a great opportunity to lasso this John Leonard kid Leonard describes Hoffman as “the math that Pepsi didn’t do. They figured there would be a lot of dreamers like me, but they never thought a dreamer like me would ever have access to someone who would be willing to take that crazy ride and actually write the check.” “When creating the show, I always had this guiding post: ‘Everybody needs a John and everybody needs a Todd,’” Renzi explains. And it’s this relationship, between two men of different generations who had a crazy idea and saw it through, that runs through the series like a golden thread. Even decades later, over Zoom, they’re warm and intimate, crashing into each other’s stories and finishing each other’s sentences. “I love being connected to people like John,” says Hoffman. “He seems serious and conservative, but he’s crazy. He is demonstrably insane. He has a job. He has a beautiful family. He has a house and pays a mortgage and goes to work every day, but he’s got some really mental stuff going on. Way outside the box.” The climax of the story is easily Googled, but the journey there is about as crazy as its genesis. At one point, Michael Avenatti – later to be discredited as Stormy Daniels’ lawyer – shows up to help in the fight against Pepsi, sharing a hotel room with Leonard on what is described as a “road trip of planes, trains and cars all over the midwest region. Avenatti filmed his pieces for the show while under house arrest for trying to extort Nike out of up to $25 million (he’s since been jailed for defrauding Daniels), but his involvement in the case was a rare point of contention between Hoffman and Leonard. While Leonard developed a personal friendship with Avenatti, Hoffman was concerned with his methods. “I didn’t think of him as an important part of our story,” he says when Avenatti’s name is mentioned. Sign up for Within Saturday The only way to get a behind-the-scenes look at our brand new magazine, Saturday. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers, plus all the must-read articles and columns delivered to your inbox every weekend. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. You get the sense that Pepsi is still embarrassed by the fight. The race for the jet didn’t do the company any favors. At the time it was still locked in the ‘Cola Wars’ with Coca-Cola – a ruthless scrap for dominance that saw Pepsi introduce blind taste tests to prove its superiority to the world – and any slip up could have been fatal. Here was a brand that sold itself on how cool and youthful it was, but lived up to Leonard’s claim with – spoiler alert! – hitting him with teams of corporate lawyers. When the TV companies saw what an open, goofy boy Leonard was, politely asking for the jump jet, he was suddenly everywhere. It was a terrible PR move by Pepsi, and Hoffman is still convinced that the damage he caused remains. John Leonard (left) and Todd Hoffman in Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?. Photo: Netflix “John was the All-American kid,” he says. “It was the Pepsi generation. And that’s kind of ironic too. Pepsi had a great opportunity to lasso this kid and say, “Look, we’re going to fly you around the country in the Harrier jet for the next year, we’re going to pay you a million dollars.” Instead of hiring lawyers and suing us, they really could have done the right thing and said, “This kid made the deal. Ring the bell and get the prize, you know?’ However, all this happened a quarter of a century ago. The world has moved on. Leonard and Hoffman have changed. As we wrap up, I ask if it’s weird for them to revisit the distant past like this, knowing all the attention the show will bring. “Over the years I’ve been sensitive to that, because even close people have said, ‘Well, you’re an opportunist,’” Leonard explains. “Lawsuits like this end up being compared to the McDonald’s case of hot coffee, the ambulance chaser kind of thing. And that rubbed me the wrong way. Looking back on it, it was opportunistic. Absolutely. But this is not always negative. And then I thought with all my heart that we will take the jet. “What I’m struggling with today,” he adds, “is how can I really think I was going to get the jet? I’m 48 years old now, and now I look back on it like: how dumb were you, man?’ Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? it’s on Netflix from Thursday
