Netflix recommendations- Pepsi, Where’s My Jet

And Pepsi, where did my life go!?

As enjoyable a watch as ‘Pepsi, where’s my jet?’ was, however watching it just reminded me how we’re all just getting old. Boo!

When you hear of references to the 1940s and the Second World War, of course your mind associates those times with ancient history (at least to us Gen Ys). As we’re talking about grainy black & white footage here and the age before talking film!

And the 60-70s is also a long-time ago, as we’re talking about TV sitcoms with the wash-out colours.

And the 80s, that was old-school long time ago, as we’re talking about a time period when we were literal babies and people had big hairstyles, chunky sneakers, and large plastic accessories. A weird time, but you could call that modern history for us.

But the 90s, we’re talking about mid to late 90s here. That was just yesterday! Wasn’t it?  We’re talking about The Matrix and the birth of modern cinematic movies. We’re talking about PlayStation and overall, pretty modern tech here! And low and behold that was over 25 years ago! What the! How time flies!

And that’s the time period that we’re talking about in ‘Pepsi, where’s my jet’- where Netflix transports you back in time via this documentary series (4 episodes) capturing (and dramatizing) the legal case of a 21 year old University student who attempted to out-smart Pepsi by collecting (and purchasing) 7 million Pepsi points, so he could purchase the Harrier Jet as featured in the Pepsi Points commercials. At the time I was unaware of the goings on of this, as I was only 14 years old then (in Australia), and  this was before the days of affordable and accessible Internet. But for those who could remember the legal case, it would have been such a ‘O-yeah’ moment when reminded of it and appreciate the deep dive into a case which probably attracted some prominence and media coverage at the time, but probably also soon fizzed out  (like Pepsi left out at room temp for 2 hours), so perhaps many hadn’t followed the court case to its eventual ruling and conclusion. So, this series follows the case, how it unfolded, and the aftermath for its main players.

But for me who wasn’t aware of this court case, it was interesting enough to learn of this story for the first time. And Hats off to Netflix for turning the documentary into a docuseries, as 5 years ago Netflix would have presented this as a ‘struggle-to-get-through’ 90 minute documentary- but splicing it up into 4 30 minute episodes, made it a lot more binge worthy and a more compelling watch!

However, throughout the experience, it kept reminding me how old we’ve all become. All the original characters in the story were so young then but are so old now. John Leonard (the 21 year old Business student), he’s now middle aged and a family man. Todd Hoffman, the financial backer was a grown man then, but now he’s an elderly man. And Cindy Crawford, the face of Pepsi and the pinup girl for so many teenage boys in the 90s (yes, even I had a poster of her in my bedroom), even Cindy is now nudging 60 years old! Can you believe that!? It’s all pretty depressing actually.

But if you want to feel reminiscent about your youth, and don’t mind then staring into the abyss wondering where has your life gone? Then check out ‘Pepsi, where’s my jet?’, search for it in your Netflix app. It’s both fascinating and eye-brow raising at the same time. Let’s just say, ‘only in America’.