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Pepsiman is a true hero, overcoming every urban obstacle thrown at him in order to quench the thirst of citizens in need!
This strange offering from Japan was released in 1999 for the Sony Playstation game console, and it’s faceless hero graced an advertising campaign in which Pepsiman saved people from death-by-thirst.
Do you think this game looks like goofy fun or a shameless advertising campaign?
by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff
The nagging question “Which is better, Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola?” sprang from an earlier, more basic question: “Can anyone tell the difference?”
Professor Nicholas H. Pronko and colleagues at the University of Wichita, Kansas, conducted a series of experiments in the 1940s and 1950s. They wrote five studies that brought rigor, sophistication, and cachet to the testing of Coke/Pepsi taste- discrimination.
Pronko’s final Coke/Pepsi paper appeared in 1958. In the ensuing half- century, other investigators have digested and challenged his methods and findings.
Advances in technology led, many years later, to investigation of the brain activity of
Coke and Pepsi drinkers. Here is a look back at the early work, the foundation upon which rests so much later planning, effort, and thoughtfully sipped cola.
This history is in some ways emblematic of experimental psychology as a whole—of its maturation and growth as an academic discipline.
Vess Cola, an obscure competitor to both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, was included in Pronko’s first “taste this and tell us what kind of cola it is” experiment. The test subjects could not reliably distinguish its taste from those of Coke, Pepsi or Royal Crown Cola.
Enter Pronko
Pronko’s first study asked not just one, but a series of complex, interrelated questions. Volunteer drinkers, some of them habitual cola drink drinkers, some of them not, tasted samples of four different kinds of cola: Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Royal Crown Cola (a brand that at the time was, like Coke and Pepsi, widely popular), and Vess Cola. Vess Cola was then (and remained) little known.
“Identification of Cola Beverages. I. First Study,” N.H. Pronko and J.W. Bowles, Jr.,
Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 32, no. 3, June 1948, 304–12.
108 college students tasted and named four different brands of Cola beverages…. From one third to over two thirds of the responses were incorrect on the basis of the subjects’ likes and dislikes. It is concluded that the identification response of Cola beverages is not a function of the physico-chemical properties of the stimulus objects, but a matter of using an available tag or label for it based largely on familiarity.
Pronko and collaborator J.W. Bowles drew several conclusions. One—the most enduring—was that people cannot reliably identify the taste of Coke from that of Pepsi. A billboard advertising Pepsi-Cola.
Pronko Two
The second study came out a mere six months after the first. Spurred and stimulated by criticism—mostly about the way they had labeled the cola glasses (the labels were W, X, Y and Z)—Pronko and Bowles simplified the experiment. This time there were three, rather than four different cola drinks, and the glasses were labeled X, Y and Z:
“Identification of Cola Beverages: II. A Further Study,” N.H. Pronko and J.W. Bowles, Jr., Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 32, no. 5, October 1948, 559–64.
156 students in elementary psychology served as subjects in a taste experiment with three colas. When presented in random order and also when only one cola was given for an entire series, the results are comparable to a chance distribution and support the hypothesis that the pattern of naming responses was a function of the subjects’ familiarity with cola brand names.
Pronko, Without Coke or Pepsi
Pronko and Bowles then embarked on their third set of experiments. They began by reminding themselves that “when subjects were asked to identify the three leading brands of Cola, they might just as well have drawn their names out of a hat.” So this time, Pronko and Bowles used only obscure brands of cola.
Sipping three kinds of cola that they had probably seldom or never tasted before, almost everyone nonetheless said they were drinking Coke, Pepsi or Royal Crown, the USA’s three most domestically popular cola brands:
“Identification of Cola Beverages. III. A Final Study,” N.H. Pronko and J.W. Bowles, Jr., Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 33, no. 6, Dec 1949, pp. 605–8.
60 subjects tasted samples of Hyde Park Cola, Kroger Cola, and Spur Cola. No correct identifications were made. Almost all responses identified the beverages in order as Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, or Royal Crown Cola.
more …
Scout checked out Rye Playland, the amusement park where Tom Hanks found the Zoltar machine in the movie Big. However, Zoltar has been replaced by another machine that can make you big.
There are more pictures of the park as it appears now at Scouting New York. Link -via The Daily What
From Crystal Pepsi to Pepsi Samba to Pepsi Ice Cucumber, one thing is assured: these sodas are gross.
Whether you prefer Coke or Pepsi really doesn’t matter in this day and age. The soda market is flooded with variants by the two giants and lesser known companies that are trying to penetrate consumers’ refrigerators. But no matter you preference, any soda drinker can agree that these flavors that Pepsi put out are downright awful. From the classic Crystal Pepsi fiasco to the more recent Pepsi Jazz, prepare to be amazed and surprised at products marketing executives actually thought would work out.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
You thought a boy named Sue would have to grow up strong and tough? Try overcoming life’s obstacles as a girl named Marijuana Pepsi Jackson! Ms. Sawyer (her married name) is a schoolteacher who had parents with a sense of humor.
Sawyer’s aunt, Mayetta Jackson of Chicago, clearly remembers when the name was picked in 1972. The newborn’s mother and father were products of the post-Woodstock era when reefer was rampant.
“And they would cool off with a Pepsi,” she said, which makes you think it’s lucky for Sawyer that it wasn’t Coke instead. “I thought it was crazy,” her aunt said about the name, “but they were such fun-loving people that it suited them.”
Ms. Sawyer’s story does have some elements of the Johnny Cash song.
She gives a surprising amount of credit to her mother for making her resilient and resourceful. “She instilled in me that fighting attitude – never take no, you can do anything,” Sawyer said.
By high school, her name was cool to many. “They were like, ‘Oh yeah. Man, I wish I had your name. I love that. I’m going to name my kid after you.’ I hear that so much and I go, Lord, please don’t do that to that child.”
(image credit: Jeffrey Phelps)
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by moneyries.
