pepsi's idea of pop art

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Vintage Ad #147 - Pepsi Pop Art
Call these Pepsi cans cool, an 80s hangover, corporations trying to be hep to the jive, whatever. The classic summer archetypes are there: surfing, parties, neon, girls in sunglasses. I dimly remember seeing these on shelves, though I don't recall if we ever bought any.

Available throughout the summer of 1990, Pepsi Cool Cans are the basis of an urban legend, specifically that stacking the black neon cans would reveal a word in the background that could end civilization as we know it. Pepsi officially denied subliminal messages, but one never knows. Stereogum has a short piece on the cans, whose TV pitchman was Young MC, fresh from the success of Bust A Move.

Source: Sports Illustrated, May 14, 1990

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