in 1992 Pepsi ran a contest in the

Philippines that ended up killing five

people the contest was called number

fever and the idea was simple every

evening the news would reveal a winning

number tomorrow's winning number is

37 and if you had a Pepsi bottle cap

with that number you won a million pesos

now a million pesos in 1992 was

lifechanging for the average Filipino so

this contest became very very popular

will you be the next millionaire

families would stockpile Pepsi bottle

caps in their homes many people would

root through dumpsters trying to find

winning caps according to Pepsi half of

the country's population was actively

participating in the contest and it was

because of this popularity that Pepsi

decided to extend number fever for an

additional 5 weeks and this is where

things went terribly wrong you see

throughout the contest Pepsi was in

complete control of how many winners

there were they relied on a computer

program to seed two winning caps into

bottling plants two winning caps meant

that there could only be two winners and

Pepsi would stay within their budget but

something went wrong after they extended

the contest the computer program

glitched causing some numbers to be

mixed up and on May 25th 1992 at 6:00

p.m. the channel 2 Evening News called

the winning number

349 and while there were only supposed

to be two winners hundreds of thousands

of Filipinos began to celebrate you see

349 was already designated as a

non-winning number and because of this

bottling plants were free to print that

number as much as they wanted this

resulted in over

600,000 349 caps circulating in the

Philippines 349 was such a common cap

that many people had more than

one that night the streets went wild

with celebration they were all rich and

could finally stop worrying about money

hundreds of people rushed to the Pepsi

Factory with their winning caps it soon

had to be shut down and guarded by

police the company quickly realized that

they had messed up big time Pepsi

Executives had a meeting in the middle

of the night to try and come up with a

solution it would have cost them tens of

billions of dollars to honor each

winning cap so instead they put the

blame on the computer and offered 500

pesos for each winning cap now 500 pesos

was only around $8 this was

05% of the original prize and while some

took them up on this offer most refused

and became even more angry they didn't

care about some computer error Pepsi was

a multi-billion dollar Corporation in

their eyes they had to honor the full

prize amount but Pepsi didn't budge and

V vient protest and riots broke out

ultimately leaving five people dead and

dozens injured 349 winners stormed the

Pepsi factories throwing Molotov

cocktails into the windows and bombing

Pepsi trucks that drove by over the next

year the angry mob took a more organized

approach to fight Pepsi Coalition 349

was a group of winners that took legal

action against the company they elected

a local preacher named Del Fiero as

their leader he rounded up over 8349

winners in an attempt to sue Pepsi for

over $400 million now the chaos

continued well into 1993 at which point

a new twist in the story started

circulating old newspaper headlines

suggested that Pepsi was somehow

responsible for bombing their own trucks

these headlines were based on a

testimony from a police officer he

alleged that in order to paint Coalition

349 as terrorist and damage their

position in court Pepsi hired

mercenaries to infiltrate these groups

and cause the riots more testimonies

surfaced of people claiming that Pepsi

had paid them to start trouble in cos

Mayhem a Pepsi lawyer quickly denied the

allegations and that was basically the

end of it in 1993 the court finally put

an arrest warrant out for nine Pepsi

Executives this was a huge win for

Coalition 349 but unfortunately it was

one of their only in the following

months almost all of the civil suits and

criminal complaints were tossed out of

court and in 2006 the court officially

closed the book on all of the remaining

court cases they found that Pepsi had

not been negligent in the number fever

disaster when it was all said and done

Pepsi only had to pay one small fine of

150,000 pesos many Filipinos who

experienced number fever are still

traumatized to this day even mentioning

the word Pepsi around certain groups is

frowned upon Pepsi was recently asked

for their response to the number fever

disaster and they came out with this

statement these events took place almost

30 years ago and none of the executives

familiar with this program are at

PepsiCo anymore we deeply regret any

pain and suffering our mistake caused

the people of the Philippines