Cavalcade of Awesome

This week, I’m looking at many of the Episode I promotions.  Yesterday I looked at some of the current promotions for the 3D release of Star Wars Episode I.  Today, I’m going to go back in time to 1999 and look at the original Pepsi Star Wars collector can promotion during the original release of Episode I.  Being a soda enthusiast as well as a Star Wars enthusiast any cross promotion between the two is a huge deal for me.  So this giant Episode I promotion is one of my favorites.

Pepsi’s 24 collector character cans were the huge promotion everyone probably remembers even to this day. There were 24 character cans in the entire set.  There were 8 Pepsi and Mt Dew cans and 4 Diet Pepsi and Pepsi One cans.  Pepsi One was newly released in 1999.

I actually bought cases of Pepsi, Mtn Dew, Pepsi One and Diet Pepsi to get all the cans. Cans were released in waves (see the list here) every 2-3 weeks and each 12 and 24 pack of cans only contained one character.  So, obviously, like everyone else, I wound up with a ton of extras.    I remember the very last character can I needed to complete the set was the Diet Pepsi with the Battle Droid.  It took months to find it but I finally did and had to buy a 24 pack of cans to get it.  The pic above is, I believe, a salesman’s sample of the complete 24 can set.  There are no tops on those cans.  I acquired this a few years after Episode I.  It came together in a lot with a bunch of Pepsi promo material, the cool black Pepsi can holder you see holding the cans in the pic and the cool Pepsi Destiny can (which I’ll discuss in a minute).

Inserted randomly into cases of these character cans was a chase Gold Yoda can.  If you found one, you could send it in to receive $20.

Each soda flavor had it’s own Gold Yoda can, so in actuality there is a set of four Gold Yodas, one each for Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mtn Dew and Pepsi One.  Pepsi One being the most rare.

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