Pepsi's Got It (The Right Stuff)

My palate has been wooed by many a soda/pop in its day, and never more effortlessly than by A-Treat Birch Beer and Barq's Red Crème Soda. But alas, given my remoteness from both Allentown (PA) and a Kroger in Ohio, respectively, I haven't tasted either of those luscious libations in quite some time.

In their stead, I sometimes sip the sweet carbonated nectar of locally-operated Millstream Brewing Company, but by and large I've sold my taste buds to the industry's two biggest behemoths: Coke and Pepsi.

For years have I vacillated—like John Kerry in the wind—between the two. On one hand, nothing compliments a fresh Italian hoagie quite like an ice-cold can of Pepsi. But if popcorn is the course, and I need something to wash down the handful of Pop Secret Homestyle I just devoured (after noisily smearing it on the side of the bag), nothing but a Cherry coke (served in a pretentious little cup on the rocks) will do. Yet, I've always been more attracted to women who drink Pepsi. And so the debate raged on...

But after my recent dual discoveries of My Coke Rewards (MCR) and Pepsi Stuff (PS), the jury is no longer out. Not only is the actual website for PS (integrated with Amazon.com) clearly superior to MCR's slow and clunky design, a comparison of the actual "rewards/stuff" reveals, in my opinion, a slam dunk case in favor of Pepsi.

For simplicity's sake, I'll restrict my argument to digital music-related prizes. While a single-song download from Rhapsody.com (not iPod-compatible) "costs" 33 Coke points (aka 11 caps), a single-song DRM-free (i.e., iPod-compatible) download on Amazon.com costs a mere 5 Pepsi points (5 caps). About the only thing Coke offers for 5 caps is a "virtual jacket" for your avatar to wear around CC Metro, which is a computer-based, alternate reality island (à la Second Life) shaped like a Coke bottle (seriously).

Brumpelstiltskin's very own music critic, MC Gallagher, who's been known to rummage through the recycle bin in his workplace's break room in search of bottle caps, put it this way: "If given the choice between an actual mp3 or some make believe clothing shite—even if it's a powder fooking blue tuxedo—you better believe I'll take the first option every time".