An Illinois man filed suit against Pepsi Co in 2009, claiming that he found a mouse in a can of Mountain Dew (a brand owned by Pepsi). In response, Pepsi has come up with experts to testify that if a mouse had been marinading in a can of Mountain Dew from the time it was bottled until the time the plaintiff drank it, the mouse would have dissolved into an unrecognizable “jelly-like substance.”
Update: Ronald Ball, the plaintiff, withdrew the complaint last week (July 30) after accepting a settlement from Pepsi Co (amount not disclosed). Pepsi Co continues, however, to deny any liability.
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© 2012 by Bill Bickel unless otherwise noted.
Wow! I guess it’s a good defense, but it’s a lousy endorsement of their product.
No surprise at all. It’s not the recipe for the soda that makes it acidic- its the carbon dioxide used to carbonate it, thus all carbonated drinks are acidic. So put a dead mouse in any soda and you’d end up with the same gelatinous glob after a month.
Didn’t everyone every do the egg-in-vinegar experiment in elementary school? It’s the same principle.
No, we didn’t all do that experiment. But now I’m intrigued…
(*goes to do some research on eggs and vinegar*)
Of all the outright lies the guy could have told, a mouse in his can was the best he could come up with? I would have tried at least a cockroach or something with an exoskeleton.
Makes you wonder about the validity of the now infamous Paisley Snail – the Scottish legal precedent that started this whole indamnfraguilated notion of tort law?
Additional details about the case are contained in an article on the Urban Legends site: http://www.snopes.com/medical/potables/mountaindewmouse.asp
P.S. Another story on NPR comments about the fact that it took over a year before the original report got widespread notice: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/01/06/144794350/mountain-dew-mouse-story-goes-viral
But before dissolving it got really hyperactive.
So was the guy Bob or Doug MacKenzie?
Bob or Doug MacKenzie did it with an Elsinore beer, not a Mountain Dew