Man who tried to win Pepsi fighter jet with 7 million points in 1996 just got his payoff in a Super Bowl LX ad

John Leonard became something of a legend when he walked upto Pepsi and tried to redeem 7 million points in exchange for a fighter jet 30 years ago. While he lost the legal battle that followed, Frontier Airlines has now made his wish come true in a new Super Bowl LX ad. Frontier Airlines decided to give his story a happy ending as they offered to turn his old 7 million soda points into 7 million airline miles, which basically gives him free flights for life. Leonard admitted he was skeptical at first. “The first conversation was, ‘Hey, we want to get you the jet we think you should have got 30 years ago. I was like, ‘Well, I’ve been down this route before. No, thank you,’” reported PEOPLE.

Leonard feels he's got the better end of the deal compared to the original one for a fighter jet.“Of course, we travel all the time with three kids. It’s not cheap to travel,” he said. “What’s funny, when I look back at that original pitch, I couldn’t fly a jet. I couldn’t have maintained it. It’s even a little bit more fanciful or laughable when I look back, where this is actually something that’s very doable.”

Leonard's fighter jet story goes all the way back to 1996, when Pepsi launched a loyalty program where you could collect “Pepsi Points” and trade them in for T-shirts, sunglasses, and so on. At the very end of one commercial, a Harrier fighter jet appeared on screen with “7,000,000 Pepsi Points” written next to it. It seemed like an obvious joke, but John Leonard saw an opportunity. He collected the required 7 million points to redeem that jet, but the company refused to entertain his offer. What followed was a long legal battle that even became a Netflix documentary called "Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?" The courts sidedwith Pepsi that no reasonable person would have taken that jet offer literally.