Advertisement What it’s about: A contest where everyone was a winner… with tragic results. In 1992, Pepsi Philippines started printing numbers, 001-999, inside bottle caps, with numbers corresponding to prizes that were announced on TV nightly. It was a huge success at first… until a misprint put the million-peso ($40,000 USD) winning number on 800,000 bottles, resulting in rioting, lawsuits, and a massive debacle for Pepsi. Biggest controversy: Those 800,000 winning bottle caps weren’t technically winners. Each contest bottle caps had a security code alongside the number for confirmation; the misprints had no code. But that mattered little to people who were convinced they had won. Panicked Pepsi executives held a 3 A.M. meeting and worked out a compromise, where the misprint bottle caps could be exchanged for a 500-peso ($18) consolation prize. Although 486,170 people accepted, it was a lose-lose for Pepsi. The payouts cost the company 240 million pesos ($8.9 million), on a contest that initially had $2 million USD set aside for prizes.