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Last week's NewsNews article for the week of 3/24/10. Soft Drink Ban Upsets
Barons News that Pepsi is pulling out of the school vending machine market has been greeted with guarded applause. On the one hand it is thought to be a positive step in the ongoing global war on the obesity epidemic, which with a little more fudging could be placed squarely at the feet of global warming, just like shrinking ice caps and oily skin. On the other is the simple business fact that a corporation like Pepsi would not just pull out of a profitable market. Pepsi has shot back by saying that the school vending machine market was never a top earner for the beverage manufacturer, hitting out by saying that Coca-Cola was lowering test scores, ruining teeth and had generally beaten them to that market. Whatever the real reason Pepsi has made it’s displeasure known, stating that it felt unequivocally victimised by teachers, parents and school mascots with aquatic themes. This sounds like a fit of pique rather than a business decision, and could have long term repercussions for the company that bet big of Ethiopia being the next economic powerhouse and had thought to turn Australia into one great big sweatshop manufacturing the universally panned Pepsi brand running shoes. Shoes that at one point were proven to cause ear infections they were of such poor quality. Campaigners against obesity are celebrating, albeit cautiously, Pepsi has long been considered the easy target as Coca-cola sponsors too many orphans to be assaulted morally. The true motives of the Pepsi corporation may have just come to light, as one senior, now name suppressed, executive stated the following last Wednesday: “How will we be able to breed a new generation of overweight people who can be ruthlessly slaughtered and rendered down for their body fat? Don’t you people get it? There were always going to be consequences to not hunting whales, we’ve made do with simple oil but the fact is fat people will be the fuel that burns us into the future!” This was later described as a moderate transmission error even though it was a live interview. If Pepsi has in fact been attempting to corner the market in a new fuel source in the form of fat people it makes the retreat from the school market even more perplexing, given that the food, beverage, hip hop and smoking industries have always subscribed to a “get them young” philosophy. Furthermore what does this lack of a new fuel source mean for the future as oil runs out? Are we cheating future generations by not turning them into easily combustible butterballs? People are looking to President Barak Obama to make a decision, to which the leader of the United States of America responded “You don’t want health care but you want someone to hold your hands over this?” |