That Time Coca-Cola Spent $100 Million Intentionally Filling Cans With Water That Smelled Like Farts

Conceived in early 1990, the MagiCan campaign was supposed to be the spearhead of a massive summer promotion the cola giant dubbed “Magic Summer ’90”. In a nutshell, the promotion involved hiding cash prizes ranging from $5-$500, as well as some other goodies such as coupons for free Coke, inside of 750,000 of the several hundred million cans of Coke that would be distributed during the summer.

As part of the campaign, Coke created (and patented) a unique mechanism that, as soon as the can was opened, would eject the prize inside via a spring loaded mechanism. Coke dubbed the cans “MagiCans”.

In order to ensure people didn’t end up with water-logged prizes, the part of the can containing the aforementioned mechanism was sealed off and the reservoir that was left was filled with chlorinated water to make the weight of the can approximately the same as a normal full can of Coca-Cola.

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