“With its faltering economy, the USSR did not have many consumer products that it could successfully sell to the West,” the Daily Kos explained in its story. “But one thing it did have, thanks to its bloated Cold War military budget, was a lot of surplus equipment for its armed forces. And so, in what must be one of the oddest commercial agreements ever signed, Gorbachev agreed to turn over to Pepsi a fleet of 17 obsolete Soviet Navy diesel attack submarines along with a decommissioned cruiser, destroyer and frigate, as well as a number of new civilian oil tankers. At a stroke, PepsiCo had become the sixth most powerful navy in the world. The oil tankers would in turn be sold to Norway, and the decommissioned military ships and submarines would be sold for scrap to a shipyard in Sweden.”
Yes, it did, it was a brilliant Coca-Cola vs Pepsi strategy to rule the world…
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“With its faltering economy, the USSR did not have many consumer products that it could successfully sell to the West,” the Daily Kos explained in its story. “But one thing it did have, thanks to its bloated Cold War military budget, was a lot of surplus equipment for its armed forces. And so, in what must be one of the oddest commercial agreements ever signed, Gorbachev agreed to turn over to Pepsi a fleet of 17 obsolete Soviet Navy diesel attack submarines along with a decommissioned cruiser, destroyer and frigate, as well as a number of new civilian oil tankers. At a stroke, PepsiCo had become the sixth most powerful navy in the world. The oil tankers would in turn be sold to Norway, and the decommissioned military ships and submarines would be sold for scrap to a shipyard in Sweden.”
Yes, it did, it was a brilliant Coca-Cola vs Pepsi strategy to rule the world…
…ahem… at least the jokes went that way.