In 1999, American entrepreneur David Phillips earned himself 1.25 million frequent flyer miles in a deal involving an absolutely insane amount of chocolate pudding.

Healthy Choice was running a deal where consumers could mail in ten barcodes to receive 1,000 frequent flyer miles. David discovered that individual servings of the brand’s pudding were only 25 cents a piece and each had its own barcode.

He went on to buy a total of 12,150 packs of pudding for US$3,140 and had to enlist the Salvation Army to help cut out all those barcodes. Most of the pudding did go to charity, netting David a US$815 tax-write off.

The frequent flyer miles David received were enough to take 21 return flights to Australia or 31 to Europe. As Wikipedia notes, his story attracted significant media attention. It was even the inspiration for a subplot in the 2002 Adam Sandler film Punch-Drunk Love.

Well, I have a similar story, but only on a much, much, much smaller scale. I dug through some old emails and posts to put all of the following pieces together.

Coke Unleashed

It was the end of 2011 and I was living on the south coast of New South Wales. At the time, Coca-Cola had its own rewards program. You could earn ‘tokens’ by going online and entering a unique code found on bottle labels.

Coke Unleashed had been around since at least 2010. The name would later change to Coke Rewards before Coca-Cola pulled the pin in July 2016 . Through the site, you could redeem tokens for things like movie tickets and gift cards as well as Coke-branded merch.

The idea of getting some freebies from the drinks you already buy does seem nice. However, I don’t remember seeing anything on the Coke Unleashed shop that made me think it was worth the hassle.

That was until December 2, 2011, when Coca-Cola updated one of the products in the shop. It seemed that the company had amassed a bunch of gift vouchers that were about to expire. As a result, it had decided to offload them at a rock-bottom price.

In a deal that lasted under 24 hours, users could redeem 10 tokens – or the amount you received from just one Coke bottle – for a $20 Ticketek voucher.

It just so happened that this deal coincided with a half price voucher for 1.5L Diet Coke and Coke Zero. For roughly $1.40, you could get yourself a $20 Ticketek voucher. Really, the bottle of Coke was just the cherry on top.

Technically, there was a limit of 5 Ticketek vouchers per person. There was also a bit of a hoop to jump through: the vouchers would expire in just over two weeks and to redeem them, you had to go in person to a Ticketek office.

Deal time

I quickly loaded up the Ticketek website to see all the things I might be able to book. Sadly, there weren’t really any major concerts or events, or at least nothing I’d realistically be able to attend.

Two activities did stand out: Harry Potter: The Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum and a Picasso exhibit at the Art Gallery of NSW.

After convincing some friends that a Harry Potter and Picasso trip would great, I ran down to the local Coles. I bought ten bottles of Coke before rushing home and ripping off the labels to get the codes.

I redeemed five codes into my own Coke Unleashed account. Then I signed my mum up (or, if Coca-Cola is reading this, she signed herself up) for an account to use the other five codes. The deal meant that I had scored $200 worth of Ticketek vouchers for around $14.

Just before the vouchers expired, I went with my friends to the closest Ticketek office around 45 minutes away. Redeeming the vouchers was a bit of a process, with the worker having to call Ticketek to verify each one.

We eventually walked out with our tickets to the Harry Potter exhibition, the Picasso exhibit and even some change (issued in more gift vouchers) to spare. It’s not 1.25 million frequent flyer miles, but I was pretty happy with how things panned out.

Maybe I might’ve tried to clear every local supermarket out of their entire stock of Coke if there had actually been more good things to book. But in the end, I was glad to be stuck with only ten bottles of Coke instead of 12,150 tubs of pudding.