mitsuki lover wrote:I have never heard of this before and frankly doubt it's authenticity.
Although there once was some truth to the item quoted above, the information it contains is long outdated and never had anything to do with Pepsi or Coca-Cola. Neither soda company is producing, or has ever produced, redesigned cans bearing any portion of the Pledge of Allegiance or an image of the Empire State Building. This issue concerns a special patriotic can design produced by Dr Pepper back in November 2001, a can which was marketed for a limited time and has been off of store shelves for three years now.
Dr Pepper did not print the entire Pledge of Allegiance on their cans while leaving out the words 'under God'; they invoked the Pledge of Allegiance by using a mere three words from the pledge. However, because the three words Dr Pepper chose to use were the words surrounding the phrase 'under God' (which was not itself part of the original pledge as written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 but was added to the pledge by an act of Congress in 1954) the new patriotic can design prompted calls for boycotts from some religious groups and news media who maintained that Dr Pepper had "omitted 'under God'" from their version of the Pledge (because it falls where Dr Pepper used ellipses) and publicized the issue by encouraging a campaign of sending e-mail and letters of complaint to the Dr Pepper company.
Somehow along the way this message morphed into the version quoted at the head of this page, which inaccurately attributes the "Pledge" can design to Pepsi. Dr Pepper and Pepsi are two completely different companies: Pepsi is a product of the Pepsico corporation; Dr Pepper is a product of Dr Pepper/Seven Up, whose corporate parent is Cadbury Schweppes. (Dr Pepper is produced and distributed by Coca-Cola and Pepsi bottlers in some parts of the USA, but the Dr Pepper company has never been owned by either of those soft drink giants as the Washington Times erroneously reported.)
To quote the Dr. Pepper company,
"Due to space limitations on the can, only a few of the 31 words from the Pledge of Allegiance could be used. The available area for graphics limited the amount of verbiage on the can. Of the 31 words in the Pledge of Allegiance, only three were included. More than 90 percent were not included."
It was true, Mitsuki Lover, but it isn't true anymore, the cans were only available for a short while.
Note: I did see Gypsy's post, and I am merely posting this so that people can read the full story. Yes, it is true, they omitted the words. No, they didn't do it to be "anti-Christian." All information is taken from snopes.com.