Dad cashes in '90s Pepsi ring pulls to claim free Spice Girls CD 26 years later
'My daughter is loving it – we're keeping girl power alive in 2023'
A father has finally redeemed a set of Pepsi can ring pulls from the 1990s to claim a free Spice Girls CD.
Euan Robertson, 37, from Edinburgh, collected 20 of the pink ring pulls from cans of Pepsi in the 90s in an effort to get sent a free copy of the girl band's song, Step To Me.
However, he forgot to send off the tokens a quarter of a century ago, and only rediscovered them last year while hunting around a box of Lego.
But despite waiting 26 years to redeem the offer, Euan was pleasantly surprised to find Pepsi still sent him the CD.
Unfortunately, he no longer owns a CD player, so he has to listen to the song in his car, where he regularly plays it while driving with his wife and three-year-old daughter.
He found the ring pulls after digging out a box of Lego at his parents house to play with his daughter.
“We were raking through the box of Lego and kept finding these Pepsi ring pulls," said Robertson.
"I instantly recognised what they were. I had a Spice Girls poster when I was younger but I wouldn’t say I was the biggest fan.
"The Spice Girls album was the first CD I ever got and played on my first CD player.
“I collected all of these little things but never did anything with them so I thought 'why don’t I send Pepsi a cheeky stupid tweet' - a bit of a blast from the past."
Following his message in November, Pepsi got back to him on X, formerly known as Twitter, to say they would have a hunt and see if they still had any copies of the CD, which was not available in shops, and it later arrived in the post.
“In terms of the CD, the track Step To Me is exactly what you’d want for a 90s girl power song with a catchy verse and lovely chorus," said Robertson.
“The remixes haven't stood the test of time – they’re a bit of their day but the actual track is fun to listen to.
“We’ve since been having a Spice Girls binge on Spotify. My daughter is loving it – we're keeping girl power alive in 2023.”
Step To Me didn't make the final cut of the band's debut album, Spice, released in 1996.
But a year later, as part of their "Generation Next" campaign, Pepsi offered the song to fans for free in the ring pull promotion.
About 92 million promotional packs of Pepsi were produced and more than 600,000 CDs were eventually given away.
Music stars and their merchandise
The current queen of pop merch is undoubtedly Taylor Swift, whose The Eras tour was the highest-grossing of 2023, with ticket sales along reaching $1bn (£786m), according to Pollstar.
On top of that, the singer took in merchandise sales of $200m (£157m), including T-shirts, sweatshirts and other items emblazoned with her image or logo.
Analysis by printing company Solo Press found that Swift's merchandise was the most searched for on Google in 2023, followed by Lana Del Rey, Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and The Weeknd.
However, compiling a list of the music artists with the most valuable merchandise, which examined items on eBay and the artists' own websites, Solo Press found that Swift was in sixth place, while the top three spots were occupied by Queen, Drake and Radiohead.
It found that the average merchandise item on Drake's site cost £236, about five times more than the typical item on other artists' websites.
