Bad Taste: The Pepsi Needle Panic of 1993

Earl Triplett hadn’t meant to start a national panic. In June 1993, Triplett, an 82-year-old retiree living in Tacoma, Washington, had just returned from vacation with his wife, Mary, when he reached for a can of Pepsi. After finishing the drink, he put the empty container down and headed off to bed.

The next morning, Triplett tried peering inside the can to see if he could make out a phrase that might earn him a prize in a sweepstakes. That’s when he noticed something was rattling inside of it. Concerned, Triplett shook it loose. Out came a hypodermic syringe and needle with a bent tip—a telltale sign it had been used.

Horrified, the Tripletts phoned their attorney seeking advice. Within weeks, the entire country was deluged with stories of people finding needles in their cans of Pepsi, causing the soft drink giant to lose a staggering $25 million in a matter of days. It would take the combined efforts of the FDA, former intelligence agents, and the FBI to determine whether consumers were being confronted with a reckless hoax or a tampering epidemic of unseen proportions.

1. Needled
2. In the Can

Needled

Thanks to modern manufacturing techniques and government regulatory oversight, mass-market consumer food products are largely safe to consume. In the 1970s, reports of Halloween candy being laced with razor blades or needles were apocryphal, as were urban legends like Bubble Yum containing spider eggs. Events like the 1982 Tylenol scare—in which a perpetrator who was never identified contaminated Tylenol capsules with cyanide, killing seven in the Chicago area—are exceedingly rare.

That may have been only small comfort to Pepsi. After the Tripletts’ discovery of the needle got airtime on CNN, the possibility of tampered soda tore through national media. Within days, people in over two dozen states began coming forward with similar stories. A woman in Federal Way, Washington, just 10 miles from Tacoma, claimed she, too, had found a needle inside a Pepsi can.

While medical needles were the most common object, others reported finding sewing needles, metal screws, drug vials, or bullets. One New Orleans man insisted his lip had been cut by a needle. A handful claimed that needles were in cans of Pepsi’s rival, Coca-Cola. One woman insisted a dead mouse was in her can of Diet Pepsi. Caffeine-Free Pepsi, Crystal Pepsi, and Mountain Dew were also implicated. Roughly 300 people nationwide claimed their Pepsi had been contaminated with some kind of sharp implement.

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Both the media and the public became consumed by the stories, which blended a recognizable brand with a common consumer fear of sharp objects in unlikely places. Coverage sometimes ran into gleeful morbidity: USA Today ran a map of states where needle reports had originated with the offending areas in red, as though it were a viral outbreak. Others reported the stories credulously, rarely pushing back against what amounted to an outlandish claim.

Though there was no formal recall issued, some retailers stopped stocking Pepsi on shelves; the FDA recommended people pour out the contents of a can into a glass before ingesting it. Pepsi’s stock dropped—and so did sales: The company would later estimate a total loss of earnings at over $50 million.

Working in Pepsi’s favor was the fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had just recently organized an Office of Criminal Investigations, a division headed by former Secret Service agent Terry Vermillion. As reports came in, caseworkers—many of them former intelligence officers—began a systematic review. Those claiming they had found needles were asked to submit to polygraph examinations conducted by the FBI.

At the same time, the FDA had to consider the possibility of tampering at the point of origin: the bottling plants. Pepsi invited FDA officials to bottling locations, where they demonstrated the seemingly impenetrable process of manufacturing the soda. The cans moved through a filling station at 30 mph, turned upside-down and flushed with water. It seemed virtually impossible for a foreign object to remain in a can even if it could be placed there. If it were, the additional volume would prompt liquid to be displaced and spill out. And once the cans were on the line, an offender stood a greater chance of losing an arm by trying to interrupt the process than successfully depositing a needle.

“It would be highly unlikely for one needle to find its way into a can,” Pepsi spokesperson Andrew Giangola told Newsweek. “And it would be astronomically improbable to have numerous needles in different cans in different states, produced months apart, and then have them all somehow show up in a 48-hour period. It was absolutely ludicrous.”

Bottling dates also gave FDA officials an important clue. If a can was alleged by a consumer to contain a needle but had been manufactured weeks prior, then the needle should demonstrate progressive corrosion from being trapped in an acidic soda bath. Yet virtually none did.

Quickly, the stories began to unravel. Some wilted under questioning by local police when they realized the FBI or FDA might get involved. One man admitted he had inserted a needle as a prank on his girlfriend’s mother. Another who claimed to have found two screws inside a can confessed to merely wanting media attention. One Michigan mother said she placed a needle in her son’s soda can because he wasn’t taking her warnings about the scare seriously and wanted to teach him a lesson. At least one claimant was transparent in his motive: He was hoping to sue Pepsi for monetary gain. The company even distributed surveillance video of a consumer in Aurora, Colorado, seemingly inserting a needle into a Pepsi can before complaining about it to a clerk.

“To date, there has not been one verified, legitimate claim of a syringe in a can of Pepsi,” Vermillion proclaimed.

Within the week, both Pepsi and the FDA had been able to course-correct headlines. Pepsi took out ads in newspapers and handed out pamphlets announcing that there was no cause for concern. (“Pepsi is pleased to announce … nothing,” the pamphlet read.) That summer, they handed out 43 million vouchers offering discounts on Pepsi products. That summer wound up being Pepsi’s best in five years.

Rather than a brand catastrophe, they were able to successfully convey the message that the needles were hoaxes perpetuated by people seeking attention, money, or both—motives that would have major consequences.

“Let me stress one point, and am serious about this,” said FDA chief David Kessler a week after the story broke. “We will prosecute false reports of tampering.”

In the Can

Consumer tampering, which can quickly affect the public trust, is not something the FDA treats lightly. Making a false claim about tampering is a federal offense under the Tampering With Consumer Products Act, one which carried a fine of up to $750,000 and up to three years in prison. Ultimately, roughly 55 people were arrested for filing false contamination reports and 47 were prosecuted, with many getting probation and community service sentences and a handful going to prison.

Rather than a coordinated hoax, the Pepsi scare was more a case of a communal con. As more reports came out of needles, the more unscrupulous people believed they, too, could potentially earn a reward if they also claimed to have gotten a needle in their can.

Sometimes, the motive could be more complex. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who worked with the FBI as a consultant, told Time in 1993 that hoaxers could orchestrate tampering crimes to garner sympathy. “Just as some people induce signs of illness in themselves to enjoy the benefits of the patient’s role, others fake tampering to enjoy the benefits—emotional support, nurturing—of the victim’s role,” he said.

The Pepsi hoax may have also been nurtured in part by headlines related to AIDS, including the recent death of actor Ray Sharkey. An incurable illness spread through needles gave the country an underlying anxiety: Reports of syringes lurking in cans of soda that were in millions of kitchens fed directly into it. (Years later, an urban legend involving AIDS-tainted needles being planted on gas station pumps would stoke similar fears.)

While most were convicted, at least one alleged hoaxer beat the rap. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Deborah Garner of Ohio, who claimed she found a syringe in her Diet Pepsi can and was charged along with her daughter with communicating false information about a consumer product, had her conviction overturned on appeal in 1995 when appellate judges decided it was possible for bottling plant workers to insert a foreign object so long as the line had been stopped or the object possibly affixed inside the can before it arrived at the filling station. Aiding Garner’s case was that she had simply called Pepsi’s toll-free line to report the incident: She had not made any demands for financial compensation.

Still, no evidence ever emerged that any Pepsi employee had ever tampered with the company’s products. And while Pepsi’s reputation largely escaped unscathed, they drew the ire of Earl and Mary Triplett, the Tacoma couple who had unintentionally ignited the hysteria. With a rash of copycats, the Tripletts were lumped in with other opportunistic hoaxers who had deliberately planted needles. They were adamant they had done no such thing.

“I think the FDA owes it to us to say they found no indication whatsoever that we lied to them,” Mary Triplett said in 1993. (The agency did finally apologize that July.)

There was one possible explanation: The couple later discovered that the needle could have been placed in the empty can by a diabetic in-law looking to safely dispose of it. But, strangely, the Tripletts denied that person had been inside their home, making the origin of the needle that incited the panic an enduring mystery.