red pepsi 81

[cohammer]

I would take a red Pepsi machine but would never have a blue one in my house.

[BONOVOX]

Welcome to the board!!

I don't drink Pepsi anymore, simply because I prefer Coke.... but I have no problem having a Pepsi machine in my mancave....  having different colours and embossing makes for a nice collection.

Some friends and family already think my hobby is strange.... but to only have Coke machines, they might think I'm obsessed lol.

Seeing these red machines brings some cred to the fact that there might have really been red machines.. but why?

[MoonDawg]

         Red has always been associated with Coke.

        Maybe Pepsi put out a few red machines before the Coca Cola police stopped them?

[vendo_81]

Can you own a color?  That would be like Ford saying I made the first black car, so no one else can make a black car.  Also, the color is very much different than Coca Cola red.  It's really in the middle of red and orange.  There is no doubt in my mind that these were done at the factory.  I'd be curious to hear from from Pepsi VMC81 owners if anyone has a machine with a later s/n than mine that is painted factory blue.  If so, it lessens the chance that the red ones were done at the tail end of production of these machines.  My earlier post has my s/n's.  Let's solve this mystery!

[jukeboxdon70]

I love the red machine! I have a Pepsi 81 VMC serial # 101118B41, but it is blue. This gives me something to look for in the future. Welcome to the club!

[vendo_81]

Your s/n is close to my oldest blue one.  Does yours have the big wide single louvers on the sides?

[johnieG]

I'd like to see the inside of the front door myself...

I did own at one time a red Pepsi Ice chest embossed double-dot, the gent I bought it from had had it in his family for years & it used to sit outside of their 1930's roadside gasoline service center & general store, he told me that for a while, Pepsi had made some red machines to draw people to the machine in heavy Coke sales areas to "break the Ice" so to speak and to get people to at least try a Pepsi. I believe he told me it had something to due with when Coke owned Pepsi in the depression era and were buying up other brands of soda bottlers & converting the plants to Coke production or dissolving them

..Interesting though.

[BONOVOX]

When I was a kid, Pepsi brought out their new line called "Pepsi Free".  I wish I kept their cans because I clearly remember Pepsi having that brand in a all RED can.  They changed it to BLUE a while later, but for the longest time they sold both the RED and BLUE together (separate in cases).

This is from Wikipedia:

"When it was first introduced, Caffeine Free Pepsi's label background was originally red, but to avoid any confusion with Coca-Cola, the background color was changed to gold in 1987"

So with this, it's not unlikely at all that Pepsi at that time might have thought about changing their colours on their machines to suit what the public wanted.  I mean, a RED or REDDISH machine catches the eye much better than a dark blue.  Once feedback was coming back to the bosses at Pepsi that their machines looked way too much like Coke machines, they were ordered to paint them blue, thus the double colours on some machines.  Because detailed info wasn't kept on ALL the machines they delivered etc... some machines simply were left as RED.

What do you all think of that?  I like playing detective lol.
It's a theory

[vendo_81]

Here's a pic of inside the door.  The one on American restorations looked the same.  They painted the metal on the back side of the embossing.  I don't believe they did this on regular machines produced.  I found on the internet a site that I could watch the episode of American Restorations for free where they tear the machine down and discover that it was all red inside.  You type in American Restorations series 2 episode 38 and it said something like free tv on the website heading.  I personally think they made a mistake changing the color to blue, but Rick said that it would bring more money that way.  I don't how you would know that, since I've never seen a red one for sale.  Plus, without knowing which s/n machines were produced red, once stripped and repainted, how do you prove that it was originally red?  Maybe being red is no big deal?  Maybe it adds no value?  It does add rarity.  If they made even 10% of them red from the factory, we would see them here and there.  What would really be something would be if Coca Cola made a factory blue Coke machine!  I tried to attach a pic of the inside of the red pepsi door, but it said my file was too large.  I used the same camara that I used before?  I'll try again

[Slapshot42]

I think the biggest mistake is when they put the drinking fountain back on the machine!