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Although there once was at least some element of truth to the item quoted above about the omission of the words under God from the Pledge of Allegiance on a soda can, the information it contains is long outdated and never had anything to do with Pepsi or Coca-Cola. Neither of those companies is producing, or has it 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 briefly produced by Dr Pepper back in November 2001, a can which was marketed for a limited time and has been off store shelves for well over fourteen years (since February 2002). The brouhaha began in mid-November 2001, when the Dr Pepper soft drink company, in response to the terrorist attacks on America a few months earlier, introduced a new can design featuring the Statue of Liberty with the words ONE NATION ... INDIVISIBLE from the Pledge of Allegiance displayed above it: Dr Pepper did not print the entire Pledge of Allegiance on its cans while leaving out the words 'under God'; it 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 ones 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 its version of the Pledge (because the words fall 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: At one time, Dr Pepper addressed the issue on their web site, saying: Although 18 million Dr Pepper cans bearing the new design had been produced by February 2002, the company said it had received only four complaints from Dubuque and 200 other negative comments nationwide, and the issue seemed to have largely disappeared along with the cans by March 2002. However, when a United States Court of Appeals handed down a decision regarding the constitutionality of the words under God in the Pledge of Allegiance in June 2002, it breathed new life into the Dr Pepper controversy even though the notorious cans had been off store shelves for months. Messages like the following then began circulating much more widely than the ones sent out during the initial wave of controversy: Somehow along the way this message morphed into the versions quoted at the head of this page, which inaccurately attribute 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 Snapple Group (which was spun off from Cadbury Schweppes in 2008). Although Dr Pepper has been produced and distributed by Pepsi bottlers in some parts of the U.S., the Dr Pepper company has never been owned by PepsiCo, as the Washington Times erroneously reported. PepsiCo eventually had to issue their own rumor alert regarding this issue: In February 2003 we began seeing the call to boycott the soda bottler who had omitted Under God from its patriotic cans aimed at Coca-Cola. It was the same wording as the summons to arms against Pepsi that had circulated a year earlier but with Coke replacing Pepsi in the text. It too was false, as Coca-Cola had had no more to do with the short-lived Dr Pepper cans than had Pepsi. Writing to any company now and threatening to boycott them until they put 'under God' back on their cans is pointless. The patriotic Pledge can was produced only between November 2001 and February 2002, it was sold only in parts of twelve states, it has long since been retired, and it has not been available in stores since that one time. An interesting contrast was provided by Time magazine's 24 September 2001 cover, which used the same words in its headline but prompted very few complaints:
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