The Insane Reason Pepsi Was The World’s 6th Largest Navy In 1989

Here’s a fun fact that we stumbled across: Pepsi was once the holder of the world’s sixth-largest navy.

According to HistorySkills.com, back in 1972, Pepsi became the first foreign consumer product sold in the USSR.

The problem was, Pepsi couldn’t accept the country’s currency for payment, as its ruble had no value in exchange rates in the United States.

Pepsi’s then-CEO, Donald Kendall, struck a deal with the USSR to trade its Stolichnaya Vodka products to sell, in exchange for Pepsi products to sell there.

But that deal fell through in 1989, when the U.S. leveled sanctions on Russian products — including vodka — following the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Kendall flew back to meet with then-Russian President Nikita Khrushchev once again, to try to iron out another workaround deal like the vodka-for-Pepsi trade.

Kendall said Pepsi needed $3 billion in cash for the product requested, but the USSR didn’t have valid currency to offer in exchange.

That’s when Khrushchev proposed a deal that was so insane, it’s almost unbelievable: The USSR offered Pepsi some of its naval fleet that had either been retired or the country could no longer afford to maintain, which included 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer.

You read that correctly — the company that makes Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Gatorade and more once had an impressive naval fleet on paper.

As HistorySkills.com reports, some estimates claim this made Pepsi’s navy the sixth largest in the world for a moment in time.

In real life, all of the ships were decommissioned and retired, and in need of repair, so Pepsi was never actually a world naval power.

The soft drink company turned around and sold its fleet as scrap metal to a Swedish company in a deal worth $3 million.

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