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I figured out a way to read under any cap without having to open it! This seems to work on all soda bottles, including 20-oz Pepsi, 20-oz Coke, 20-oz Sprite, and 2-liter Dr. Pepper! I was not the first to post this idea, and I doubt I came up with it first. However, I did come up with it independently.

What's the trick? REFLECTION. Get a flashlight, tilt the bottle slightly, and use the surface of the soda as a mirror!

Click a link to jump to a particular soda, or just scroll down: 20-oz Pepsi 20-oz Coke 2-liter Dr. Pepper 20-oz Sprite


20-oz Pepsi (top)
pepsi itunes flashlight

Notice the cap's reflection.

Closer shot, no flash.

Even closer. It's backwards, but very readable. Just for clarity, I'll mirror this in Graphic Converter . . .

Bingo! The code is "IX7EN PPRO4."

20-oz Coke (top)

You may have heard of the "tilt trick" made famous on macmerc.com. It's useful on 20-oz Pepsi, but it doesn't work on 20-oz Coke. Reflection works fine, however:

The glare is from the flash. I'll turn it off and zoom in.
It's a winner. But what does it say?
Flipping . . .
"YOU WIN 1-LITER COKE PRODUCT." Yay! And from only 20 ounces!
I'll let you reverse this one mentally. Did you ever notice that "COKE" upside-down is still "COKE"?

2-liter Dr. Pepper (top)
The cap is conspicuous.
Some characters, like 2/5/Z/S, are easily confused when reading backwards. :-)

20-oz. Sprite (top)

Clear sodas like Sprite are even more interesting. There are at least three ways to read under the cap. I'll start with the "normal" way:

It's a little harder to see the reflection in clear soda.
"FREE RINGTONE"! I don't have a cell, so feel free to redeem this.
Different shot, different camera.

It's actually easier to just invert the bottle and look through the bottom of it:

Here, the flashlight is shining through the whole bottle.
It's not a reflection, so it's not backwards! It's also brighter. Almost too bright . . .
. . . If it's too bright, you can invert the bottle but shine light through the *bottom* of the bottle.

By the way, this is the flashlight I used:
I think it's from GE and has a krypton bulb. $4.99 at Target. (Hand modeling by Smaranda Marinescu.)

Note: Please think twice before using codes from bottles that you did not buy. Think how you would feel if you found a "winner" but later discovered that the code had already been used!

--Geoffrey Hom

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