Editor Ira is here today to take you on a journey into one of the strangest soft drink ad campaigns of the ’90s.

Disclaimer right up top: Please don’t read this Friday Know-It-All as an endorsement or condemnation of any particular political system or economic philosophy. I’ve got my views on those things, of course, but I’m not about to drop them in this space to be parsed by a bunch of internet scoundrels. I’ll refer all further inquiries to my counsel, Mr. Simpson.

Cold War marketing

With that out of the way, let’s talk about capitalism’s ultimate Cold War endzone dance. Whatever your overall take on capitalism, you have to admit that it’s mighty good at marketing itself. Seldom was that demonstrated so clearly as at the tail end of the 1980s, when it was becoming clear that Soviet communism was teetering on the brink of collapse.

After decades of casting the U.S.S.R. and its affiliates as the ultimate “Evil Empire,” the tone in the American media started turning more conciliatory toward the people of those countries, if not their leaders. Russian stand-up comic Yakov Smirnoff became the face of Best Western. Alvin and the Chipmunks tore down the Berlin Wall with the power of pop music. Pepsi took credit for the Soviet punk movement with an ad featuring boombox-toting skateboarders and mullet-sporting rockers shaking things up in Moscow. That ad was emblematic of a particular strain of late-Cold War U.S. marketing which didn’t just celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union, but reveled in it.

So… how is soda involved?

Now, pretend you haven’t already read the headline of this article and play along with this hypothetical. If I was to ask you what U.S. soda brand would author the most devastating lampooning of the U.S.S.R.’s recently collapsed superpower status, what would you say? Maybe Coca-Cola, the most all-American of brands? Or could it be an edgelord like Pepsi, who we’ve already seen stirring this particular pot? Perhaps a wildcard like Mountain Dew, just beginning to discover the XTREME energy that would define its 1990s?

Nope, the ultimate tweaking of Soviet communism’s nose came from none other than… Barq’s. In 1992, America’s third-or-fourth favorite root beer began running TV ads for a big giveaway of “Free Soviet Stuff.” Pitched as a going-out-of-business sale for the U.S.S.R., the commercial goes pretty hard. Mikhail Gorbachev declares, “We’ve lost our lease! Everything must go!” An announcer shrieks that Barq’s has “acquired a huge inventory of really neat stuff” including “authentic Soviet pins, like-new Mayday flags, Communist Party favors, and mooore!” Joseph Stalin pops onto the screen, and we’re told to “quit Stalin, pick up Barq’s and take a bite out of Communism today!”

These TV spots were accompanied by ads in print publications and on cases of Barq’s featuring a caricatured Russian official grimacing at the viewer while tanks rolled through Moscow. The ad copy read “Barq’s has a huge inventory of genuine Soviet Stuff. Own a real piece of world history — FREE!* from Barq’s.” (For the younger readers, the asterisk meant that you had to collect a certain number of proofs-of-purchase and send them in to claim your prize, as was standard “free giveaway” practice in the days before electronic shopping.)

Everyone’s edgy, older cousin, Barq’s

Nowadays, Barq’s has a general reputation of being the root beer that maybe isn’t quite as tasty as some of the other options, but does have caffeine. In the world of early ’90s advertising, though, Barq’s developed a reputation as a smaller company that grabbed more than its market share by being willing to take risks that the industry giants wouldn’t. Led by legendary advertising executive Rick Hill, the New Orleans-based brand carved out a niche as the edgier alternative to your grandparents’ A&W. Barq’s ran tie-ins with MTV’s “Headbanger’s Ball” and the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise in an era when openly associating your brand with slasher movies and heavy metal was begging for a fundamentalist boycott.

As American advertising entered its era of “totally radical” slackersploitation, Hill was eager to stand out by pushing things in weirder directions. He started thinking about prize giveaways that would drum up not only customer excitement, but also media interest. The U.S. was going through one of its periodic Elvis revivals in the early ’90s, spurred by the 15th anniversary of his death and a media frenzy about which Elvis painting should go on a postage stamp. (For the younger readers, postage stamps used to play a far larger role in our waking lives than they do today.) Hill put two and two together and came to the obvious conclusion: he needed to buy one of Elvis’s old Cadillacs, cut it up into little pieces, and distribute scraps of metal and fabric to over-caffeinated root beer aficionados.

Sadly, the Presley estate’s asking price for Elvis licensing rights was far beyond Barq’s designated Wacky Stunts budget. Hill needed to find another iconic IP with household recognition and significant kitsch value, and one that needed cash badly enough to let him have their memorabilia for a song. Enter the former Soviet Union.

So…again, how is soda involved?

The notion of casting the fall of the U.S.S.R. as a going-out-of-business sale struck Hill while watching the evening news. Barq’s quickly approved the campaign, which was announced to trade publications in January, 1992. As Hill had hoped, it garnered immediate media attention, so much so that the Associated Press dispatched a photographer to take some pics of the “Soviet Stuff” Barq’s would be giving away.

That put Hill in a tricky position, as the campaign had been announced before he’d even procured the giveaway items, or, for that matter, confirmed that they were possible to procure. He got a friend in New York to buy up a bunch of souvenirs from shops in a Russian neighborhood and slapped together a package for the press, then looked into his options for actually getting his hands on Soviet memorabilia.

According to a marvelous profile from Chief Marketer magazine (For the younger readers, hyper-specific trade and special interest magazines used to be invaluable sources of cultural and historical data, as well as a good source of income for staff writers and freelancers.), Hill flew to Moscow a few weeks later with his attorney and $70,000 worth of checks. He came back 10 days later with the rights to 4,000 pounds worth of official Russian trinkets, as secured from the “Soviet Mafia.” In Hill’s words, “The country had just gone to hell, and the only people able to do any business were the criminals.”

The package thus secured, the Barq’s team began assembling gift bags to be sent out to eager soda fans. Every customer who sent in a proof-of-purchase and 50 cents would receive a package selected at random, containing pins, patches, army hats, Kremlin telephones (!), and other assorted Soviet ephemera, along with a certificate of authenticity. (Certified by whom, I’m not sure.) According to Hill, “We filled a container with Matryoshka dolls, Lenin Day pins, tank commander watches, and military medals. We even had complete Soviet Army uniforms as bottler premiums. Of course we were offered MiGs and tanks, but we declined.”

Even though Barq’s took a loss on each individual Soviet Stuff shipment — the 50-cent shipping fee didn’t cover the actual costs — the promotion was a massive success, winning the company unprecedented media coverage, making them the fastest-growing root beer brand of 1992, and earning Hill’s team a Grand Reggie award from the Promotion Marketing Association of America.

As an irony-hungry 13-year-old in the summer of 1992, of course I sent away for some Soviet Stuff of my own. My haul consisted of a few medals, a patch from some branch of the military, and a pretty boss hammer-and-sickle pin that saw some action in my high school years. (I’m sure it will shock the reader to learn that I was the kind of 16-year-old who wore a houndstooth trench coat and a fishing hat festooned with ironic buttons and pins unearthed at thrift stores.) Obviously I had no real use for any of this junk, but being able to tell the story of the time I asked root beer to mail me discarded artifacts of a fallen empire was too good to pass up. And hey, look, I’m telling it to you right now!

For his part, Rick Hill kept on scheming for Barq’s until they were purchased by Coca-Cola a few years later. Coke wanted to keep him on board, but Hill apparently loved an underdog. He made the move to VP of Marketing for RC Cola in 1996. He remains a legend in the world of retail marketing as the person who managed to swoop into the fall of Soviet communism, bag up the departing regime’s literal garbage, and get himself declared a genius for selling that detritus to the root-beer-drinking public of the USA. Success stories don’t come much more capitalist than that.