Answer: Pepsi

Throughout the sci-fi comedy Back to the Future film series, Pepsi Cola makes repeated appearances. Why Pepsi and not, say, Coca-Cola? Did Pepsi pay more for product placement? Did Coke scoff at the idea of even paying for product placement in the first place?

It turns out that the real reason is central to the plot of the movie: changes over time. In the DVD commentary, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale pointed out that the reason they selected Pepsi products over Coke products was that Coke’s label hadn’t changed at all in nearly a century, and using it to show changes between 1955, 1985, and 2015 would have been a tad underwhelming. Instead, they went with Pepsi, whose logo had undergone significant changes. They used the historical 1950s logo, the current (at the time of filming) 1980s logo, and then created a new logo for Pepsi Perfect, the futuristic iteration of Pepsi found in 2015.

While Pepsi has never gotten around to releasing Pepsi Perfect, we’re OK with the predictions put forth in the Back to the Future movies not coming to pass; after all, when Marty arrives in 2015, inflation has driven the price of a bottle of cola up to nearly $50. We’re more than happy to drink plain old Pepsi and pay around $2 a bottle these days.