Raising The Tube Stakes

Raising the Tube StakesPity the purists. They punched Top Gun into the VCR and couched back to watch the world's best-trained combat pilots fly the world's best interceptor aircraft. Then, out of the blue, as it were, came a commercial for Diet Pepsi. Tsk. Those caught off guard just hadn't been watching their market-place radar. Paramount and Pepsi had ballyhooed the cassette of Top Gun, 1986's box-office champ, in ads and promotions on an unprecedented scale--about $8,000,000 worth of publicit...