How a Soft Drink Became Quebec's Homegrown Insult

https://maisonneuve.org/post/2010/02/4/how/?fbclid=IwAR2ETGgayzKoeR9qANxO7AeBo1a1jxVKQQ8kp51HoPoxiel5boX1Cr8zk8M

Among the plethora of ethnic insults that traffic in food—Germans as “krauts,” say, or Irish people as “potato eaters”—“pepsi” deserves special mention. It’s the only slur I know that is based on a beverage. The lexicography team for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary tell me the epithet “pepsi” derives from the belief, first held by Quebec anglos in the late forties, that their French-speaking counterparts swilled Pepsi because they were too poor to afford Coke (which was marginally more expensive). While Pepsi’s early marketing did promote itself as the more economical alternative—“Twice as much for a nickel, too / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you”—impecunious Québécois of yore were probably imbibing Kik, which was the cheapest postwar cola available.