The Pudding Guy Story
 

It may be old news to you FlyerTalkers, but I understand that my pudding-for-miles/charity project will appear in the Marketplace section of tomorrow's (1/24) Wall Street Journal and The WSJ Interactive Edition.

Way to go Pudding Guy! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Be interesting to see what Healthy Choice has to say. Maybe they will indicate what happened to everyone else's certificates?

Congratulations!

And again thank you for providing the
information you did... Enjoy those
American Advantage miles. YOU deserve
them...

Mike

Pudding Guy,

Those of us who met in SF last weekend, mostly from CA (even Rudi!!), are dying to know what part of CA you hail from since we noticed a dearth of Healthy Choice puddings in our Bay Area Grocery Outlets! Next time, join us! We are dying to meet you!

And, congratulations! You are a FlyerTalk genius! You should win any "What I have done for MILES" contest. Hands down.

Way to go PG! The story is already online at WSJ Interactive. Interesting feature. It appears Healthy Choice is keeping mum. See if you can get them to bring the promotion back!!! As an international icon, we need you to lobby for our civil rights (to upgrades and free trips, that is).

- Derek

Anyone interested in forming The International Cult of Pudding?

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50 cents an hour not a big Advantage?
Be paid $20-$120 an hour with BePaid.
http://www.bepaid.com/users.rhtml?REFID=10063853

The story has been posted here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/000535.html

Congratulations Pudding Guy! An incredible effort indeed.

I am reading the story right now at the DL CRC in DFW. It is on page B1 of Today's WSJ.

Pudding Guy = rock star!!! Way to go!!! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I am soooooo humbled by this stroke of genius.

[This message has been edited by geo1004 (edited 01-24-2000).]

Where were the UPC Symbols on each pack?I thought that the UPC symbols were only on the four packs of pudding? Also myself and a friend of mine purchased 130 six packs of Healthy Choice Soup and donated them to the native Russian Eskimos of eastern Siberia that are relatives to the Eskimos off the coast of far western Alaska. 780 cans almost 1/2 ton.

[This message has been edited by Sydneyjb (edited 01-24-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Sydneyjb (edited 01-24-2000).]

"The Pudding Guy Story," hmmmm, sounds like a made-for-TV movie. It certainly has all the elements ... pain, drama, suspense (will the certs arrive?) and, finally, triumph!

I'm sooooooooo inspired, Pudding Guy.

So lemme guess. Now you're figuring how to store 1,250 boxes of Kellogg's cereal without your wife finding out about it, right? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 01-24-2000).]

Pudding Guy, this is a *great* coup! What fabulous publicity! The story is simply amazing. Way to go!

Too bad it isn't for Cheerio's... Hello, General Mills...


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"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

This deserves a bump. The dollar coin has been a great run for many, but Pudding Guy is still the standard.

At least the dollar coins don't cost anything at the end of the day. I like the bank intrest rate at the bottom of the page. 6.5% for 36 months!

The Pudding Guy was quite the phenon. He was universally worshipped. He even inspired a movie.

9 1/2+ years may be a record for resurrecting the dead. I wouldn't be too surprised to see this thread closed, though newer FTers who never heard of the guy might still be interested in reading it.

(My personal record is about 10,000 AA miles from cereal boxes. Not nearly in the same league.)

Ha, me too, sort of. This was before my FT and heavy flying days for sure as I was just a young grad student. Back then, I was just buying the cereal, cutting the coupons off, and selling them on Ebay. I was just happy to get the FREE cereal, probably 3-4 years worth, and it was pretty good stuff!

such a great story! Reminds me of so many crazy retail tricks that yield all sorts of goodness. (all legal of course)

The movie was Punch-Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler. You can see a special acknowledgment to the man that we know as Pudding Guy in the closing credits.

Pudding Guy and I worked in the same field but for different universities back then, so he "happened to get invited" to visit my department in Texas to exchange ideas (a peer visit). He is a very smart, personable guy, and his knowledge impressed us all.

Does anyone know what happened to Pudding Guy?
It would be great to hear how he spent his miles and if he has gone into churing AA Citi cards, buying Presidential coins, opening up bank accounts with mileage credit cards, etc...

Well, why don't you ask him? According to his page, he was last active on August 12, 2009, so it appears he's still an active FlyerTalk member (if not the most active poster).

I am the president of the Pudding Guy Fan Club. Completely in awe of what he was able to accomplish. (And this coming from someone who figured out how to get 3000 Continental miles per dollar - see thread in Buzz if interested) Has anyone ever come close to getting the sheer amount of miles, in that short a period of time, and with the (relatively, in relation to the number of miles earned) small amount of work required to get them!?

I've been an AAdvantage member for over a decade now. Still a year+ away from a million miles. And that million miles is going to come from lots of cross-country flights and thousands of Citibank credit cards charges.

Pudding Guy's (David's) "facts:"

1,215,000 million miles earned...in a few weeks. Cost, roughly $2,325. The pudding was donated to food banks. And of course, he became an "AA Lifetime Gold" frequent flyer in the process. (And all the inevitable media attention - not too envious of that though)

Simply amazing. And never close to duplicated!

.....4.6 million KLM Flying Dutchman miles for 1100 USD :cool:

Uhh...ok...I'll bite...

HOW !!??

2001 KLM offered a status match AND a mileage balance match to woo folks from the just defunct Sabena program...but they did not put any conditions on the match (ie- having to be a Sabena member). To match 100% of the miles in my existing account, I had to fly 8 KLM or NW segments, which I had already booked for pre-existing travel anyway, valued at $1100.

I submitted my UA account which had 2.8 million miles and it was matched. About a year or so later, KL decided to equalize the point values of its program and NW WorldPerks program. They decided to offer KL members 1.8 miles per KL mile for the 'equalization. So, my KL balance was revised in mid-2003 to 4.6 million.

And there you have it!

now where the hats off smiley on FT? what a conversion rate and what a match! thanks for sharing :)

Wow. Maybe some day someone will make a movie about you too. :)

slight revision, it was 20 segments, not 8 as I had mentioned. But I remember they were 4 segment RTs so a total of 5 RTs for $1100...cheapies CLE-DTW-TPA. I remember that the new DTW airport terminal had just opened and it was an eye-opener how cool it looked with the sky subway and the sushi restaurant and the huge WP lounge that used to serve a much wider variety of munchies!!!

just saw Punch Drunk Love again for the first time since its release, and having no interest in miles at that time, completely overlooked the Pudding Guy story.

was it true that the barcodes were accidentally on each cup of pudding, rather than the box of cups, as intended?

Thanks for the nice words and fond memories!

I'm still around. I'm still traveling and collecting miles & points, but that hobby has taken a backseat to running in the past few years. I ran a marathon at the end of 2007 and caught the bug. I've now run 16 marathons and will be running Boston in April! The miles have helped move us around for marathons.

I didn't match beaubo's take on the KLM deal, but I was able to take advantage of that one, too, and I have to agree that it was probably the easiest miles ever. I took 3 flights (on NWA and Continental), and they matched nearly all of my AA pudding miles. Add in the 1.8 multiplication that occurred later, the top-level status match for several years, and the incredible deals they offered from the US (e.g. I think SFO-AMS-SIN-AMS-SFO in Business Class was 40k miles on sale), and we had quite a run with KLM. I collected several dozen Delft houses in just a few years.

Recently, the travel hasn't been quite so fun. The last few trips we've taken have been full of very long delays and hassles. Let's hope for a return to the golden days soon!

This thread reminded me -- I was wondering if anyone had gotten Million-Mile status or better from Club Bing (formerly Live Search Club). This was another AA (and other carrier) mass-mile opportunity but I was cautious and rule-abiding at the beginning, paradoxically when it was actually wide open.

If someone had opened multiple accounts and used multiple PCs early on when there was no ticket limit, it would have been very possible to reach 1,000,000 AA miles fairly quickly even without using bots. So I figure someone must have done it. Anyone care to confess? Certainly since there is no cost other than the time spent, it would top the Pudding Caper.

Well I did earn 2.9 million Amex MR points ;)
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...pers-like.html

Cool, and I assume you also kept all your original points too. Win win!!!

So I guess all of that pudding didn't go to waist!

Drop us a line when you're in town. Drinks are on us.

Mike

Pun of the day!

The Marathon bug is a dangerous bug, now for you to catch the ultra bug!

Just goes to show that chasing points can be fun, creative....and addictive!!

Coverage 17 years later:

http://www.businessinsider.com/david...e-miles-2016-6