Somewhere in America right now, a guy who has consumed roughly four thousand cans of Red Bull in his lifetime is staring at a lawsuit and feeling seen.
A class action complaint has reportedly been filed claiming the company's famous slogan is misleading, because—brace yourself—no customer has ever successfully achieved flight after drinking one.
This is the most American legal development since someone tried to sue because their coffee was hot.
We are a nation of people who read "gives you wings" and apparently took it as a binding aeronautical commitment rather than a marketing slogan cooked up by a guy in an office who was probably on his third espresso.
The plaintiff's argument, per the usual class action playbook, is that the slogan creates a "reasonable expectation" that the beverage provides some kind of physical enhancement.
Which raises a question: reasonable to whom?
The same people who think "Breakfast of Champions" means eating Wheaties will get them a Super Bowl ring?
The folks who believe "Finger Lickin' Good" is a legal warranty on their fingers?
Red Bull, for its part, has been fighting this flavor of lawsuit for years, and no wonder.
The slogan is hyperbole, the kind of thing courts typically file under "no reasonable person would believe this." But here's the thing about reasonable people: they are in shockingly short supply when there's a settlement check in the offing.
Let's be honest about what Red Bull actually gives you.
It gives you the ability to stay awake through a 3 a.m. study session you should have started three weeks ago.
It gives you a heartbeat that sounds like a dial-up modem.
It gives you the confidence to text your ex at an hour no decent person should be awake.
You just can't see them on a boarding pass.
And look, the company isn't exactly a sympathetic defendant.
This is the brand that settled a separate false advertising suit for $13 million back in 2014 over claims that the drink doesn't actually "give you wings" in any measurable performance sense.
They paid up, changed nothing about the slogan, and kept selling roughly a gazillion cans a year.
That's not a company worried about legal exposure.
That's a company doing a cost-benefit analysis and deciding the joke is worth the legal fees.
But frivolous lawsuits are basically our national pastime, right up there with arguing about tipping and pretending we'll fix the healthcare system someday.
If you can sue over a slogan, you can sue over anything, and honestly, that's the free market working as designed.
The real losers here, as always, are the rest of us, who have to keep hearing about this while we drink our overpriced caffeine slurry and quietly accept that the only thing soaring is our blood pressure. **Our take:** Nobody sues over "Just Do It" because Nike never promised you'd enjoy it.
The genius of "gives you wings" is that it was always a wink, and the only people mad about the joke are the ones who want to be paid for missing it.
Final Thoughts
Drink the can, accept you're still on the ground, move on.