drpepper.com requires flash

I've been saving up some bottle caps and cut-out pieces of 12-packs of Dr. Pepper products, for their "Win One of 75 Mini Cooper Convertibles" promotion. Why was I saving them up, rather than just entering the codes as I got them? Well, I tried going to enter a code last week but their site was down for maintenance or something.

Today, I went to drpepper.com to enter these codes, and was presented with nothing but a Flash app. For some odd reason I clicked the "Join the Party" link first... I'm thinking it's because I prefer navigating with pulldown menus over clicking on various animated objects.

So, I went through and registered my personal info and created an account, with their flash app that made tabbing from one field to another a chore, and made dropdown menus seem to actually require clicking with the mouse, but got through it all and submitted.

Then I waited, and waited, while some kind of animated "Saving..." type thing kept moving, but eventually (5-10 minutes later) I gave up. I decided to look for an HTML version of the registration form, so I could start over (I never got any confirmation email so I assumed the registration failed).

So, I tried using Firefox and disabled the flash plugin stuff (since Firefox makes that nice and simple to do!), but then drpepper.com just gave me a blank page. I thought maybe my browser was still reporting that I have Flash, even though it was not displaying it, so I viewed the page source. There was a "noflash" link in there, but that page turned out to just be a message saying that they "use flash extensively" and *require* Flash. I also tried with a text-only browser (links), but of course all I got was a blank page again.

So, I went back to drpepper.com in IE again and actually LOOKED at the Flash app. There was a great big image regarding this Mini Cooper promotion on the left side, so I clicked it, and ... this is the best part ... a window popped up with exactly what I was looking for, an HTML version of the registration form and code entry form: http://www.softcoin.com/p/handler?target=general&action=getHome&sid=530

If I wasn't a programmer, I might have just thrown away my codes; in fact, the thought did cross my mind. But, I was happy to find what I wanted, and I entered my codes (all losers of course). I still think they're morons for completely requiring Flash to get to the promotion, while the entire promotion site is all HTML.