You'd think the purveyors of a popular slushy drink would be tickled pink to get free product placement in a movie. But no. When postal prankster Jeff Sinclair pitched a steamy porn-video plot incorporating the refreshing beverage, the response was cold.

Not one to cease and desist easily, Sinclair parlays a whole collection of comedic corporate correspondence into stage show Letters at Large at the Gas Station Theatre next Thursday. Sinclair, 27, uses a projector to present some of the 600 or so prank letters he's written since 1998.

More than half get responses. His first letter -- a query about the make of the Planter's Peanut Man's cane -- yielded a $1 coupon, the first of many that have since landed in his mailbox.

Using a pen name and a post office box, Sinclair writes motel and hotel chains, complimenting them on maintaining an ideal pH level in the pool or gushing about some other aspect of an imaginary stay. A rambling letter about a childhood encounter with a bear earned him coupons for A&W burgers and root beer. And an ode to Pizza Hut brought in two large pizzas and a hat.

Not that his letters are entirely mercenary. He never complains about goods or service and he assumes his missives brighten up some office drudge's day.

Sinclair, who conducts improv workshops at local schools, started writing fake letters on a whim. The habit snowballed until he worked up a stage act in 2000.

"It was all for my personal amusement and then one day someone said, 'Hey why aren't you doing it onstage?' " He's since performed at fringe festivals in Edmonton and Vancouver and his show opens the Gas Station's summer patio series.

* A thank-you to a VCR manufacturer: "I regularly watch adult movies (commonly called porns). I used to worry that the tape would get caught in the machine, causing my wife to find it ... (but) the heads in my VCR excel in their performance!" The response was disappointing -- a form letter saying, "We regret that you are not pleased with your VCR."

* A request to a five-star restaurant in L.A. to treat him like a regular customer when he showed up with friends. For a handsome tip, a staffer agreed to play along.

* An alert to the Assiniboine Park Zoo about a man selling straws on zoo property: "The man was about six-foot-seven ... He had a scar on his neck and a tattoo of Ruby the Clown on his left elbow."

* Tattling to the Kool Aid people about a movie theatre concession where "Kool Aid is far from PENNIES A GLASS ... I have since staged a series of protests outside, selling your product for the trademark price, only to be confronted and intimidated by some thuggish muscle."

* An offer to a wig manufacturer to donate a lock of Elvis's hair, the prized possession of his late trailer-park mother: "It seemed the only thing that my mother loved more than me and cosmetology was Elvis Presley." The wigmaker graciously declined.

He plans to tell liquor companies that since he started sending their products to a third-world foster child, "he's the most popular kid in the village."

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