My lovely nephew from Palo Alto is going to be very cross about this blog. He’s still annoyed at the one I wrote at Christmas complaining that there were too many inane commercials on American TV for Pizza followed by inane commercials for fat reduction surgery. Maybe they should just perform liposuction on the pizza and eliminate the middleman?
But that’s another conversation altogether.
This one is about Kinder Eggs. Yes, those delicious German chocolate eggs with the plastic toy inside.
Kinder Surprise Eggs, dear blogees, have been banned in America since 1997.
The reason?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies them as “a confectionery product with a non-nutritive object imbedded in it.” They thus pose a threat to hungry Americans who might mistake the whole thing for a new sort of foodstuff and scarf the egg plus the plastic toy, choke to death, and then sue.
Kinder Surprise Eggs, by the by, are eaten safely throughout Europe, Canada and, for all I know, North Korea and Easter Island.
As my daughter wisely pointed out,“Even if Americans don’t know what a Kinder Egg is, surely they know what plastic is?” But no. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 25,000 Kinder Surprise eggs in 1,700 separate incidents.
Meanwhile, a six year old first grader from Michigan arrived at school with his mother’s handgun and shot a fellow first grader to death.
Fatalities from Kinder Eggs have so far gone untallied.
Which just goes to prove the old adage that Guns don’t kill people. Um……first graders do.
KinderEggs = survival of the fittest, yo. Too dumb to recognize plastic for a non-edible = too dumb to live.
I think they’re called Darwin awards.
I really hope those border guards don’t swallow any toys while scarfing down those 25,000 eggs…
I remember some choking incidents in the UK 15-20 years ago.
Yesterday my holiday newspaper had an article about the boy scout from Angola who nearly drowned in a Swedish lake next to where he is on mini-jamboree camp. Afterwards the camp leaders came to the conclusion that maybe from now on they should have someone on guard duty by the shore…
What about parents who died of frustration from trying to put the toy together?
There is that.
That pink gun looks like the one I found in my Kinder Egg the other day. I’ll keep eating them in hopes I get a lime-green tazer.
Maybe the eggs would have more chance of getting into the States if they put real guns in them. By the way a fact I just heard and can’t get out of my head: More than one in a hundred of the US population are in prison. There are more 17 year old black men in prison than college! Perhaps they tried to smuggle Kinder Eggs in?
Click here for Bazza’s Blog ‘To Discover Ice’
yikes.
What’s wrong with crunchy chocolate?
I am late stumbling on to this thread due to a vacation (a lovely reason for not being up to date online) but as an American now learning that I am being denied Kinder Eggs, which I would’ve dodged all the stray bullets in my city to obtain, I am incensed.
I recall buying a German dollhouse for my daughter–purchased here in the US–and when I noticed the little swing for it was missing, I emailed the company. They responsded they were not allowed to sell the swing in the US because the string posed a strangulation hazard. An 8-inch-long string. No wonder you can’t find old-fashioned pull toys for tots over here anymore…they’d have to crawl on hands and knees to pull the toys by their 4-inch strings.