Kinder Surprise: Still Illegal. Oh Hai, Choco Treasure!
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This may surprise the non-U.S. residents among you to know, but Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs, containing capsules with snap-together toys inside, are prohibited in this country by law. Seriously, you can mount a better legal defense in my state of California for selling marijuana than you can a chocolate egg with a toy under the shell.
The theory: that we are too stupid not to let kids choke on tiny toys. The actuality: those regulations can be gotten past, and now have. How?
Two things: Choco Treasure eggs have a ridge around the plastic capsule inside the egg that keeps the candy from ever being fully sealed, thus circumventing the rule against non-foods being completely encased in a food.
(Side note: U.S. laws would rule out the Irish cake known as Barm Brack, a fruitcake into which were baked several tokens that supposedly prefigured various futures; I got a pea in elementary school, meaning poverty.)
Second: the toys are bigger than the legal standard for choking hazards. And Spider-Man is the first major licensed character among them.
And yet as cool as this may be, they will never top this particular Kinder commercial for disturbing genius. EVER. Maybe deranged Humpty Dumpty is the real reason this shit was illegalized.
About The Author
Luke Y. Thompson has been writing professionally about movies and pop-culture since 1999, and has also been an actor in some extremely cheap culty and horror movies you will probably never hear much about (he is nonetheless mostly proud of them, as he met his wife on one). As editor of The Robot's Voice since 2012, he can take the blame for the majority of the site's content, all of which he creates because he loves you very, very much. (Although he loves nachos more. Sorry.) Prior to TRV, Luke wrote for publications that include the New Times LA, Los Angeles CityBeat, E! Online, OC Weekly, Geekweek, GeekChicDaily, The L.A. Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Nerdist