Not so surprising surprise

This is because you are not allowed to have inedible objects embedded inside edible produce. This is a less than well thought out law which aims to do something very sensible: stopping food manufacturers from leaving all sorts of debris in their food items which can break teeth, lacerate your mouth, or even kill.

And while everyone likes to make fun of America because of Kinder Eggs, most other countries have laws that are even worse. Like, for example, in the UK it is technically illegal to remove a fish from a fish tank without a fishing rod and a rod licence.

@Cris from what I've seen, that's for a fishery, not a common fish tank

@CaptainBritain ok thank you for clearing that up cause I was just imaging England trying to get his goldfish out of their bowl so he can clean their tank, using a fishing rod

like this

@Cris How do Americans deal with Apricots then?

Just to clarify for people, they are not banned because of choking or anything like that. They are just caught under the somewhat broad wording of food safety laws much older than the product itself, and are not an important enough exception to go through all the trouble of re-writing them.

Simplified as much as possible (I am not a lawyer), anything contained within a food product must be approved as safe for consumption (to avoid companies putting antifreeze in cough medicine, for example), with the only exception being embedded inedible objects "necessary" for the function of the product, such as lollipop and popsicle sticks. The toy egg has no structural value to a chocolate egg, and the lack of a toy egg does not stop a chocolate egg from functioning, so kinder surprise eggs do not qualify as an exception.

@Callback Which mysteriously doesn't apply to some other food products. I have a feeling Kinder could fight it if they felt like it, they just don't.

@Callback Incorrect. A surprise is quite essential and vital for a surprise product to function, you know. You can only doubt it because you are an American and didn't grow up with them being available. Although it has been ages since I was a little kid, I can assure you the capsule and toy hidden within the chocolate egg is 100% necessary for the product. The chocolate itself was always of inferior quality to real chocolate bars (not that children would pay much attention to that), but it's nevertheless a clear sign the chocolate wasn't the point of those surprise eggs, the surprise was.

Perhaps companies operating in the USA were merely worried about the overdeveloped American justice system and decided not to risk it. It's not worth it to earn 10 million selling chocolate eggs, but then lose 100 million in the court.

@Louhikaarme Just because the surprise is essential for the product to be a surprise product doesn't mean the surprise has to be *inside* the product. As a surprise product, Kinder Eggs function just fine when the surprise is contained outside the egg, as in the "Kinder Joy" version; contrast that with a popsicle or lollipop, which would be much more difficult to use if the treat and stick were packaged separately. I say this as someone who grew up with them available and has lived in the US for many years.

And on that note, the US justice system isn't nearly as overdeveloped as general opinion would have you believe. Unfortunately, that's's because most of that general opinion is driven by smear campaigns from people who think that the best way to undermine the US justice system is to get people to think that Americans are sue-happy and need to be taken down a peg. Most frivolous lawsuits we hear about are either a) thrown out of court immediately, or b) perfectly reasonable but unique in a way that sounds very bad. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_jaU5V9FUg

'@AmadeusMop' Unpossible, that doesn't let me say, "lol, whole country am dumb!" I wanna say whole country am dumb and believe it's really true instead of just a joke.

Dude you wana talk dumb laws ? I offer a dumb active law for each state in the u.s.

Washington
When two trains come to a crossing, neither can go until the other has passed

Oregon
A door on a car may not be left open longer than is necessary

California
Animals are banned from mating publicly within 1,500 feet of a tavern, school, or place of worship

Nevada
It is illegal to drive a camel on the highway

Idaho
It is illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds

Montana
It is illegal to have a sheep in the cab of your truck without a chaperone

Wyoming
It is illegal to wear a hat that obstructs people’s view in a public theater or place of amusement

Kansas
The state gaming board prohibits the use of mules to hunt ducks

Alabama
It is illegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church

West Virginia
Whistling underwater is prohibited

Maine
After January 14th you will be charged a fine for having Christmas decorations still up

South Carolina
A person must be 18 years old to play pinball

New Mexico
Idiots may not vote

Minnesota
It is illegal to sleep naked

Michigan
It is illegal to kill a dog using a decompression chamber

Vermont
Women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth

Massachusetts
At a wake mourners may eat no more than three sandwiches

Connecticut
It is illegal to dispose of used razor blades

Hawaii
Coins are not allowed to be placed in one’s ears

Arkansas
The Arkansas river can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock

Tennessee
It is a crime to share your Netflix password

Utah
It is illegal to not drink milk

Alaska
It is considered an offense to push a live moose out of a moving airplane

Maryland
Thistles may not grow in one’s yard

South Dakota
No horses are allowed into Fountain Inn unless they are wearing pants

North Dakota
It is illegal to lie down and fall asleep with your shoes on

Virginia
Children are not to go trick-or-treating on Halloween

Arizona
Hunting camels is prohibited

Texas
It is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing

Colorado
It is illegal to ride a horse while under the influence

Nebraska
If a child burps during church, his parent may be arrested

Oklahoma
It is illegal to have the hind legs of farm animals in your boots

Wisconsin
It is illegal to cut a woman’s hair

Kentucky
One may not dye a duckling blue and offer it for sale unless more than six are for sale at once.

Louisiana
It is illegal to rob a bank and then shoot the bank teller with a water pistol

Georgia
You cannot live on a boat for more than 30 days during the calendar year, even if you are just passing through the state

Mississippi
It is illegal to teach others what polygamy is

Florida
Doors of all public buildings must open outwards

North Carolina
It is against the law to sing off key

New Jersey
It is against the law to wear a bulletproof vest while committing a murder

Pennsylvania
It is illegal to sleep on top of a refrigerator outdoors

Ohio
It is illegal for more than 5 women to live in a house

New York
The penalty for jumping off a building is death

Rhode Island
Riding a horse over any public highway for the purpose of racing or testing the speed of the horse is illegal

New Hampshire
You may not tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant or, cafe

Indiana
One armed piano players must perform for free

Missouri
Single men between the ages of twenty one and fifty must pay an annual tax of one dollar

Illinois
You may be arrested for vagrancy if you do not have at least one dollar on your person

Iowa
Moustaches are illegal if the bearer has a tendency to habitually kiss other humans

Delaware
It is illegal to fly over any body of water, unless one is carrying sufficient supplies of food and drink

@IronKraken

"Virginia
Children are not to go trick-or-treating on Halloween"

Children who are 13 and younger can go trick or treating its teenagers and adults that are 14 and older who aren't allowed to go trick or treating


also, Wyoming is the only one of those laws that make any logical sense, I mean when people go to the theater they want to see the movie and it will cause a lot of problems if some guy just wore his cowboy hat into the theater and didn't take it off

@AmericanButterfly I mean the Nevada one makes perfect sense too, it's just no longer very relevant.

@Monogreen I do have to wonder though, why some of these were put into law in the first place. Some of them make a lot of sense many years ago, but some of these feel like complete nonsense.

@IronKraken USA sounds like a giant joke from all these you pulled up x)

@IronKraken Dumb laws like this always make me wonder under which circumstances these laws were created. Some of them make sense but just haven't been relevant for a number of decades, but others, like Pennsylvania or North Carolina I can't imagine circumstances where these laws would need to be put in place.

@Monogreen Nearly all such dumb law lists notably fail to cite any actual source, aside from perhaps other dumb law lists.

I know the North Carolina one is believed to be a reference to a 150 year old case where someone was fined for disturbing the peace over some apparently horrible singing, a charge that was overturned on appeal.

Others are only dumb sounding because they are weirdly specific statements of perfectly sensible laws. Hunting camels is illegal, because camels aren't recognized as game animals.

@IronKraken ON most of these you really have to wonder about guy/event behind reason of making specific law

Pity they don't have those metal figurines in them anymore. They were kind of neat.

"Rite of passage" btw.

@stabcutdrink

Metal figurines? When was that?

My grandmother has some really old kinder stuff, but they're all plastic, mostly hippos and random shit.

@Sisu if recall it was somewhere at end of 90's (maybe 97),just one set though

I say we smuggle in kinder eggs, take them to various schools and hold earing contests with them. Then hand out Darwin Awards to the winners.

@Humility Canadians do this all the time. If you lived next to Bro-Usa you would too.

Karen would give her kid the egg, let him swallow the thing and choke, then scream and cry about how there was no warning and OMG LAWSUIT blah blah.

Karens are why we can't have those eggs in the first place. Don't let your toddlers eat this shit.

@miryasan85
Or crack it open and take the toy out first.

@Steeeve Kinder eggs are halved really easily. You just squeeze it slightly. Not that they're meant for a child under 3 years old anyway. The wrapping is rather dull and has a not-for-under-three-year-olds marking. Older children simply want them for the content and couldn't care less about the package.

They WERE banned from somewhere in the 1930s to... 2017, I believe. The ban has been lifted for several years now.

...Because the USA is the only place in the world where morbidly obese children will try and put the entire, 6.5cm chocolate egg in their mouth at once. :/

@Hinoron Not at all the reason for the ban! It's actually just poor wording in a law. The law banned "plastic inside of food for any reason other than support" which basically allowed popsicles and suckers to keep their sticks, but banned any other plastic from being in food. The intent was that plastic can be used to make fake rice and a few other things, so they wanted to ban that. The effect was... not that.

It's like how horse meat is illegal to sell, but not to cook or eat, because to sell meat in the US there must be an FDA approved grading system for that meat, and they just never made one for horse.

Also, they're still banned. Kinder just made the Kinder Joy Egg for US sales.

@ChalengerX
Not at all the reason for the ban!

Yes, that was a joke. -_-

@Hinoron no they're still banned in the US, they may not have been banned in Canada but according to U.S law from the 1930s which doesn't allow inedible objects in food, it been banned before Kinder Egg Surprise was invented

The US is allowed to have Kinder Egg Joy, which is half candy on one side and a toy on the other, honestly, I didn't really like it cause it white chocolate cream with a round cookie inside toy was fun though

@AmericanButterfly

You are correct. I did not read the whole article: In my defense, it has a VERY misleading introduction:

After [u]Being Banned[/u], Kinder Eggs Are Coming To America
Kinder Eggs are coming to the U.S. — legally. The hollow chocolate egg with the toy surprise inside [u]has not been[/u] allowed in the states due to a 1930s law banning candy with non-food objects inside...

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/26/530257536/after-being-banned-kinder-eggs-are-coming-to-america#:~:text=After%20Being%20Banned%2C%20Kinder%20Eggs%20Are%20Coming%20To%20America%20Kinder,have%20previously%20smuggled%20them%20in.

@Hinoron hey if you want a more clean link trying

going [/url= full link ] title of link [/url]
(with out the first / in front of the URL I had to add it there so it doesn't think I made a short cut link

like this After Being Banned, Kinder Eggs Are Coming To America

you give it a try

@AmericanButterfly

Been using BBS code for a decade or two thanks. Chose to be lazy this time. (it's 4:26am here)

(looks back at post) Although I DO note that the underline code is not working on this site. >_>
@#$# it. I'm going to bed...

All you need to do is replace that bit of plastic with an AK-47, problem solved!

'@BananaJewell'' #9860131' your best hope is parts kit that was salvaged from abandoned Romanian warehouse that was forgotten for 40 years and was only recently rediscovered. That would be $20k, plus NFA transfer, for a small extra fee of few thousand dollars you'll get a box of sketchy Polish surplus ammo. If you have a dog - better give it away, in case ATF wants to talk to you.

Laughs in Canadian across the border.

@RadBaron ...for now. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

@khrispy

Never underestimate how much Canadian pride is invested in being able to look south and say, "Well, at least we're not THAT bad!"

"rite" of passage, altho 'right' might be more apropos, at times.