I’ve discovered that there are people out there in internet-land who enjoy eating Comet cleaner. What is wrong with people?
When we rented a cottage a year or two back, there was a welcome hamper of basic groceries - milk, bread, tea, coffee etc. Also in there were a couple of loose dishwasher tablets - the individually wrapped kind, but not like any I’d ever seen. I at first took them to be some kind of candy, and had to look closely to figure out what they were – and I’m young, sharp-sighted and immensely intelligent. 
That’s a strong disincentive to using the Tide pods. I mean, a dog’s favorite snacks include cat poop, horse poop, and rotting garbage.
Who wants their clothes to smell like any of those things???
Re cat food: A friend of ours, years ago, told of how she had to put the cat’s dishes somewhere where her toddler couldn’t get at them. As she said: the food is harmless enough, she just couldn’t stand how her daughter’s BREATH smelled after such a snack.
So when visiting friends, with our just crawling daughter, and I heard a suspicious rattling from the next room, I knew to make a run for it and prevent my daughter from eating any more Little Friskies than she had already done.
They would have been a great addition to the “Worst Halloween Candy” thread that showed up in Boo this year.
Meh. It’s sad when someone’s sense of taste* goes and everything starts to taste alike. But it’s no skin off my nose unless I’m cooking for them and they’re complaining.
- Yes, I know that it’s the sense of smell that’s going and that the tongue only tastes sweet/salt/bitter/sour and maybe umame. I was being colloquial and subjective.
Don’t forget about their own poop. My dog once was roaming our backyard and found some ancient mummified turd and promptly commenced to chewing that thing vigorously until he’d eaten the whole thing, like it was crap jerky. Probably the nastiest single thing I ever saw him do, mostly because it didn’t appear to be a whim, and didn’t seem to be a single-bite thing like most other nasty things he ate.
Nope, he had to work at that turd for a while before he ate the whole thing.
Back to the OP… I think they’re bright and colorful, and that’s what would attract small children, who then just eat everything because they can. I mean my 2 yr old son was chewing on the butt-end of an aluminum flashlight once!
No idea why an elderly non-demented person would decide to snack on one. Cry for attention maybe?
You ain’t the only one.
As for Tide pods, if people would just get in the habit of rinsing their food thoroughly before eating it this would never happen.
They look pretty good to me, but I say no way are those things better tasting than Sunlight dish soap.
Kids. I once saw my niece, at about 2 or 3 years old, place a cigarette butt in her mouth, and then get this absolutely horrible look on her face. The thing is, she wouldn’t – for whatever reason – surrender it. She grimaced and fought back tears and then swallowed the damned thing.
I might leave some on the front porches of folks I really, really don’t like.
“I’ve got some buddies and we all drink bleach
you know we practice what we preach”
-The Dead Milkmen
This thread is making me hungry.
Have you tried them dipped in Lemon Joy?
And I thought the bulk liquid was the dangerous stuff.
So what the hell is in Tide that makes it so devastatingly toxic?
Deep clean stain fighters. 
Lye, perhaps?
Here’s a pdf of the MSDS.
I’d say the ethoxylated polyethylene polyamine looks poisonous. But I’m no chemist.
A long time ago, I was hosting a party and had simmering potpourri on the stove. My friend took a cracker, dipped it into the potpourri, and popped it into his mouth. Yes, he was drunk.
Good times!
I just noticed the LD50 column, and I guess the Alcohols, sulfated, neutralized pose more of a risk.
My youngest is fourteen. Has life gotten so different in the past little over a decade that parents now don’t make sure their cleaning products are out of reach of kids younger than five or so? I mean, this is Parenting 101 - keep the cleaning supplies out of reach and behind child locks.
And rather than stop making them, maybe people with little kids who don’t want them because of the temptation shouldn’t buy them. (They will be pulled from the market anyway - we like to have products like that for travel, and they’ve never been able to penetrate the market - they disappear. Purex laundry sheets were the bomb for travel. Apparently, people aren’t willing to pay a premium for convergence in laundry detergent.)