# Were "Pop Rocks" ever illegal. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 12, 2000, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-pop-rocks-ever-illegal/22130 "2000-06-12T16:03:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2000, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-pop-rocks-ever-illegal/22130/1 "2000-06-12T16:03:13Z")
In the very early 70’s you couldn’t find Pop Rocks candy anywhere in the suburb of Milwaukee I grew up in. Kids would come back from out of state vacations with them, but they just didn’t have them here. The story was that they were illegal here, being such a “violent” thing to put in ones mouth. Then in the mid-70’s the “Mikey from Life cereal died from Pop Rocks and Coca Cola” story surfaced, bolstering the claim, and giving a good reason for, pop Rocks to be illegal. By the early 1980’s Pop Rocks were present in the stores here, but by then I was too old to enjoy the thrill. Recently I saw some in a store, which reminded me of all this nonsense. But I still wonder: Did any states or municipality ever ban Pop Rocks? If so, what was the reason? ---
**Author:** ![GreenEyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f9ae1b/32.png) [@GreenEyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenEyes)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2000, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-pop-rocks-ever-illegal/22130/2 "2000-06-12T16:21:53Z")
I remember back in the mid to late 70’s PopRocks were banned from my school. I don’t remember the reasoning behind it though… ---
**Author:** ![Brea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2bfe46/32.png) [@Brea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brea)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2000, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-pop-rocks-ever-illegal/22130/3 "2000-06-12T16:30:56Z")
I was a kid of the 70s too, and I remember Pop Rocks being around. We used to trick family members into trying them, what hilarity! :rolleyes: What did disappear from our area of Iowa, though, was Zotz candies. You know, the little hard-shelled candies with the fizzing powder in the middle? The reasoning behind the ban was that some kid had been sucking on one of the Zotz Bomb suckers when it exploded in his mouth. He supposedly had to have numerous stitches. Never did find out whether it was true or not, but I didn’t see any Zotz products again till the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![Trion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Trion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trion)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2000, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-pop-rocks-ever-illegal/22130/4 "2000-06-12T16:33:53Z")
I don’t think they were ever illegal, however they did stop marketing them. Here’s the whole story from [http://www.snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com) > [@](#): > > Claim: Little Mikey of LIFE cereal fame died from the explosive effects of mixing Pop Rocks candy with soda pop. > Status: False. > > Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1994] > A kid ate 6 bags of pop rocks at a party. He then proceeded to drink a 6-pack of Pepsi. The two substances combined in his stomach and exploded, killing him horribly. That’s why pop rocks were taken off the market in the early eighties. > Origins: Invented in 1956 by General Foods research scientist William A. Mitchell and introduced to the general public in 1975, these fruit-flavored nuggets delighted kids with their “fizzle.” Small amounts of carbonation were released when the candy was placed in the mouth, causing both a mild “exploding” sensation and resulting in a satisfying “sizzling” noise kids loved. > > Though the confection had been extensively tested and found safe, the combustive candy still alarmed residents in Seattle. The Food and Drug Administration set up a telephone hotline there to assure anxious parents that the fizzing candy would not cause children to choke. > > \> Nevertheless, among kids, wild stories about the perils of eating Pop Rocks abounded. (Kids love ghastly rumors about candy. Visit our Bubble Yuck page for the one about Bubble Yum.) > > Mixing the candy with carbonated drinks would cause the stomach to explode, was the popular whisper. Further, according to playground lore, an overly-cute kid who achieved fame in LIFE cereal commercials had died of this. Why Little Mikey, of all people? We can only guess. Urban legends require victims who are known yet anonymous – the ubiquitous friends of a friend – to lend them a touch of credible realism without allowing for the easy verification of their details. Little Mikey was a kid known to all other children by virtue of his famous television commercial, yet he was still relatively anonymous – few people (adults included) knew his real name, and his non-appearance in any public role subsequent to his well known LIFE commercial could therefore plausibly be attributed to his untimely demise. (Contrary to the rumor, John Gilchrist, the lad who played Mikey in those commercials, not only survived his childhood unexploded, but he went on to graduate from college in 1991.) > > General Foods was battling “exploded kid” rumors as early as 1979, a scant four years after the product’s introduction. They took out full-page ads in 45 major publications, wrote some 50,000 letters to school principals around the country, and sent the confection’s inventor on the road to explain to all and sundry that Pop Rocks generate less gas than half a can of soda and ingesting them could induce nothing worse in the human body than a hearty, non-life-threatening belch. Despite all these measures, the rumors abound even to this day. > > The company stopped marketing Pop Rocks around 1983, and this is often pointed to as “proof” that the candy was so harmful it had to be pulled from the shelves. What’s less known is that Kraft bought the rights to the product from General Foods in 1985 and then marketed it as “Action Candy” through a company named Carbonated Candy. Pop Rocks are still around today, provided you know where to look. > > Barbara “get a bang out of LIFE” Mikkelson ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2000, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-pop-rocks-ever-illegal/22130/5 "2000-06-12T19:57:25Z")
I just saw a thirty-something Mikey in what looked to be a re-touched version of one of the original Life commercials. Kind of funny, but it would have been cooler had he exploded. Then again, I’m not a marketing person.