Unless you are a complete and utter recluse, you have noticed the Kinder Joy eggs at the store. Which store? Every store. I reluctantly let my son, Frank (not his real name), get one last summer and I have been thinking about what a stupid f*cking waste this thing is ever since.
The story of the Kinder Joy egg begins with its predecessor, the Kinder Surprise egg. Both eggs are equally stupid, however, the latter is illegal in the United States because of human stupidity.
The Kinder Surprise egg was the brainchild of Michele Ferrero in 1968. Yes, that Ferrero. Of the Ferrero Rocher and Nutella variety of chocolatier fame. Ferrero based his Surprise egg on the Italian Easter tradition in which children are given large chocolate eggs that have a toy inside. Ferrero's idea was a scaled down version that children could have every day. The Surprise egg hit the market in 1974. It is a hollow milk chocolate shell with a thin layer of sweet milk flavored cream. Inside the chocolate is a yellow capsule that contains a small toy. Yellow because yolk, of course. Every foil wrapped chocolate egg that comes out of a chicken has yellow yolk, right? The Surprise egg was promoted as having a "high milk content" to appeal to mothers. Apparently, mothers around the world lack basic intelligence and fell for this marketing tactic as the Surprise egg has sold over 30 billion units.
The Kinder Surprise egg has been banned in a few countries due to its obvious choking hazards. "I'm shocked that children would choke on a plastic capsule and tiny toy encased in chocolate!" said no one ever. The United States banned the Kinder Surprise egg in 1997. The FDA announced that "non-nutritive objects" cannot be contained in a confectionery product unless the "non-nutritive object" has a functional value. Stop and think about that for a moment. Basically, you can only encase useful items inside of chocolate and give them to small children. In theory, could you put a fingernail clipper inside of a chocolate egg and give it to a small child because the fingernail clipper is a "useful item."
Since American children were suffering without Surprise eggs, Ferrero worked to get around the FDA ban. This is how the Kinder Joy egg came to fruition. It's illegal to put a tiny toy inside of a chocolate egg but it's perfectly legal to put a tiny toy inside of a plastic egg next to chocolate.
This spectacular waste of resources and money was introduced in 2001 and has launched in all of the countries that have made the Surprise egg illegal. As of 2014, the Joy egg is sold in over 100 countries. It became available in the United States in 2018. The Joy egg is a plastic egg shell that separates into two halves. One half contains about a tablespoon (or less) of cocoa and milk flavored cream along with two cocoa wafer spheres. There is a tiny plastic spoon between the halves because how else could you possibly eat a whole tablespoon (or less) of cream without a tiny plastic spoon? The other half of the egg contains a tiny piece of sh!t plastic toy that your child will love for many minutes before it is broken, lost, no longer fun, or choked on.
My two cents: It's probably obvious from the post.
Rating: I'm giving Kinder Joy eggs one out of five slow claps for obvious reasons.
Kinder Surprise
Kinder Joy
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