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Food

Forward-Thinking Supermarket Removes Tide Pods from Candy Aisle

The youths are all Juuling now anyway.
tide pods and candy side-by-side
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images // Getty Images/CHUYN

We’ve somehow survived until December and now it’s time to reflect upon the eleven previous months. I think it’s safe to say that the prevailing theme for 2018 has been “Everything Fucking Sucks.” But maybe we should have seen this coming when, just 24 days into January, the American Association of Poison Control Centers reported that almost 100 people had called their local poison control because they’d eaten Tide Pods.

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In the 45 weeks since, we’ve proven that, collectively, we’ll never learn, and that we can’t be trusted around those stain-removing flavor bombs (That’s a joke! They probably taste terrible! MUNCHIES does not endorse consuming chemicals!). The proof? In February, two New York state lawmakers proposed legislation that would require all detergent companies—but specifically Proctor & Gamble’s own Tide—to make a monochrome product “that is not attractive to children,” and to ensure that these mildly toxic Gushers are “not easily permeated by a child’s bite."

Tide more or less responded to that suggestion with the I’m-thinking-with-my-hand-on-my-chin emoji, recommending that customers transition to the all-white Tide Free and Gentle Pods (which probably don’t taste like White Mystery-flavored Airheads…) before releasing new packaging for its liquid detergent that looks a lot like boxed wine.

No one can stop the forbidden romance between Tide Pods and our own voluntary self destruction, but some people are still trying. On Sunday, the King Soopers supermarket in Greeley, Colorado, decided that maybe it should move its inventory of Tide Pods from the candy aisle—where they were!!!—to a less appealing, less edible section of the store.

According to the Greeley Tribune, the store was prompted to move its Tide Pods display after local resident and mom-of-two Kaylea Kesterson posted a photo of the aisle on social media. “I think it’s sending a weird message,” she said. “Lot of high school kids go there during lunch and I think it’s a little irresponsible.”

This King Soopers location is less than a 10 minute walk from Greeley West High School, which Kesterson’s son attends. One Tribune commenter interpreted Kesterson’s snitching to mean that she was worried that her kid was eating Tide Pods by the handful. “I actually never indicated that I thought my kids would participate in the [Tide Pod] challenge, and they wouldn't,” she responded. “My kids are smart and responsible. I think it welcomes lawsuits though if someone else's kid make [sic] a stupid choice though.”

Thanks, Kaylea. Now the store doesn’t trust anyone’s kids not to give themselves a Spring Meadow flavored after-school snack. “Our goal is to create an uplifting shopping experience and we take customer feedback very serious,” a King Soopers spokesperson said in a statement. “This was an isolated incident. We agree, these items shouldn't be placed where they were. We fixed it immediately. This has been shared with our team to prevent this from happening moving forward.”

There are just 27 more days left in this godforsaken year so everyone get your Tide Pod-consumption (again: kidding) out of your system before then. And then maybe let’s try to poison ourselves with something new in 2019.