Dear simpleton,

Subject: No Second Acts in American Media Events

An associate was hired by a European candy company to research a line of products for US introduction. These are now widely sold, and admired, in Europe and consist of a chocolate egg inside of which one finds a large plastic egg, inside of which one finds a small toy that must be assembled to be played with. There are over 100 toys, and kids collect them in Europe; assembling them is a family fun thing, apparently.

Does this sound in any way familiar? Even as she was researching the product, the enormous [insert own slang term for loud, stupid, pointless media event] over Hershey's chocolate eggs began. For those of you who weren't listening, Hershey's introduced a line of Disney-connected chocolate eggs; inside each egg was a large plastic egg; inside each plastic egg was a Disney play figure. Turns out it's illegal to insert toys into food. Much idiocy resulted. Many people had press conferences discussing the horror, The Horror, of putting toys into candy, thus risking the health of innocent children. The product was banned. Or at least Hershey's withdrew it out of justified fear that it was about to be in legal trouble.

My associate's product is clearly unlikely to see the light of day in the US, although it remains on sale and extremely popular in Europe. However, since I was tangentially involved in all this, I followed the [again insert own noun] carefully, and learned many things:

1. The law was never meant to prohibit what was clearly not an edible product from being mixed with an edible product; otherwise, bubblegum cards (anybody remember those?) would be illegal. It was designed to, correctly, protect against dangerous nonfoods being mixed cavarlierly in with foods.

2. Much of the anti-Hershey campaign was discretely being run by Mars Candy lobbyists; Mars did not have an equivalent product.

3. It was absolutely and totally impossible for anybody to accidentally mistake the interior egg for something edible. It was the size of real egg and made of plastic; an ostrich couldn't have swallowed it. It was also impossible for anybody except an adult (preferrably with lots of tools) to open the egg and get out the toy.

4. The toy was a perfectly normal child's toy, the type sold everywhere, and perfectly appropriate for young children to play with. It met all conceivable safety standards, and anything less likely to cause an accident I've never seen.

Did you know any of this? You did not. Sound bites, easy visuals, the usual villains (greedy candy company) and usual heros (vigilant TV reporters, vigilant negligence lawyer) made their usual appearance.

It really was a nice toy. Nice gift for grandparents to pick up for the kids. Good stocking stuffer. Hershey's clearly researched the hell out of it, to be sure it was safe and something that both parents and kids would like. But no... Somebody said it was dangerous for children, therefore by God it was a dangerous evil thing and needed to be destroyed. There are no second acts in American lives and no second acts for either American products or Amercian media events.

The Moral, since every media tale must have a moral: The world is not safe. Who ever told you it was? Nor was it made safe for a four-card flush. Nobody gets out of this alive. Learn to make distinctions. And don't believe everything you see on TV.

Alan Kornheiser
ASKORNHEISER@prodigy.net
The Doctor Is IN (and in need of some help himself)