Dec 22 2008
Pop Rocks and Coca-Cola
People will believe almost anything if they hear the message enough. When I owned my own candy store about ten years ago, I sold POP Rocks, in every flavor that I could find.
I had heard the urban legend that Mikey, the kid in the life cereal commercials, had died from eating pop rock and coca-cola. How stupid, I thought, why in the world would anyone believe this?
As customers came in, almost every adult had something to say about the Pop Rocks. I heard stories about kids choking on Pop Rocks and soda, and “didn’t you know that Mikey from the commercials died from it?” on a daily basis. He isn’t dead, he is in fact a licensed attorney in New York City. Even with the explanation, customers were not willing to believe that Mikey was alive and well. They wanted to believe that Pop Rocks and soda were dangerous and nothing could change their mind.
I wanted to post a sign, “No, Mikey didn’t die from pop rocks and soda”, but I didn’t want to scare any of the kids.
I even tried it myself. I took two packages of Pop Rocks and put them all in my mouth at the same time. I washed them down with a 16 ounce bottle of Coca-cola. Besides a significant sugar rush and a few carbonated pops, nothing else happened. I didn’t die and my stomach did not explode. Hah. Urban legend proven false. Pop Rocks and Coca-Cola did not kill Mikey and they did not kill me.
Now if it was mentos and Coca-Cola, that might be another story altogether. I heard that if you chew hard on mentos while drinking a Coca-Cola, all of your teeth will disintegrate. It happened to Jennnifer Aniston and that is why she always smiles without showing her teeth. Really. It happened. This is not a rumor.
