“Chil­dren can’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between toys and nutri­tional items”

No, it’s not a clas­sic piece of ‘Onion’ reportage; it’s a quote from Miriam Gruß, a mem­ber of the Ger­man par­lia­men­tary children’s com­mit­tee, on why the Ger­mans plan on ban­ning Kinder Eggs (are these avail­able in the US?).

Char­lie Brooker’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally hilar­i­ous retort is best placed here.

What, really? Don’t get me wrong — I think chil­dren are idiots. But even I find that state­ment a tad unfair and sweep­ing. I used to have a spud gun when I was a kid. In case you’re not famil­iar with that con­cept either, it was a small metal pis­tol that fired chunks of potato. Not once did I aim the potato at any­one. Or try to deep-fry the gun. And I was thick as sh!t. I guess it was luck.

In fact my run of luck was pretty impres­sive. Other toys I failed to ingest include a Scalex­tric, sev­eral boxes of space Lego, the board games Oper­a­tion and Mouse­trap, and a com­plete col­lec­tion of Paul Daniels’ TV Magic Tricks — even though the lat­ter included an egg-shaped gizmo called The Magic Egg. Some­how, mirac­u­lously, my conker-sized kid­dy­wink brain man­aged to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from a real egg. Thus my life was saved by a whisker.

Gruss won’t coun­te­nance such a slap­dash approach to child safety. Not on her watch. “It’s a sad fact,” she said. “Kinder Sur­prise eggs have to go.”