chocolate surprise eggs

I don’t remember the first time I ever heard about Kinder Eggs or Surprise Eggs. I think I saw them on a blog and saw that it was chocolate with a little toy inside that you could assemble. How freaking cool is that and where could I get some?! I remember reading further and discovering that that were in fact illegal in the US due to a law from 1938 that no toys could be embedded into sweet confections and sold in the United States because “The imbedded non-nutritive objects in these confectionery products may pose a public health risk as the consumer may unknowingly choke on the object.” Um, are you for real? They’re much more reasonable about this in Canada, where the eggs have “…always been legal here because Health Canada has determined the tiny toy inside is not likely to be used by children under three years of age.” Sigh. Why can’t we be as reasonable and rational as Canada?

I saw last month that CC was able to get one at a Mexican market in San Ysidro so I had this inkling that maybe I’d find one at a Mexican market. Now I wasn’t on the hunt for any… but fortune shined on me so I could finally get some!

I made Jake drive down to 25th & Imperial to go to Gabriel Tortilleria for some freshly made tortillas for some taco makin’. This place is open 24 hours in case you like… really, really need some tortillas at 2AM. You can see them making tortillas on a machine right behind the counter and they just have a few shelves stocked with all of their products. There were a bunch of people in there when we went so I didn’t take any photos. After that, I wanted to get some meat and instead of driving all the way to Lemon Grove to the Farmer’s Market (where we usually go) we decided to just drive around to try and find a market.

We struck out at the first place we went to which said out front they had fresh meat, but upon entering the only things we saw in the “butcher case” were boxes of White Castle and Hot Pockets. Hmmm! We ended up driving up Imperial a bit more until we found this place:

Lew’s Market. I spied a “Fresh Meat” sign and hoped for the best. I ended up getting some carne asada for $3.99/lb and some pollo asada for $1.99/lb. At the front counter I saw some chocolate eggs which I stared at after I had paid for all of the food. I went back to the car and told Jake about them and we sent S in to buy as many as he could with $5.

They ended up being $2 each. They had two different kinds which were both Disney themed but S just got two of the “Planes” ones. I don’t remember what the other kind was.

I opened one and S opened the other. Inside, you can see there’s a clear plastic tub inside of the hollow egg.

Pop/twist it open (with quite a bit of effort, actually) and these were the little pieces + instructions in my egg.

These parts are truly very tiny, especially with my double propeller on the front!

Here’s S.’s parts.

Which turned into this plane. We didn’t see the Planes movie so I don’t know the characters, but I thought it was rad to put together these little planes!

While reading up about Kinder Eggs, I found this article that said the US Ban has been “sort of” lifted on Kinder Eggs. A company worked with the FDA to create a “safe” version of the surprise eggs called Choco Treasure. The toys are larger than the ones inside of Kinder Eggs and come in some kind of special capsule for child safety. After quick look at the site, the toys don’t seem quite as interesting to me, but it’s still cool that there’s some kind of legal version. I’ll still buy any of these “illegal” ones if I see them though! Shh, don’t tell anyone else, okay?