I can still remember a handful of places in my childhood home that were off-limits to me as a child, one of them being the cupboard under the kitchen sink. Being the adventurous lad that I was, one day I decided to have a look to see what was being kept from me there. I found a bunch of brightly colored aerosol cans and plastic bottles, each labeled with a bright green circle depicting a sick, frowning face.I can still vividly recall that sickly green face and remember seeing it quite frequently as a kid, but today, "Mr. Yuk" seems to have disappeared. So what happened? Who killed Mr. Yuk?Mr. Yuk was developed in the early 1970s by Richard Moriarty, a pediatric doctor in Pittsburgh who founded the National Poison Control Network. Evidently, Moriarty felt that skull-and-crossbones iconography wasn't good enough for poison control due to the proliferation of the symbol in popular culture. "Children are relating the danger symbol to pleasant surroundings, Moriarty told a local paper in 1973 upon the release of Mr. Yuk.The design for Mr. Yuk came from a team of medical experts interviewed children under the age of 5 and recorded their facial expressions when asked about poison. Based on this, the researchers developed three concepts for a new poison warning symbol: face with X's for eyes, a mad face, or a sick looking face with the tongue out. After drafting up a version of each of these, they were shown to children along with the skull and crossbones and the kids were asked to choose the faces in "the order they liked best." In almost all cases, the sick face finished last."The skull and crossbones was designed by adults for adults," Moriarty told the paper. "Mr. Yuk is actually the first symbol specifically designed for kids."Within a year of its creation, some two million Mr. Yuk stickers were distributed freely to parents to help prevent the poisoning of children. By 1980, 50 million of these stickers were distributed every year by poison control centers. The program continued for decades (indeed, you can still write in for free Mr. Yuk stickers today), but starting in the 1980s, a series of studies found that the stickers were ineffective at repelling children from toxic materials and would in some instances actually attract them to the poison. Most recently it was investigated (and rejected) as a way to stop kids from eating THC-infused edibles, much to the ire of cannabis advocates since marijuana isn't a poison.The history of Mr. Yuk is an interesting look at the difficulty of designing warning signs that are intelligible regardless of the language spoken (or in the case of children, the ability to understand language at all). It's a tough problem to solve, but as far as keeping kids away from poison goes, the most effective route is to just keep it in an inaccessible place to begin with.
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