Originally published at: Mr. Yuk will make you sick! | Boing Boing
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Did Mr. Yuk (as a poison warning sticker) ever go away?
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My friend and I loved hamming up the jingle when we were kids.
As I recall, this campaign was initiated out of concern that the traditional symbol for poison at the time, the skull and crossbones, had become ineffective due to kids associating it more with cool pirates. Mr. Yuk probably wasn’t the best alternative, though.
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Invented in Pittsburgh! Mr. Yuk - Wikipedia
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I got ahold of the stickers as a kid and put them on everything, while my parents used them for nothing. Probably not the point they were going for, but STICKERZ!!! 
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I remember something similar to this in the 80s. I was living in VA and going to elementary school.
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Holy cow, I think you just figured out the catalyst for the huge sticker craze of 1980-82!
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As was the concept of zombies as we know them today in pop culture (as hordes of undead rather than people under a spell in Haitian folklore as in the original meaning). And Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (although Fred Rogers had a children’s show in Canada earlier).
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Apparently you can still request a free sheet of Mr. Yuk stickers by sending a self-addressed stamped business size envelope to:
Mr. Yuk
Pittsburgh Poison Center
200 Lothrop Street
PFG 01-01-01
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Also, they have a “Mr. Yuk Store” where you can purchase this sweet little kit for $11.
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I must have been in the sweet spot age-wise for these as a kid (I’m 50 now), because the commercials (with the dissonant tones and dire warnings) terrified me. If I saw one of these on anything, I’d give it a wide berth.
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Yeah, 52 here, and the commercials terrified me too.
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I remember these commercials! At one point I got a sheet of them from school and dutifully put them on all sorts of stuff around the house.
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My memory is that Mr. Yuk was invented to replace the then-current warning symbol for poison, a skull and crossbones. Too many kids figured that the poisons were endorsed by pirates, and thus cool as heck.
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You and every other mid-GenXer! The sheet of stickers I got at school was deployed by my mom at our house and grandma’s house. We’re still here, so I guess it worked!
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Well, in their defense, pirates are pretty cool.
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I remember these being everywhere in Kansas City’s punk and all ages scene in the early 90’s. They were on anything and everything around Westport, signs, lampposts, restaurant booths, bathroom walls, every surface of all ages clubs, and on peoples leather jackets. It also acted somewhat like a hobo marker for finding weed, shrooms, or LSD.
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We got ahold of some of those and put them on some stuff my mom had made. Laugh riot! (For a while at least)
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Relevant to this, by virtue of being an attempt to replace an ambiguous/confusing symbol with a less subtle one, they changed the ionizing radiation symbol after a number of children suggested that the original trefoil represented airplanes:
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Today in “God I’m old”, I remember these.
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