<P> Many media outlets referenced the visual similarity the pods have to candy as a reasoning behind their consumption . U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer commented on the appeal of pods, "These pods were supposed to make household chores easier, not tempt our children to swallow harmful chemicals . I saw one on my staffer's desk and I wanted to eat it ." </P> <P> In 2018, media publications noted that shortly after the product's introduction, the consumption of Tide Pods became a topic of discussion on the Internet . Ultimately, eating Tide Pods became a meme, with its origins being credited to a 2013 thread on the Straight Dope online message board and a 2015 article from The Onion . Mashable quoted an instance of a tweet regarding this topic from 2012, "Why does a Tide Pod look so good to eat?" The Straight Dope thread's discussion was more centered on children accidentally eating Tide Pods, rather than the meme's iteration popularized in 2017, which portrays pods as a delicious food . The topic of children eating the pods was a concept based on real incidents of children consuming them . </P> <P> In the following years, online content would skew more in line with the meme's popular usage as a satirical obsession with consuming Tide Pods . In March 2017, CollegeHumor uploaded a sketch video titled Don't Eat The Laundry Pods . The specific prominence of Tide Pods, rather than laundry detergent pods from other brands was noted by Mashable to trace back to a thread posted on Reddit's "intrusivethoughts" subreddit in July 2017 . The thread, titled "Bite into one of those Tide Pods . Do it ." was referenced in another Onion article from the following day, discussing flavored Tide Pods . Posts on Tumblr contributed to the meme's rise, but in December 2017, the meme's popularity rose significantly due to various viral tweets . A common trope of Tide Pods memes involved referring to the pods as a "forbidden fruit". Memes involving the Tide Pods included joking about how "delicious" they appear, as well as posting images with the pods on top of food . Vox described that the meme "pokes fun at the idea consuming the pods, while (usually) stopping short of actually doing so ." The publication noted that part of the allure of discussing, wondering, and joking about consuming the pods spawns from the product's warning to not eat the pods . In early January 2018, television personality Jimmy Kimmel referenced the meme when discussing a tweet from President Donald Trump, "sounds like somebody's been in the White House laundry room eating Tide pods again because the President of the United States is starting his own award show for the media ." </P> <P> In January 2018, following the meme's surge in popularity, media publications started reporting about teenagers participating in the Tide Pod Challenge . The challenge is an Internet challenge in which an individual consumes Tide Pods . Teenagers were the reported demographic participating in the challenge; they would record themselves chewing and gagging on pods and then daring others to do the same . Some of these videos were posted on YouTube . Some teens cooked the pods prior to eating them . </P>

Where did the laundry pod challenge come from