About

Pokéball Recall PSA Parodies refers to spoofs of a product recall PSA for toy Pokéballs that came as part of Burger King kids' meals in the 90s and 2000s. The parodies have become a common trope in analog horror videos.

Origin

Most of the recall PSA videos are based on a recall PSA for toy Pokéball containers that were used to contain Burger King kids' meal toys during a promotional tie-in for Pokémon: The Movie. The containers were recalled due to a suffocation hazard after a toddler had died due to suffocation, as the container covered their nose and mouth.^[1] The PSAs ran from late 1999 to early 2000. The PSA (shown below) was uploaded to YouTube on April 6th, 2010, by Wiinerd37 37, where it received over 1.3 million views in over twelve years.

Spread

The first widely known parody of the PSA was from the Omega Mart commercial series. On January 28th, 2021, YouTube user Meow Wolf posted an Omega Mart commercial that was a recall PSA for Omega Mart lemons. The video (reupload shown below, left) received over 2.9 million views in over one year. Another recall parody PSA was used in the analog horror series Monument Mythos. On March 25th, 2021, a recall PSA for the Maize Movie Maker personal computer was shown in the video titled "MAIZEMOVIEMAKER". The video (shown below, right) was posted to YouTube by MISTER MANTICORE, and received over 226,000 views in over one year.

On April 26th, 2021, YouTube user Syntec Lost Media posted a parody recall PSA which featured a recall on Syntec experimental vials (from the Project 863 web series by YouTube user Matthais). The video (shown below, left) received over 20,000 views in over one year. On September 18th, 2022, a recall PSA for the Spamton NutriNose was aired at the end Fangamer's Spamton Sweepstakes livestream on Twitch. A clip of the recall from the stream (shown below, right) was posted to YouTube by Kirbo4-7897 on September 29th, 2022, where it received over 10,000 views in over one month.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References