Milk Chocolate Eggs Banned By Post Office

Reporter Lauren Sage Reinlie of Fort Walton Beach, Floridia's Daily News pens, "At the post office at Ramstein Air Base in Germany behind the plate glass window of a locked display case are items that cannot, under any circumstances, be shipped to the United States: bullets, lighters, alcohol — and a lone, foil-wrapped chocolate egg.

She goes on to say, "The egg is a Kinder Surprise, a piece of hollow chocolate with a small toy hidden inside. It is popular around the world but banned in the United States under a 1938 law that prohibits embedding  'non-nutritive' objects into candies."

According to the article, Leslie Dannelly, whose husband is stationed at Ramstein, was shocked to find that she couldn’t mail home the popular milk chocolate candies because of the choking hazard.

In a effort to get what she considers the "ridiculous" ban lifted, Dannelly has created a website www.freetheegg.com and begun all-out campaign to get the law changed.  Her website includes an online petition, which she eventually plans to send to Congress.

Apparently, Dannelly isn’t the only one who wants to get the eggs to America. U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 25,000 of them last year, most of them from travel bags or mailed packages.

Post office workers at Ramstein Air Force Base told Dannelly they had a bucketful of the eggs returned after Christmas.“I said ‘You guys ate them, didn’t you?’ They said ‘Yeah.’ I would have, too.”

To read the entire article, click here.