Bad idea

Maybe they're just urban legends, but I've always heard stories about parents rushing children to the emergency room after they've swallowed small toys or pieces of toys. Little green army men, plastic beads, costume jewelry -- anything small enough to get down their throats becomes grist for the youthful digestive mill.

Usually, doctors adopt a wait and see attitude. After all, the piece has to come out sometime, and often does no harm while doing so. A recent episode of the Fox series "House" had the good doctor sticking a knife to the outside of a kid's tummy after the kid swallowed a refrigerator magnet.

Anyway, one of the most common "swallows" are the ubiquitous Legos, those colorful building blocks (kid DNA, almost) of the prepubescent set. They're small, attractively colored, and probably awfully tempting to a hungry toddler whose mom has told him he'll just have to wait for lunch.

So can I be the only person in the world who thinks it's a bad idea that somebody has decided to make Lego fruit snacks? I saw them on my supermarket shelf this week. They look just like Legos, but edible. (Well, at least as edible as those gummy little hunks of sugar can be.)

Doesn't it seem extraordinarily stupid to encourage kids to eat something that looks so similar to something they really shouldn't eat?

Leggo my Lego ... or something like that.