Children of the 1970s & ’80s may remember their parents plastering those horrifying day-glo green stickers all over their houses – warning us that we would die if we even engaged with whatever the sticker’s content contained. But did they help? And where did they come from? Read on to find out the history of Mr. Yuk.
Mr. Yuk was conceived in 1971 by Richard Moriarty, a pediatrician and clinical professor of pediatrics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who saw the need to alert children to the harmful things around the house, especially chemicals. With skull-and-crossbones imagery becoming popular in cartoons and with the recently crowned MLB champs, the Pirates, Moriarty felt that the traditional symbol was no longer scary to kids and wanted to create something that would deter them.