Mr. Yuk

Mr. Yuk

The Mr. Yuk symbol was developed in 1971 by the Pittsburgh Poison Center of Children’s Hospital. It is copyrighted exclusively for prevention education through affiliated hospitals and poison centers.

Research conducted early in 1971 indicated that the old skull and crossbones that had been in use to identify poisons had little meaning for the children of the 1970s. The old symbol had been exploited in movies, cartoons, commercial products, and amusement parks to denote happy, exciting things like pirates and adventure; the Pittsburgh Pirates use the symbol as its team logo.

In a university-conducted testing program, children at daycare centers were shown six symbols affixed to identical bottles of mouthwash often found in family homes. The symbols included a red stop sign, the skull and crossbones, and four others.

At the beginning of the test, each child was told that bottles like the  mouthwash might be found at home and asked to identify any bottle they might dislike playing with. While the most popular symbol was the skull and crossbones, the symbol that proved to be least attractive to the children was Mr. Yuk. One little boy declined to pickup a bottle marked with the green, scowling-faced symbol because he said, “he looks yucky,” providing Mr. Yuk with his name.

In 1973, The Washington Poison Center, which was then the Seattle Poison Center located at Children’s Hospital, was the first poison program outside of Pittsburgh to adopt Mr. Yuk as its poison warning symbol.

Mr. Yuk is used in many states as well as Europe, Asia, and Iceland. Last year, several million stickers were distributed nationwide.

Realizing that any symbol must be taught for it to truly be effective, poison centers use Mr. Yuk to emphasize education and awareness to teach both adults and children about the hazards of toxic products in the home and environment. Each Mr. Yuk sticker distributed in Washington State comes with the national toll-free phone number for poison centers.

Mr. Yuk stickers are available at many pharmacies and at the Washington Poison Center by calling, 1-800-222-1222. To order large quantities of Mr. Yuk stickers, magnets or other educational supplies, visit our Order Materials page.