Sugar Causes Hyperactivity

10 grams of sugar—great for reaction time, hell on your pancreas.

Bart: [after drinking an all-syrup slushee] Okay, we're young, rich, and full of sugar! Whatta we do?
Milhouse: Let's go crazy, Broadway-style!

— The Simpsons, "Boy-Scoutz 'n' the Hood"

There is a big reason parental guardians never let their children consume sugar or other processed junk food, especially before bedtime. Other than it being a risk for developing chronic illnesses, when children consume sugar or other junk food, they're usually depicted as talking really fast, running around at a constant speed, and wanting to stay up all night into the early hours of the morning playing videogames. Hilarity ensues.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not Truth in Television. While excessive consumption of sugary (and fatty) food and drinks can affect a child's behavior and physical health in general, it doesn't make them hyperactive, clinically or otherwise. Part of why the association with hyperactivity and junk food is so common among parents is because these tend to be the things eaten at parties or special occasions (celebratory cake, chocolate bars, jelly, fizzy drinks, you name it) and kids, being small bundles of energy, will want to play more than usual with friends, making them excited, and that means they'll do a lot more running about.

This trope then, is a prime example of correlation does not equal causation. Saying that "The kids are running around because they were eating all this sugary food" latches onto a convenient explanation while ignoring other causes, such as the environment (the party or special event), or the fact that kids tend to do this anyway, and they don't need sugar to be hyperactive — at a party, they just happen to be in constant sight of parents.

This should logically also scale to teens and adults, but that never crosses parents' minds either, despite caffeine (a psychoactive drug), being something that does keep someone active, and is found in energy drinks and coffee in gyms and offices the world over. So, if anything, the blame should instead be on impulse and self-control, which takes years of learning for a kid to understand properly.

Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Biology. Compare and contrast G-Rated Drug, Drunk on Milk, Frothy Mugs of Water, Intoxication Ensues, I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!, Must Have Caffeine, Klatchian Coffee, Fake High, Mushroom Samba, and Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films.

---

Examples

Blogs

• From Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG:
  48. The elf is restricted to decaf for the rest of the adventure.
  242. Not allowed to give quicklings Mountain Dew.

Comic Strips

• It is a recurring theme in Calvin and Hobbes that when Calvin eats his favorite cereal, Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, for breakfast (usually three bowls), he gets incredibly hyper. In one strip, Calvin's mother is seen vibrating and speaking almost incoherently slow. It turns out that, due to Calvin having eaten Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs, he is now experiencing everything in Bullet Time, which concerns Hobbes as the boy walks around spasming.
• Dogs of C-Kennel: Kenny, a naively child-like husky dog, is seen in a hyperactive sugar-rush state after eating a bag of candy corn in this comic. It's also implied that Kenny got buzzed on sugar from eating 350 Pixy Stix here. And in this strip, Kenny has been rolling for five minutes straight after consuming something sweet, with no signs of stopping.

Fan Works

• Lucy's Secret: Lucy attributes her forgetting to put on her bedwetting pants at the sleepover to being "hopped up on sugar" (even though the soda she drank was stated to also contain caffeine, which really does make people hopped up).
• In My Little Fonzie (a crossover fanfic between Happy Days and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic), eating a piece of candy causes Big Mac to run superhumanly fast.
• Peeking Through the Fourth Wall: Discussed in Episode 35, when Lincoln notes that the only time he couldn't outrun a seven-year-old in heels would be if the seven-year-old was having a sugar rush.
• In Tommy Pickles: The Terrible Twos, one Original Character defies this by telling another not to eat too much ice cream or she'll be "bouncing off the walls faster than Tigger".

Films — Animated

• In Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie: The school carnival includes a scene of kids eating sugar and going crazily hyper. George and Harold partake in spite of them needing to keep Captain Underpants under control.
• In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, after Flint Lockwood's conversion of water-into-food invention works and it showers the small town Chew And Swallow with all kinds of foods, the town children are happily indulging in the massive piles of candy, becoming hyperactive as a result. With one boy boasting about having jellybeans in his teeth while his eyeballs are popping out and his irises are expanding and shrinking rapidly. Eventually one of the children complains of not feeling so good and collapses, prompting his sheriff father to seek a medical doctor to save his son from falling into "a food coma".
• Hotel Transylvania 2: Mavis cracks open a pinata. Wanda tries to warn her that she doesn't want her kids to have too much sugar, but it's too late, and the siblings go on a wild, destructive rampage. They wreck many things such as a bounce house and they even tear through a yeti's fur, exposing his underwear in the process.
• In Open Season, though Boog’s not a kid, his owner and caretaker Beth treats him as such and is not happy when he comes home in police custody under the influence of sugary junk foods. Elliot had given Boog a bite of his Woo-Hoo candy bar and the bear became hooked, causing him and Elliot to trash a mini market by having fun and eating all kinds of junk foods. After stumbling to his room in a haze similar to drunkenness, he projectile vomits on the garage window.
• In Over the Hedge, as the woodland creatures slowly get addicted to junk foods (or "human wazoo foods" as they call them), RJ gives Penny and Lou's triplets Bucky, Quillo, and Spike a sugary caffeinated soda and the three end up becoming jittery, shaky, excited and spinning and bouncing around all over the woods. It gets worse in the case of resident Keet Hammy, who is able to move faster than light after drinking a can of soda. To the point where he can casually walk around a laser beam crossing the lawn.

Films — Live-Action

• In Alvin and the Chipmunks, when Alvin, Simon, and Theodore become pop star sensations due to their singing skills, their boss and adoptive caretaker Ian Hawk abuses his power over them and drives them to sleep deprivation and exhaustion. When the chipmunk trio is unable to finish a recording because they keep dozing off, Ian decides to give them large coffee drinks filled with whipped cream, caramel, and two pumps of chocolate syrup. As the chipmunks guzzle the large sugary coffee drinks, Ian smugly replies "That oughta keep them awake". Unfortunately, it works too well. As soon as the large drinks are finished, the chipmunks end up bouncing off the walls of their recording booth and singing at a rapid rate before literally crashing by hitting the glass windows of their recording booth. Much to Ian's ire.
• In Are We There Yet?, Nick's love interest's children Kevin and Lindsay are forbidden to have sugar. When they go to a kid's birthday party at a rec center where one of the clowns is a doctor with a prescription to refill Kevin's inhaler, Kevin and Lindsay spot the tables just filled with various pies, cakes, and brownies and allow themselves to indulge and enjoy the chocolate creamy treats for the first time. While Lindsay turns out fine, Kevin unfortunately goes overboard and becomes hyper from all the sugary treats, resulting in him talking too fast, not being able to stay in his passenger seat for too long, and eventually projectile vomiting all over the inside of Nick's prized vehicle after sipping an orange soda to try to calm his upset stomach.
• In Big Daddy, the protagonist's newly adopted son Julian is shown passed out from a sugar crash. Immediately upon awakening, he jumps up and down on the couch to his favorite kids' TV show, and then he vomits due to the sugary junk food he ingested the night before.
• Lampshaded in the Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) remake, when patriarch Tom Baker promises his children that they can have fun and let loose and "eat sugar and cake and ice cream and go crazy" once their mom Kate leaves for her job. At their friend's birthday party, however, the twins Nigel and Kyle are the only ones of the Baker children to get into any of the sugary birthday party snacks like cupcakes. And once they have eaten some cupcakes, they start throwing handfuls of birthday foods from the party plates at the panicking guests just for fun. Granted the party guests were all in a panic because a pet snake for a birthday gift got loose, and Tom and his entire football team had to intervene and save the kids. Hilarity Ensues.
• Daddy Day Care: During Daddy Day Care's first lunchtime, the children are served sweets and junk food. Charlie is rightly concerned about how feeding them like this will lead, prompting Phil to ask what he is so worried about. We get an answer in the next scene showing the kids running wild on a sugar high. When Charlie returns to his job as a marketing executive, he brings up the concern of a new sugar-filled cereal causing this type of problem for kids.
• In Hocus Pocus, Max and Dani's mother references this when Dani tries warning her about the Sanderson Sister witch trio who are after them, but since Dani is speaking really fast and acting anxious, it only leads her mother to ask her "How much candy have you had, honey?". Dani replies "Mom, I haven't OD'd! I haven't even had a piece!" in response to the Halloween candy hyperactivity suspicion and begs her mom to listen. Unfortunately the witches arrive and put a hex on the parents through a song.
• In See Spot Run, after James' mother has to go do something important, her son James is left in the care of his babysitter Gordon who decides to let James indulge in his first taste of Fruit Loops cereal instead of his perfectionist healthy mother's meal choice of raisin bran cereal and soy milk for the kid. Gordon soon regrets letting James have sugar and realizes that he should've obeyed his love interest's (James' mother) orders when James goes hyper, wears a cereal box over his head, whacks stuff in the living room with his toy lightsaber, attempts to grab the pet fish in the water tank with his toy robot hang, jumps from the couch and hits the living room floor flat. Then he shakes his head and keep on going with his sugar-pumped childish rampage. By the morning, when Gordon awakens and walks into the living room to check on James, James is lying on the floor by his videogame toy Dreamcast system, surrounded by a pile of trash and empty discarded bags and boxes of sugary snack cakes, Cheetos and other junk foods, and suffering a terrible sugar crash-like hangover and stomachache. Gordon's solution? Give James "a hair of the dog that bit you" which involves a donut and Pepsi or more sugar. After a bite of a chocolate donut and a drink of some Pepsi, his stomachache and nausea disappear and James tells Gordon "I feel better".
• In Speed Racer, Speed Racer's younger brother Spirtle breaks into the stash of candy and junk food when the adults aren't around and becomes lethargic and tired from enjoying the candy while watching TV. He and his pet chimp then decide to steal a go-cart and drive around crazy and have fun, resulting in the child getting in trouble.
• In the 2005 remake of Yours, Mine, and Ours, when the parents are away at a dinner meeting, the stepsiblings plot to break up their parents' marriage by throwing a Wild Teen Party. While the older kids and teenagers are singing, dancing, eating pizza and junk food, and performing with a band, the younger kids are shuffled up in one of their rooms partying and celebrating by chugging root beer sodas and then indulging in big salad bowls of random junk foods and making a mess (Cheetos, marshmallows, gummy worms, candies, etc). After the parents arrive home and break up the house party, their first concern is where the little ones are. Smash Cut to all the younger children dazed and tired and lying on the floor of their bedroom passed out in a sugar crash, muttering that they're in need of more chocolate.

Literature

• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: 2016's Children's Literature Dishonorable Mention by Russ Wren of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where sugar makes a kid speed around, and is a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory reference:
  Little Billy Wonka spent his days running through the Gumdrop Forest, dashing through the greenery of Marzipan Valley, hopping along the banks of Honey River and racing to and fro between the Chocolate Factory to his Gingerbread Abode... which is not surprising considering his colossal daily sugar intake.
• Several instances in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise:
  • In the first novel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the sleepover Greg tries to have turns into a disaster due to Fregley having eaten sugar, which gives him a sugar high and makes him go hyperactive. He also eats all of Greg's jelly beans and gets even more hyperactive to the point of chasing Greg around with a booger on his finger.
  • In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, Greg starts to approach Holly at the school dance, only for Fregley to jump out, waving his arms and jabbering. Greg notes that there's icing on his mouth and that the cake probably made him hyperactive.
  • In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever, the teachers ban a type of soda called "Rowdy Riot" since it apparently makes people hyperactive. Greg notes that this does seem to be the case with at least some of his classmates, and the lengths some of the kids go to to drink it approaches I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin! levels.
  • In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, one of the pages in Greg and Rodrick's old babysitting guide states that Rodrick couldn't have red fruit juice before bedtime because it made him extremely hyperactive.
• In one of the Dilly the Dinosaur books, Dilly's parents forbid him from drinking "dino-pop" since it "makes you totally hyperactive".
• The Dresden Files: Two potions that rely on speed or energy, escape and stimulant potions, have caffeine and sugar as part of their ingredients' ingredients. Cola and chocolate-covered espresso beans, for the former, and coffee and a doughnut of unnamed flavor for the latter. (By the rules of Dresden-verse magic, the factual inaccuracy of the trope is more or less irrelevant — the fact that people believe in it allows the symbolic ingredients to work regardless.)
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Natalie's loud and energetic self doesn't play well with others if she doesn't manage to rein in her soda and soft drink intake, which has varying amounts of sugar and/or caffeine.

Live-Action TV

• Abbott Elementary: In "Candy Zombies", the teachers are keeping the kids from getting Halloween candy until the end of the school day so that it's the parents' problem. Unfortunately, one of the kids takes the candy and hands it out early, leaving the school in chaos as the teachers struggle to keep the now hyper kids in line.
• Dinosaurs: In "The Golden Child", Baby Sinclair raids the fridge, and the animals inside feed him all the sweets they have, including pouring raw sugar straight down his gullet. This causes Baby to literally fly around the house, eventually hitting his head and getting a bump.
• Farscape: When the crew of Moya finally make it to Earth, it's Halloween. Rygel gets high on Halloween candy, jittery and excited and hyper, and even asks Chrichton (the token human) "How illegal is this dren? You gotta get me more, I don't care how much it costs!" Crosses over with Alien Catnip and Mars Wants Chocolate.
• In The King of Queens, Carrie and Doug deliberately over-sugar Deacon's two sons while they're being babysat, knowing when they go back to their parents, the boys will be almost unmanageably hyper.
• Life in Pieces: A flashback shows that Heather and Tim tried to raise their kids without junk food or television, and only listening to classical music. This changes when they let Matt look after Tyler and Samantha. Matt takes them to a bar where they get to drink soda, eat French fries, and listen to rock and roll. When Tyler and Samantha return, the two are hyperactive and inform their parents that they tried soda.
• In one episode of Modern Family, Luke helps his dad Phil donate some food to a homeless shelter and they are awarded with food themselves. Luke ends up all hyper, giddy, excited, and talking really fast due to eating a lot of chocolate. He later suffers a sugar crash, being found passed out asleep on the family couch and then springing up shouting that he didn't fall asleep.
• Raising Hope:
  • In "Happy Halloween", it's revealed that giving Maw Maw too much sugar will make her think she's nine years old.
    Burt: It's not any better when she thinks she's the old woman who swallowed the fly. Then she wants to swallow a spider, a bird, a cat. I made an executive decision. Besides, I like nine-year-old Maw Maw. We play jacks.
  • In "Kidnapped", it's revealed that Burt faked his own kidnapping twenty years ago to get away from his family after a particularly grueling and hectic day. At the end, Maw Maw admits to setting everything that happened that day to break him and Virginia up, which included feeding Jimmy a lot of sugar to drive his dad bats.
• Reba:
  • When Reba allows her son Jake to spend time with her ex-husband Brock as part of their father-son time, the religious ditzy stepmother Barbara Jean gets the wrong idea of bonding with her stepchild and allows Jake to have a banana split, a Snickers candy bar, and an iced mocha coffee drink after he had dinner with his dad. As a result, Jake comes home hyped up on sugar and caffeine, talking really loud and asking his mother if he can stay up all night and then jumping and hopping energetically all the way to his bedroom — much to Reba's dismay.
  • In a season 2 episode where the plot focuses on Jake's birthday party (and the family drama that ensues), Reba lampshades this and Cheyenne references this as she's a new teen parent trying to keep everyone quiet so that her baby could sleep. Reba simply tells Cheyenne not to worry about the noise as they're just "a bunch of 10-year-olds we're pumping full of cake and candy".
• In Toddlers & Tiaras and its spinoff Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, the then 6-year-old competitor Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson drinks a "healthy" blend of Mountain Dew and Red Bull, called "Go Go Juice", to give her the extra energy she needs to be a toddler beauty queen. Which is quite an unhealthy mix of caffeine and sugar for any child to ingest. "Go Go Juice" is a juice that June gave to Alana when she did pageants. In a rather meme-able moment, as soon as she drinks the concoction, Honey Boo Boo gets hyperactive and speaks nonsense very fast.

Poetry

• Zigzagged in the poem "I Never Want to Go to Bed". The protagonist, a young boy, wonders why he's so energetic despite it being bedtime. He wonders if it was the Red Bull, chocolate cake, Hershey bars, and Skittles he had. However, he also wonders if it was the seven cups of coffee he drank.

Puppet Shows

• Inverted in a Sesame Street skit in which a girl named Carolyn gets tired from eating cake.

Video Games

• The Invincibility Candy in Kirby, as its name implies, is Kirby's unique invincibility power-up. Whenever one of these appear, expect a line of enemies for Kirby to demolish on contact to follow. In modern titles, it also gives him a devastating speed boost.
• Sugar in Minecraft can be used to brew Potions of Swiftness, which can be drank for a temporary speed boost.

Web Animation

• Bed Time - Spy x Family: Loid and Yor are trying to get Anya to go to bed, so Yor brings her a glass of milk. It's chocolate milk, which makes Anya even more hyper and has the opposite effect of what they were going for.

Webcomics

• Dork Tower: Ken has a complete freakout after a serving (or maybe just a taste) of the Nutritional Nightmare that is an Igor Bar.◊
• In the Hyperbole and a Half entry "Menace", Allie swipes at her classmates and draws on the walls in a power high after getting a dinosaur costume for Halloween. Her teacher assumes it's due to the holiday candy consumption, leading Allie's parents to forbid her candy. Unfortunately, Allie then rebels by eating sugar anyway, perpetuating the misunderstanding.

Web Videos

• B. Dylan Hollis invokes the concept in a couple of his recipe videos where the dishes he makes are exceedingly sweet desserts:
  • The "Snickers salad" is a dessert that combines Snickers, apples, vanilla pudding and Cool Whip topping, which overwhelms him with its sweetness when he tastes it.
    Go ahead, feed this to a child—you're gonna yeet them into orbit!
  • The "dirt cake" combines a custardy base with mixed-in Cool Whip, ground-up Oreos, and gummi worms, and has a similar effect on him.
    Whoooo! That's sugar! This will make little kids go feral. Little Johnny's gonna put his tricycle in the Indy 500.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Laziest", Gumball and Darwin drink too much soda and get a sugar rush, shown as sugar cubes dancing inside their body and tickling the heart. They start running around and talking really fast, so fast their speech becomes indecipherable gibberish. Soon after, they get a sugar low (shown as the heart singing a slow blues song) and deflate like balloons.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: When Beavis, a teenager, has too much sugar or caffeine, he ends up becoming hyperactive while also triggering his Split Personality Cornholio, who mumbles nonsense and goes around wreaking all sorts of havoc.
• Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: In "The Forge of Creation", after Ben's gang adverts kid Ben to be quiet in order to not disturb the Celestialsapiens, the kid becomes suddenly excited and starts asking one question after another. Gwen sternly says "No more sugar. Give." He says he hasn't any, but she glares at him and he's forced to give her all the candy he has in his pockets. He retaliates by saying that her butt is huge.
• Big City Greens: In "Sleepover Sisters", in an attempt to help them stay awake until sunrise, Tilly and Andromeda scarf down a large amount of candy the latter saved in case of an apocalypse, causing them to experience a sugar rush and go hyperactive. Unfortunately, it doesn't last long, and they suffer a sugar crash and temporarily pass out.
• Big Mouth: Missy is very sensitive to sugar. Drinking a single Coke makes her act loopy and impulsive, even kissing Jessi's dog because she daydreams about him being Nathan Fillion.
• Captain Flamingo: In "Flowers and Candy", after eating a piece of candy while watching TV at Max's house, Owen-Only ends up becoming super hyperactive and consumes more and more sugar throughout the episode.
• Close Enough: Just one bar of chocolate makes Candance hyper enough to crawl on the roof.
• Dead End: Paranormal Park: In "Night of the Living Kids", when Barney and Norma come to babysit the children who are going to sleepover in the restaurant, they learn that the kids are too excited to sleep because, among other things, they "ate loads of sugar".
• DuckTales (2017): Downplayed with Huey, who only shows sensitivity to sugar at night in "Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!". When his newly returned mother bakes him a cake to make up for all the past birthdays and holidays she missed, Huey takes one bite and his pupils dilate, making him a little loopy.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Just Desserts", Timmy wishes that all the food in the world is dessert so that he doesn't have to eat vegetables. The wish gives everyone a sugar rush since there's nothing healthy in their stomachs to absorb the sweets. Traffic moves at the speed of light, world records get set in all sports, and Chet Ubetcha writes five operas while grouting his bathroom. Chet also manages to do his news show in just five minutes and spends the remaining 55 minutes running a marathon. Meanwhile, an entire day of school is held in just three minutes. Soon, the sugar rush wears off, and 28 days later, everyone becomes morbidly obese.
• Family Guy:
  • In "Baby Not on Board", Stewie is accidentally left home alone when the family go on a road trip. He decides to take advantage of being alone by drinking his first soda. The sugar causes him to become giddy and run around for ten seconds... after which he crashes and becomes sad.
  • In "Livin' on a Prayer", when Brian discusses Christian Scientists and lack of proper medication and vaccinations for children, Chris suffers an Out-of-Character Moment where he angrily rants to Brian. Lois points out that his sudden angry rant is the result of having too much sugar cereal for breakfast, but Chris refuses to listen and just shoves his bowl full of sugary cereal into his face.
    Lois: Chris, I think you've had too much sugar cereal.
    Chris: I think I haven't had enough!
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Exaggerated with Mac. Usually the Adorably Precocious Child and Only Sane Man, he is forbidden from eating sugar precisely because of his reaction to it. Even getting a drop of sweetened food or drink is enough to make him lose all sanity and turn into a screaming, sugar-obsessed gremlin who craves more sugar, sprinting all over the place and swiping any sweets in his vicinity. In some episodes, he's literally bouncing off the walls and can lift Eduardo, who is several times Mac's size, with ease.
• The Great North: In "Blood Actually Adventure", Halloween is the one time Beef allows Moon to eat as much candy as he wants and it really makes him hyper and aggressive. In the past, he would eat so much candy that he would have a sugar crash and they're surprised he managed to stay up until 2:00 P.M. this year. When Judy takes him to his room to rest, they would put a few candies under his pillow because it's dangerous for him to go cold turkey. After Judy gives her statement for her costume, Moon returns from outside the house (having no idea how he got outside in the first place) so he can continue to eat more candy.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: One episode has Billy call Mandy late at night in a very excited and hyper mood (more so than usual, at least) after eating 19 highly sugary cakes, which leads to Mandy and Grim reading various fairy tales with him (and eventually entering the fairy tales with Grim's magic) in hopes of getting him calm enough to go to sleep. He eventually falls asleep after a sugar crash.
• Horrible Histories: Subverted in one episode, where Stitch is jumping up and down and eating sugar cane, and Mo thinks that he's having a sugar high, but really he's trying to reach a eucalyptus leaf so he can use it as deodorant.
• Kamp Koral: In "Sugar Squeeze", Narlene and Nobby sell a sugary drink to the campers, causing them to glow yellow and act incredibly hyperactive.
• King of the Hill:
  • Hank and a new neighbor, Wesley, both start a Straight Arrow scout group which includes Bobby and two of Wesley's sons. Hank is frustrated over Wesley's idea of activities: all taking place indoors with a fake fire made of streamers and a fan, and a teddy bear that acts as a grizzly bear. Hank would rather take the group to the outdoors to give them the real experience, which Wesley is against. Later on, when Hank takes charge of the group and gives Wesley's boys sugary sodas and treats, they both get a sugar rush and run into the forest. Hank and the others have to find them using outdoor scout skills. After finding the boys, Hank gets scolded by Wesley, who disallowed the boys to have sugary treats because one of them has ADHD and the other has hyperglycemia, meaning sugar is very dangerous for them.
  • Bobby was misdiagnosed as having ADHD after eating four bowls of sugary cereal for breakfast.
• The Loud House:
  • In "No Spoilers", Lola makes a cake with so many decorations that she runs in a circle after just one bite. Despite this, she still thinks it's not sweet enough since she has a massive Sweet Tooth.
  • Implied in "Party Down", where Lisa is a lot more twitchy and excited than usual while eating chocolate, though perhaps she was just very excited.
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Take Two", Peter Venkman jokes that a man's dramatic, hammy behavior may be due to a high-sugar diet.
• In Regular Show: Pops eats a Double Glazed Apple Fritter and instantly becomes super hyperactive, even by his own standard.
• Rugrats (1991): When Charlotte leaves the room to use the bathroom in "Piece of Cake", Angelica first puts her finger in the pastry to taste it, then pulls the cake back and starts eating handfuls of it. It doesn't stop there — Angelica heads outside and brags to the other children that she ate an entire cake, following which Tommy tells her she can have his cookie. After eating all these sweets, Angelica is excited and hyper, becoming a famous star overnight. In order to maintain her sugar rush, Angelica later eats more chocolate cake, a scoopful of gumballs, chocolate marshmallows, button-shaped candies, and chocolate muffins.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Boy-Scoutz 'n' the Hood", after finding $20, Bart and Milhouse spend it on a Squishee drink made of pure syrup. That much concentrated sugar acts a G-Rated Drug, making them twitchy, hyperactive and reckless enough to join the Junior Campers.
  • In one episode, it's revealed that Ned and Maude Flanders ^note This is before Maude's fatal accident. forbid their kids to eat sugar. However, Bart convinces one of the Flanders kids to eat a pixie stick; said kid immediately goes hyper, starts fighting with his brother, and calls him a "smelly head".
• Spliced: In "Sugar Low", when Peri feels he's gotten enough sweets as rewards for all the good deeds he's done for others, he eats them all and ends up experiencing a sugar rush that actually has him moving so fast, everything around him is frozen in place. After the sugar crash, he grabs more sugar to experience another rush. Mr. Smarty Smarts catches on to this and consumes a large amount of sugar so he can also have a sugar rush. He tries to kill Peri in the sugar rush, and they chase each other so quickly around the island it creates a massive windstorm.
• Tuca & Bertie: In "Leaf Raking", Bertie spoils Tulip while babysitting by giving her candy, which she can't usually have. Tulip flips out and runs onto the playing field in the middle of a raking tournament.
• VeggieTales: Inverted in "Lord of the Beans", when Ahem goes into a Food Coma after eating a 200-pound Marshmallow Peep that he created with a magical bean.
• We Bare Bears: Played with in "The Library"; Chloe eats a pile of candy and dashes so fast that she manages to go faster than time itself. She even makes the same sound that The Powerpuff Girls make whenever they blast off. However, the same thing happens to the bear brothers, who are either adults or teens.
• The Weekenders: One episode involves Carver and his friends taking turns babysitting Carver's baby brother, Todd. On Carver's turn, when Carver isn't watching him, Todd consumes a large amount of sugar and then starts shaking as the sugar rush kicks in. The end result, Todd starts running around excitedly while rambling a fast-paced string-of-thought series of words. By the time it's Tish's turn, Carver is completely worn out from the experience.
• What About Mimi?: In "The Stepford Twins", we're told that if the Crabdinkle twins eat candies known as "Super-Fizzle Cherry Rockets", it makes them, in Mimi's words, "go ballistic". Mimi and Bradley even tell Elaine of when the twins' kindly old aunt gave them the candy the previous year. By the time the sugar rush wore off, the aunt had lost all her teeth and had to be committed to an insane asylum, and the fire department was called in to get the twins off the roof. We finally see it in action when Jason gives the twins the candy in question, and they both shoot into the air like rockets, leaving two trails of smoke in their wake.

---