Soda-Candy 'Splosion

"Like, comment and thubthcribe for more looney hijinkth!"
"Th-th-that's all, folks!"

Science is a wonderful thing. It makes our world go round, and yet can be done by virtually anyone. No need for priceless equipment and particle accelerators — the materials you need may be right in your own home. One of the easiest and most iconic of all is no doubt the soda geyser, in which the simple combination of soda and certain candies can effortlessly create an eruptive geyser of soda.

The simple nature of this little experiment means that it can be done by anyone, and thus frequently serves as a basis for gags in fiction. A common scenario is for characters to create a big mess — either intentionally or unintentionally — with the ensuing eruption. Occasionally, the combo may even be weaponized due to its simplicity and accessibility, with the explosive effect often exaggerated for the Rule of Funny.

In terms of ingredients, Diet Coke and Mentos (or Bland-Name Product or Brand X counterparts) are common choices. This is indeed Truth in Television; the two are infamous for creating a massive soda geyser for reasons elaborated on below. As this iteration of the experiment was largely popularized on websites such as YouTube in the 2000s, characters are sometimes shown filming their attempts, in the hope of becoming an Instant Web Hit.

Sometimes, Pop Rocks are utilized instead of Mentos. This candy tends to appear in relation to a common Urban Legend which claims that consuming both could cause one's stomach to explode. Former child actor Little Mikey of Life Cereals fame has famously been rumored to have died from this^note In reality, Little Mikey actor John Gilchrist is still very much alive and works as director of media sales for a regional sports network in New York. Unlike Diet Coke and Mentos, the two will not create an outright soda eruption when mixed, although it does release large amounts of carbon dioxide. Nonetheless, these rumors have persisted in fiction, and having characters' heads or bodies explode is not an uncommon sight.

In reality, this experiment is not, as many may assume, a chemical reaction, but rather a physical one. Carbonated beverages contain dissolved carbon dioxide gas, which forms bonds with the water. This gas seeks to escape, but is contained securely within the bottle, and produces only a limited amount of bubbles when poured. However, Mentos candy is covered in millions of bumps and cavities, and this rough surface breaks these bonds, allowing bubbles to form rapidly and create the classic eruption.

The reason this doesn't happen in the stomach is because the Mentos' bumps get smoothed out in the mouth or on the way down, giving the CO2 far less to work with. You would probably have some gas, but the body has ways of expelling that from either end, so the worst you should get are some brief stomach cramps and a hearty belch; the amount of soda you'd need to consume to cause a reaction would be a greater danger.

While Diet Coke and Mentos are the most common choices in this experiment, any carbonated beverage can substitute for Diet Coke, though Diet Coke is nonetheless believed to have the strongest effect. Among other explanations, it has been proposed that the lack of sugar in Diet Coke makes the mixture less viscous and thus have less surface tension, meaning the gas is released more rapidly.

As for Mentos, a variety of other objects will work, including other candy and even various inedible objects. Pop Rocks also contain tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide within them, responsible for the popping effect when consumed. While the release of carbon dioxide within both the soda and candy can be significant enough to inflate a balloon placed over a soda bottle, it still won't be enough to cause your stomach to explode.

Subtrope of Unconventional Food Usage and Bizarre Beverage Use. Compare Soda Can Shakeup, a similarly eruptive reaction involving soft drinks.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bocchi the Rock!: It's a sore spot for Yoyoko that her Mentos and Cola videos don't get anywhere near the views of her bandmates' vids online.

Comic Books

• Looney Tunes: In a 2009 issue, Pepé Le Pew is shown watching a variety of videos on VousTube based around then-viral videos (such as Keyboard Cat and OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" music video). In one, Daffy and Porky attempt the soda geyser experiment, only to get covered in soda and frozen in place (as Porky accidentally used a calcium tablet instead of "Mentals Mint Candy").

Fan Works

• Prescience: In chapter 4, Izuku helps foil a convenience store robbery by placing Mentos inside soda bottles, sending them flying at the robbers' faces.

Films — Animation

• The Boss Baby: Family Business: The climax of the film sees Tina and Tabitha use a Mentos and Coke combo to produce a candy lava volcano, which destroys the servers being used by Armstrong to keep the parents as zombies.
• Sausage Party: During the battle between the drug-high humans and food, one man is killed by having Diet Coke and Mentos force-fed to him, causing his head to explode.
• Wreck-It Ralph: One landmark of candy-coated kart racing arcade game Sugar Rush is Diet Cola Mountain, a volcano of boiling Diet Cola with a massive array of Mentos stalagmites hanging from the top. It's home to an unfinished course where local outcast Vanellope has made her home. It also becomes a Chekhov's Volcano in a dramatic context; when the Cy-Bugs overrun the game, Ralph recalls that they are attracted to beams of light and heads off to attempt a Heroic Sacrifice to dislodge the Mentos and cause an eruption.

Films — Live-Action

• Aliens in the Attic: Jake uses Mentos to create soda grenades to fight against the aliens during the climax. The soda grenades become ineffective when the aliens use the molecular expander.
• Home Sweet Home Alone: One of the implements Max uses against Pam are plastic soda bottles with Mentos. The bottles either fizz in her face when opened or fly into her.
• Urban Legend: Professor Wexler debunks the lethality of ingesting soda and Pop Rocks at the same time in class by making two students do the same as an experiment. Later on, the Big Bad invokes the urban legend by forcing Pop Rocks and drain cleaner chemicals down one victim's throat.

Literature

• Captain Underpants:
  • At one point in Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy — Part 1: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets, Melvin's parents are shown performing a top secret government experiment, which apparently involves pouring Pop Rocks into soda.
  • In Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot, Smart Earth — an identical counterpart of Earth made out of an element that increases intelligence — explodes due to a science experiment involving the mixture of Smart Diet Coke, Smart Pop Rocks, and Smart Mentos. Later, Sir Stinks-A-Lot is destroyed by being forcefully fed our world's versions of said items.
• In Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, Boxxo vends Lammis a pack of Soda bottles and "certain candies" when the Frog King attacks. After an accidental "Eureka!" Moment, she and the wounded hunters create a fountain that hits the monster in the eye and stalls it long enough for The Cavalry to arrive.

Live-Action TV

• 1000 Ways to Die: "Bubbled Out" features two brothers who try this mix inside their stomachs, downing an entire liter of soda each before swallowing a packet of Mentos. Their stomachs burst from the built-up pressure as jets of soda shoot from their mouths, killing them in seconds.
• The Goldbergs: In "Family Takes Care Of Beverly", Barry stops Erica from consuming Diet Coke and Pop Rocks. Citing the urban legend, he claims that Erica owes him a life debt and makes her help him in his quest to win Lainey's affections. Later, after she rejects him, he tries to commit suicide by mixing the two. This doesn't work, but he has stomach trouble the next day.
• Good Luck Charlie: In "Charlie Did It!" Gabe enjoys putting mints in soda bottles at the store to make them explode. This comes in handy as a distraction so his family can escape their supermarket arrest and incapacitate Hugo.
• Modern Family: "Kiss and Tell" has Haley, conflicted over kissing Dylan, confess such to her uncles Mitchell and Cameron. Both are surprised, with the former claiming that he thought he joined a cult and the latter claiming that he heard he consumed Mentos and a Coke and exploded.
• Mythbusters:
  • Naturally, as a series focusing on testing Urban Legends and old wives' tales, this was covered at multiple points. The first time this was attempted, it was not given any sort of rating ("Busted", "Plausible", or "Confirmed") and instead simply had the science behind it explained, with them using a nozzle to reach a height of over 30 feet. A later episode tested out the myth that this reaction could cause a ruptured stomach; when attempted with that of a pig, it was discovered that simply drinking the soda eliminates much of the carbon dioxide responsible for the eruption. Even when the gas was directly pumped into the stomach, it only inflated, albeit to a point that would cause pain.
  • The very first pilot episode looked at the soda and Pop Rocks myth in relation to the Little Mikey claim. Like in the later Diet Coke and Mentos test, it was determined that the reaction was far from powerful enough, though the pig stomach used inflated to a painful extent when unrealistically large amounts of both were added.
• Scrubs: "My Mirror Image" has this occur with Pop Rocks and soda. Keith and Ted mix them together to see what will happen, creating a mess that the Janitor clearly isn't happy about having to clean up.
• Supernatural: A variation happens in "I Believe the Children Are Our Future". Two children get hospitalized with stomach ulcers, and they claim it was the result of them mixing Pop Rocks and cola. Sam and Dean discover that this is only made possible because Jesse Turner, a half-demon child who's destined to be molded into the Antichrist, lives in town, and his growing reality-warping powers are bringing all the old wives' tales he believes in to life.
• Two and a Half Men: "Lookin' for Japanese Subs" has Jake and Eldridge film a variety of Jackass-style stunts to upload to the Internet. The first one, the "human volcano", has Jake consume warm (off-brand) Diet Coke and Mentos and lie on the floor. Alan shows up in the middle of it, getting vomit violently spewed in his face as a result.
• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: In "Kimmy Drives a Car!", after chipping a tooth, Jacqueline uses a Mentos candy to fill the gap. While at the dentist, it falls into the receptionist's Diet Coke, causing a messy eruption.

Music Videos

• The music video for Weezer's "Pork and Beans" features a variety of then-popular viral videos, including Eepybird's "Extreme Mentos & Diet Coke". Rivers first sprays himself in the face with a single bottle, before Voltz and Grobe of Eepybird help enact a large-scale display of Diet Coke and Mentos eruptions behind the band.

Print Media

• This◊ unused The New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt depicts two Muslim men on an airplane, with one covertly handing a pack of Mentos to the other, who has a cup of Diet Coke prepared for explosive purposes.

Web Animation

• Gossip City: In this video, Masa targets Miho's baby son, Hide, for this stunt and passes himself off as a police officer to prank her. He even records the prank to blackmail her into letting him use her baby, but the Ugumori brothers show up to stop him, with Leon pinning Masa down with a box he carried before he could do any harm.
• The Homestar Runner Halloween episode "The House That Gave Sucky Treats" has Pop Rocks as an option to give to The Cheat and Strong Mad for their trick-or-treat candy. Doing so will cause The Cheat to eat them and drink a soda, leading to his head exploding. Giving actual rocks to them will have Strong Mad eat them, along with eating half a can of soda...and The Cheat's head will still explode.

Webcomics

• Ennui GO!: In Science Fair, Izzy is forced to judge a middle school Science Fair. Among other failed projects, Cricket and Bee are shown to have constructed the inevitable model volcano. Bee wanted to use hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid, but Cricket told her to get Diet Coke and Mentos instead. Bee proceeded to forget what he said and got Dr. Pepper and Skittles instead, ultimately resulting in merely a very sticky volcano.
• Moringmark TOH Comics: In one strip, Willow and Gus mention how they once knew a witch called Lucine (an Identical Stranger to Luz) who decided one day to drink an entire bottle of fizzy Coke and Mentos. We don't see the aftermath, but it's confirmed that it killed her, and seriously traumatized Gus and Willow.
• xkcd:
  • #346 has someone seemingly demonstrating the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment to their friend, deeming it "the coolest thing" and telling them to "give it a moment". It causes said friend's father to magically come back (either from death or abandonment).
  • #1053, which is about not making fun of people for not knowing things, notes that on average, around 10,000 hear about something for the first time. The second panel has Megan not know what the "Diet Coke and Mentos thing" is, causing Cueball to gesture her to come with him to the grocery store, deeming her "one of today's lucky 10,000".

Web Original

• What If?: The first image of "Comet Ice" has Black Hat Guy offer to plug an overflowing Diet Coke with Mentos. The Alt Text contains a Mythology Gag, stating that "some of the lucky 10,000 are less lucky than others."

Web Videos

• The Angry Grandpa: Diet Coke & Mentos Explosion! has the titular Grandpa being challenged to hold his face over a bottle of Diet Coke while dropping a handful of Mentos in. He only lasts a single second and goes into one of his typical rages afterward. He later gets sprayed with the same while he's distracted.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd: In the Pepsiman episode, the titular character's Kryptonite Factor is shown to be, naturally, Mentos. The TV Game Guy's ultimate weapon is revealed to be a bazooka that fires a massive amount of Mentos, blowing a hole right in the middle of Pepsiman and sending him falling to his death in a parody of the T-1000's destruction.
• The CollegeHumor skit "Urban Legend Ward" takes place at an emergency hospital ward that is being overrun by victims of various Urban Legend-inspired disasters. One patient in particular has washed down Pop Rocks with coke, and the doctors can only watch in horror as his belly bursts open in a geyser of soda and gore, killing him instantly.
• SuperMarioLogan: "Bowser Junior's Big Mess!" has Junior view Show Within a Show host Charleyyy mix Mentos and Diet Coke in the bathtub, creating an eruption. While Junior is forbidden from performing it himself, Toad convinces him to do it. He quickly regrets doing so upon causing a mess in the kitchen.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: In "Jelly Beans Have Power" Princess Bubblegum uses soda pop and Scotch mints (or, in this case, the basic ingredients) to create explosions with her new candy elemental powers.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • "The Date" begins with Richard finishing a story by stating that you should never mix Pop Rocks and soda. Given his battered appearance, one can assume he attempted this himself.
  • "The Friend" turns this into a Chekhov's Gun. Gumball and Darwin are prevented from eating Anais' cupcakes because they get blasted by a mint and soda cannon. Later on, the Chimera to blow himself up with this against the police. He downs 3 soda bottles and threatens to eat the mint, but he gets tased by the cops, knocking the mint into his mouth and setting it off.
• In one episode of American Dad!, to save Steve from his former students, Lewis chugs an entire Mentos packet with several liters of Diet Coke. The result is a propulsion of foam from his mouth that jettisons him across the field, ramming into the thugs. Steve is in disbelief that he planned it; cue Lewis skywriting "did too!" with the foam.
• Animaniacs: One Randy Beaman segment has Colin claim that Randy Beaman's younger brother ate Pop Rocks and drank soda simultaneously, causing his head to explode.
• Big Mouth: Rick swallows soda and Mentos as a form of suicide after realizing Jessi won't love Nick back, resulting in his stomach exploding.
• Craig of the Creek: The Halloween Episode "Trick or Creek" has the Stump Trio be told the tale of No-Neck Natthew, whose head exploded after being challenged to consume soda and "Poppin' Pebbles" simultaneously, and now haunts those who steal others' candy. When No-Neck Natthew appears to start haunting them, they defeat it by filling its torso with Poppin' Pebbles and soda, blowing it up to reveal that it was Big Red the whole time.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the episode "Partying Is Such Sweet Soiree", where Bloo hosts a wild party at Foster's, Mac accidentally tastes a tiny droplet of punch and experiences a massive sugar rush, causing mayhem around the room. He then consumes soda and Pop Rocks, and while he doesn't outright explode, he goes into hyperdrive, stripping naked and causing more chaos through the halls and all over town.
• Futurama:
  • “Into the Wild Green Yonder” features a dancing fountain display at Mars Vegas created through a mix of Diet Slurm and Mentos.
  • "Attack Of The Killer App": Among other videos to get subscribers, Bender creates one of The Professor mixing Mentos into a bottle of Diet Solarmanite; a blast of fire comes out of the mouth of the bottle lighting The Professor's head on fire.
• Grojband: After getting locked in a zoo in "Zoohouse Rock", Kin attempts to break the band out by sticking soda and candy in their cage's lock. It does nothing.
  Kin: Nothing? Last time I combined Chuggers Cola and Blastymouth Candy, I lost three teeth.
• The Loud House: In "Making the Case", one of the ways Lincoln tries to win a trophy is by sticking a bunch of breath mints to himself and stage-diving into a wading pool full of soda to make the soda go crazy.
• Megas XLR: In "TV Dinner", Coop and Jamie debate the legend that consuming Pop Rocks and soda will make your stomach explode after the former considers using it to win a burping contest. He's ultimately cut off before he can consume the soda, however. The myth is later proven true when the combination is (unintentionally) used to destroy a planet-sized space monster.
• Robot Chicken: After hearing of the myth of a kid's demise from consuming Pop Rocks and soda, a bunch of kids dare their friend Mikey to try it and see what happens. One kid even bets a dollar that he'll do it. Mikey quickly turns into an out-of-control Gasshole whose ignited farts cause him to run faster than the nearby train before his body ultimately starts spinning out of control. A nearby citizen caps his butt with a softball, only for the explosion to turn upward and send his head flying off to land by his friends' feet. In their Stunned Silence, the one kid hands a dollar to the other.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Homer Badman" has Homer improvising a grenade out of a can of cola and a bag of Pop Rocks to cover his escape after he steals the Gummi Venus di Milo.
    Homer: See you in hell, candy boys!
  • "Midnight Towboy" has an odd variant. When Homer rushes to the Kwik-E-Mart to purchase more milk for Maggie, he discovers that all the milk has been purchased. Apu tells him that he sold it all to the teenagers, as there is a rumor that mixing milk, Mentos, and lottery ticket scrapings to make jet pack fuel.
    Homer: Does it work?
    Jimbo: [floating a foot off the ground with a jetpack strapped to his back] Kinda.
  • In "The Debarted", after learning their new friend Donny is an accomplice of Skinner, Bart and Nelson capture him and reveal their latest, greatest prank idea: using crates of Diet Coke and Mentos to create a giant explosion at Skinner's house. Skinner arrives to stop them, but Donny ultimately pushes the crates together and triggers the explosion to help the boys escape.
• Solar Opposites: In "The Stockiverse Ray," Cherie mixes Mentos and soda to blow up the Game Boy that provides heat to the Wall.

---