Found at Costco: Corry's Slug and Snail Death

Dean and I found this slug and snail poison at Costco today while shopping for the Boing Boing picnic tomorrow.

I'm a contributing editor here at Boing Boing. I also have a blog (TokyoMango), a book (Urawaza), and I freelance for Wired, Make, the NY Times Magazine, PRI's Studio360, etc. I'm @tokyomango on Twitter.

MORE: Weird

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

Ito Kagehisa

I wonder if it works on flesh-eating slugs.
Hoot

There’s a note on the side of the box (or, at least, there used to be) that states something like, “Rotate for freshness. Fresh death.
mack

Gastropods are the FIRST WAVE OF ALIEN INVASION. Slowly and deliberately, they are laying their plans and the BEST-PREPARED GARDENERS are our first line of defense!

Slug & Snail Death does WHAT IT SAYS ON THE PACKAGE, like a 12-gauge round to a zombie’s head.

THEY’RE COMING! BE VIGILANT! WATCH THE SKIES!!!

(faints)
Anonymous

They sell death by net weight? Ideally, the slugs and snails could just get resettled to Corry’s favorite golf green.
kiloseven

Slugs delendo est!
johnocomedy

I guess version 3.24 wasn’t deadly enough
Xeno

Very popular in Seattle. Better than sweet and low if you ask me.
theawesomerobot

Hah, you’re not the only one – A commenter pointed this product out on Mark’s post about insect killer packaging a while ago: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/27/insect-trap-has-admi.html
- Donald Petersen
  
  Yeah, that was me. But I never tire of seeing it. Could be why this packaging has lasted so many decades without substantial revision.
Marshall

When I was a child, a half-empty, faded box of this was a standard issue mystery in every garage in the neighborhood.

We used to have so many snails at my house that my mother and I would go out every morning, collect a coffee can full off the plants and salt them to death. Way more fun than poison and probably better for the local animals, too.
- akputney
  
  Everyone in my So. Cal. neighborhood (mid 1950s & on) had the same box. The grown-ups used it all the time.
  
  We had big Dusty Millers that overhung a retaining wall. Dean’s great-grandpa would come by, I’d get the bucket and the salt, and he’d hold up the Dusty Millers while I picked the dozens of snails off the wall from underneath.The sizzle and bubble of them hitting the salt were a little kid’s delight. I passed the pleasure onto my kids. Dean’s a salter, as well as a Happy Mutant.
  
  (Snails and slugs love little saucers of beer, which is mildly entertaining, but no sizzle nor bubbles…and a shameful waste of a dietary staple.)
wetwarefault

Sluggo is the best, it’s even harmless to pets and kids!
runciblefish

I agree that this stuff works really well, but be sure and read all label directions. About 20 years ago I used this by sprinkling it in the grass around our flower bed. I didn’t think anything about it till later, when my dog started shaking. I remembered reading that you’re not supposed to feed it to dogs, but I didn’t think he’d lick up this sawdust-looking stuff out of the grass. The vet was able to save my dog. He told me that dogs love it because they use molasses in the mix. So, unless they’ve changed the formula, watch out for your dog.
Anonymous

This stuff is a must have in the Pacific NW. slugs won’t eat your mint, oregano, or chives but will devour most everything else. If you read the directions and get the pellets there it would be difficult to get the poison in your food.
Anonymous

This is just now on BoingBoing? I remember laughing my a$$ off as a kid (back in the late 70′s), thinking how funny it was that you could buy a box of death.
- Dean Putney
  
  Yeah, Lisa, this is SO this afternoon.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Stop playing with the box of death, kids, why not a nice box of rain instead?
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLFk1qKWxLU
Eltanin Antenna

I was picturing a slug skeleton in a robe carrying a tiny scythe AND SPEAKING LIKE THIS when it dawned on me that slugs don’t have skeletons.
Kimrod

I’ve always entertained myself by using an aluminum pie tin and some cheap beer. Slugs and snails will drink it until they explode. Through a pair of binocs it looks like a “B” grade sci-fi disaster flick.
Xopher

Thanks to this thread, I can now imagine buying beer again.

Not Guinness, though. That would be wasting food.

But actually, I’m curious about whether Guinness-drinking slugs would visibly darken before exploding. Fortunately I don’t live where slugs are a big issue, or the experiment might be more tempting.
orwellian

Okay, so we now know what powers his awesome. Dead slugs and snails.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  He’s lucky they are dead: because if you eat them while they are still alive, your farts will smell real bad. I mean real bad.
Anonymous

I first learned about Corry’s Snail and Slug Death from my Great-Grandfather who was an apprentice of Harry Carter’s back in the 1920′s. He was showing me unpublished photos from the initial uncovering of King Tutankhamun’s tomb and I remember asking about several boxes of Corry’s Snail and Slug Death in the corner. He said Corry’s was so common for as long as anyone could remember, no one in the exhibition gave it any thought. The packing hasn’t changed either.
Gilbert Wham

Thing is, slugs & snails love beer so much, you will attract every one in the neighbourhood. Best thing to do is, put the saucer of beer in your neighbour’s garden.
LightningRose

This is news to you young punks?

I sold this at Pearson Hardware in Oakland* in 1970, and it certainly wasn’t a new product then.

*) Now Dr Comics and Mr Games – flip the door mat back and you’ll still find “Pearson Hardware Co” embedded in tile.
thebelgianpanda

Wait, wut?

First, if you don’t know this is poisonous to your critters then *what are you thinking*.

Second, keep your domesticated critters out of your garden (I built a 5 foot fence with barb arms, don’t have deer so that’s tall enough), and a pencil-thick line around yer veg beds works great.

Third, it is a slug and snail bait. They *want* to eat it. Get it as far away from your actual veg since it *attracts* slugs and snails.

This plus beer plus a small amount of soap spray works like a champ.
EH

My mom has had a box of this in the garage for at least 40 years.
Anonymous

Beer-quaffing slugs are far more entertaining than the movie Beerfest was.
Anonymous

See the History of Corry’s Slug & Snail Death written by a family member, here on our web site:

http://www.cityfarmer.org/corry.html
wolfiesma

People are too possessive of the vegetables in their gardens. So some snails eat a few of your precious veggies? Let them! Or pick them off. But sprinkling poison all over the stuff you are going to eat? It’s bad enough when agribusiness does it, but on your own little garden plot? *Shudders*

I’ve been planting mad butterfly host plants everywhere, and, naturally, butterfly larvae have made their appearance throughout. They consumed the dill plant down to the stalk and the same with sunflower and watermelon plants. Homegrown watermelon would have been nice, but now the garden is full of butterflies. I’m telling you, habitat gardening is way cooler than vegetable gardening and you never ever get the urge to run out and buy big boxes of pesticides in the process.
- Locien
  
  You sort of discount that people may not be so appreciative of simply having bugs to look at, as opposed to vegetables to eat. And to be honest, because I hate slugs and snails, I’m all for killing any that tread upon a vegetable garden.
Anonymous

Twin pack! What a great value!
monkeyspider

This stuff sen me to the ER when I was 3 with vomiting and convulsions. I had apparently handled it, then, know better that to eat it, put it back and later must have put my hands in my mouth or something. Just from touching it and licking my fingers, I was half conscious and seizing. Creepy stuff that will never be in my house.
Xopher

Someone should sprinkle this stuff around RNC headquarters.

oopsdidisaythatnoicouldnthaveyoumusthavesaidthat
Anonymous

“Ideal for Vegetable Gardens”… yeah right.
Anonymous

Huh. My parents used to have a box of this in the garage. I never thought much about how absurd the branding is. How vintage.
jere7my

Take out the word “death” and they look like boxes of delicious chocolate snails.
igpajo

I have almost an identical memory of stumbling across that with a friend at a hardware store and laughing so hard people were coming around the ends of the aisle to see WTF was going on. I think we were 12.
Anonymous

That stuff is in every hardware & grocery store. Welcome to SF! It’s not toxic to humans, but still kind of scorched-earth. If you don’t do something, though, the snails around here will literally eat everything. We put either a ring of pennies around the bases of the plants that the snails love, or, you can get copper tape to wrap around the stems. It keeps them off pretty well. Apparently, the copper sets up a micro current in the mucus of the snail and they don’t like it and won’t cross it. I gotta say, though, i love the truth in marketing!
BrotherPower

Cory’s Slug & Snail Death comes with a ray gun — way better.
Lisa Katayama

Dean’s mom found this: http://www.corrys.com/msds/MSDS_corrys_slug_snail_death.pdf
Anonymous

So, is it basically just a box of salt?
Anonymous

Costco does NOT carry Corry’s Slug and Snail Death anymore. I hate that!

Catalina Eddy