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In Strange words people say when leaving, we have an answer that says:

Legend has it that this term was first used in the 40's by a jamaican named Antoine Cleo. He believed that filling the area of a popsicle with deadly radiation, can be used against certain countries as biological warfare. He believed that the radiation had certain brainwashing chemicals inside of it and that placing the popsicles at stands at random areas could allow more people to buy the popsicles, thus was his plan for world domination. However, his plans were soon foiled when a strange cult called the Kindred Spirits blew up all the popsicle stands in North America killing the perpetrator, Antoine Cleo. "Lets blow this popsicle stand" was then started as an inside joke between 4 teenagers, then spread throughout the US. The phrase from then on meant;"Lets get out of here fast before something bad happens."

This doesn't come up too often, but I was sorely tempted to downvote because it seems like it's an urban legend, the kind that can spring up around these odd cases.

What are peoples' thoughts on allowing/encouraging/accepting these answers? I suppose I can't be impartial as I'm not a big supporter of propagating unfounded myth. I'd like to know what happens if we get these types of answers, though.

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    My first reaction was "this is completely made up and should be deleted," but then I saw J.R.'s comment on the answer that this is actually a real urban legend (though I'm still going to go with "made up", just not by the answerer). In this case I'm not really sure the answer answers the question, except for the last sentence which is already covered by an existing answer. And our general policy is to delete answers which don't add anything to existing answers (or rather, anything useful/on-topic). So I'll see what others think, but I'm leaning toward "delete"...
    – WendiKidd
    Jun 1, 2014 at 18:04

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It may be a "real" urban legend (in that it appears verbatim on at least one other website), but it's also clearly false (just try to find any evidence of The Great Popsicle Stand Destruction of the Early Fifties and see what you can turn up). It does not cite any sources (much less credible ones) and does not contribute anything to the question.

I downvoted it and would be perfectly happy if it were removed.

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  • The main source appears to be this post on Urban Dictionary for "let's blow this popsicle stand!" by Not Zane on July 23, 2004: urbandictionary.com/…, which cites "Evil minds of the 1900's.", which I and many other people have not been able to find any evidence of the existence of.
    – Solomon Ucko
    Jun 5 at 2:02

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