Teens’ latest fad? Eating laundry pods. The results aren’t clean — or safe.

When you’re doing laundry, stick to the job.

Leave the detergent pods where they belong — and out of your mouth. Even though they look super pretty and colorful and a little like candy.

Needless to say, teens these days are ingesting the colorful pacs that are thrown into the wash as an alternative to messy powder or liquids.

It likely started as a joke.

Back in March 2017, College Humor posted a video of a college student ruminating whether he should eat a laundry pod while seeing a bowl of them while studying and alone. He Googles whether consuming them is safe, calls the poison control center, obsesses more, then eventually pretends to gorge on a whole bowl of blue and orange pods. The last scene in the skit is of the man on a stretcher convulsing with a stained mouth covered by an oxygen mask. The caption: “I don’t regret it.”

“Memes” soon started popping up of people putting the pods on their cereal or pizza.

Online users joke about how “delicious” they look.

Vlogger Drew Philips actually went shopping for pods and filmed himself actually cooking and making salad with them (it was a joke, but still).

A spokesperson for Tide says their trendy packets are only meant for cleaning, um, laundry.

“Our laundry pacs are a highly concentrated detergent meant to clean clothes, and they're used safely in millions of households every day. They should be only used to clean clothes and kept up, closed and away from children.”

According to the D.C.-based not for profit National Capital Poison Center, biting into a pod can cause “serious injury or even death.”

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 9:10 PM with the headline "Teens’ latest fad? Eating laundry pods. The results aren’t clean — or safe.."