The Hidden Truth Of Chia Pets

Those familiar with Chia Pets take a step back and behold the strangeness of the premise: "Hey, why don't we smear chia seeds onto a terracotta animal and water the animal till the seeds grow green chia fur?" Alright buddy, slow down and go back to your data entry. Well, in 2019 — 42 years after Joseph Pedott "discovered" the Chia Pet in 1977 (more on that later) — 500,000 people were still buying his product every year at $16 a pop. By 2024 the company was charging around $20 or more for most versions of Chi Pets. You can do the math. Pedott died a multimillionaire and NPO creator in 2023 at the age of 91. 

In what is definitely a prime case of the power of novelty goods, Chia Pets not only persist to this day but thrive — especially around holiday time (no surprise). Refinery 29 in 2019 accurately pointed out that a big chunk of Chia Pets' ongoing appeal is nostalgia and "the ever-popular kitsch aesthetic of the '80s." Too true. Even celebrities like Lady Gaga on Instagram have wreathed their actual pets with lei-like rings of green to make them Chia ... Pets. Get it? It's an actual pet that looks like a Chia Pet. 

Now that you've pulled yourself off the floor after nearly dying from hysterical laughter we can get real: There's a lot to Chia Pets beyond the pasty chia smear and the watering of a decorative planter, right back to the product's late '70s and early '80s roots. From its origin to its jingle, its marketer to its edibility, Chia Pet's roots go deep.

"There's this stupid item called the Chia Pet. I don't know why anybody buys it." That's what a sales executive from Thrifty Drug Store told Joseph Pedott in 1977, per The New York Times. When he asked about the store's biggest selling item during a household goods convention in Chicago. Pedott isn't the original Chia Pet creator — he's the dude who spun it into a successful business venture. 

As for where Thrifty Drug Store got its Chia Pets, we've got a man in Oaxaca, Mexico to thank. The Washington Post explains that the original Oaxacan product was identical to the Chia Pet we know and (possibly) love: Take a figurine made from terracotta, smear a Chia seed paste across it, water the figurine for a couple weeks, and the seeds sprout green. The seeds were a specific strain of Chia called Salvia hispanica that grew quickly enough to resemble hair growth. 

Just to demonstrate how committed Pedott was to the venture, he took a trip to Mexico to locate the Chia Pet's original creator, a man named of Walter Houston. Pedott bought the rights to Houston's Chia product for $25,000 and took up production himself through his own self-named business, Joseph Enterprises. 

Folks might be surprised to know how popular and apparently revenue-worthy Chia Pets still are. A quick scroll down the official Chia Pet website reveals a whole bunch of headline Chia products that are way, way more sophisticated than the early days of the original rams, turtles, kittens, and puppies. There's even a Star Wars Baby Yoda (Grogu, for those who know) officially branded and merchandized Chia figure, which is no small feat of business arrangement. 

Readers will notice that many of the products aren't animals but human heads or busts, including Indiana Jones, actress Jenny Ortega's version of Wednesday Addams, Willie Nelson (complete with red bandana), the long, white, screaming face of Ghost Face from the "Scream" movies, and (we never thought we'd write these words) an Ice Spice afro Chia. And yes, Amazon has a Donald Trump flowing locks bust for sale, which you could assumedly dye yellow.

Chia heads aren't a new thing, though. Creator Joseph Pedott's first Chia product was a head that grew Chia's signature green hair. The head looks like painter Bob Ross if Ross was a wonky-eyed Mr. Potato Head complete with old-timey comic Jimmy Durante's bulbous "schnoz" (as Durante himself called it). Somewhere between the original Chia Dude and the famous '80s Chia commercials Pedott must have thought, "Hey, this would be a lot less creepy if people were petting Chia dogs and not Chia Dude's hair."

Have you ever picked up a Chia Pet and thought, "Yum, yum, where's the mayo and/or sriracha"? If so, then you're in luck because yes, you can actually eat those green, leafy bits of sheep's wool, Deadpool's hair, or whatever other furry bit grows out of your terracotta object. Sites like Healthy Eaton even come equipped with a full-on text and video tutorial/justification regarding the ancient health benefits of eating Chia seeds across various Mesomerican civilizations. Plus, Chia seeds apparently do all this other stuff that you've heard lots of other foodstuffs do: reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, etc. So we're all set then, right? Just buy a whole truck full of Chia Pets and you'll live to 110. 

Not quite. The official Chia Pet FAQ directly addresses this question of seed edibility. Ahem, and we quote: "We advise that people and pets refrain from eating the seeds that come with the Chia Pet or the sprouts because the seeds are processed for optimal growth and neither the seeds nor the clay itself is handled by food-grade standards." If you somehow accidentally snip off some Chia sprouts with your incisors, chew them, and swallow them, the FAQ continues, you won't die. This is good. Also, there's a legally protective bit about the Chia Cat Grass Planter not being sold as food for actual, non-Chia cats. What to do if you've got a hankering for chia seeds? Try the grocery store.

You know how it goes: People always get the best ideas when they're drunk or high, and then always realize later that they're the worst ideas. But with just enough of the sauce to keep you relaxed and slightly lubricated versus fully going downhill inebriated, some folks get strangely lucid. In fact, tons of research has linked relaxation to creativity, as one study from the Behavioral and Brain Functions at the National Library of Medicine explains. So anyway, how does this tangent connect to Chia Pets? Well, booze might have been responsible for our instantly recognizable (and somewhat irritating) "Ch-ch-ch-chia!" jingle.

The origin of the Chia jingle has become something of an urban legend at this point. The official Chia Pet website dates the jingle to 1982, two years after Joseph Pedott launched Joseph Enterprises to wrangle his entrepreneurial ideas. From there, we've got two versions of the jingle's origin. One version relates a calculated office "brainstorming session" to develop Chia Pets' "low-budget feel and irresistible jingle" hook. Someone stuttered "Chia" and presto: we get our three-note, five-syllable earworm.

The other version of the tale portrays a sloppier creative origin. In this version Pedott and whomever of his business associates or circles of friends were out for a night on the town. Like in the first version, someone stuttered "Chia" — intentionally or not — and boom: We've got music for the ages. 

Children of the 80s, recall if you will: "Clap on, clap off, the Clapper!" In the commercial, there's a tired grandma in bed who rolls to one side and claps twice in the air to turn off the lights in the room without getting up. Or there's an elderly guy who sits down in front of the TV to clap on his Sunday football game, so revolutionary is modern life. And that's the Clapper, by the way, not the clap — don't get it twisted. 

So yes, if you grew up seeing Chia Pet commercials on TV you probably also saw commercials for the Clapper. Targeted at the precise intersection of abject laziness meets legitimate physical limitations, the Clapper could connect to a whole bunch of household products, including security alarms, and turn them on or off at the clap of the hands. 

So what does this have to do with Chia Pets? Well, the two Canadian inventors who created the Clapper pitched it to Chia creator Joseph Perott in the form of a prototype at some workshop in Toronto. Despite his very affable appearance, Perott was a hard sell and ultra-practical businessman. But, Perott liked the simplicity of The Clapper and thought it could make a good patent. Plus, its use was repetitive, much like it and the Chia Pets' jingles. "If you do something repetitive," How Stuff Works quotes him, "you're doing a little brainwashing." And so folks keep buying Chia Pets to this day.