Ricky Joy’s Sour Crush Refund Pays $3 a Bottle — Only $1.50 if It’s Empty or Expired — and Wants Photos of the Lot Number: What Changed Since the September 10 Recall of 2.3 Million Candy Bottles

If you have a Ricky Joy Sour Crush bottle at home, stop using it, take it away from children and register it for a refund. That is the instruction in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission notice of September 10, 2026, which covers about 2.3 million bottles: “The rolling ball on the recalled candy bottles can detach, posing a risk of serious injury or death from choking hazard.” The CPSC lists the remedy as a refund and the incidents as “None reported.”

What the September headlines did not say is how much the refund is. The company’s registration form now spells it out in a help box next to the product questions: “$3 per product that is neither empty nor expired. $1.50 per empty and/or expired product/container. These rates are per unit.” The rate is per bottle, not per receipt, and the form does not ask for proof of purchase — it asks for photos. The CPSC gives the shelf price as “about $3 for the bottle and for between $13 and $32 for the pack,” so a single full bottle comes back at roughly what it cost. If you bought a 3-pack or a 12-pack, the refund still counts bottles at the same per-unit rate, which may be more or less than the pack price you paid.

People searching for a “ricky joy slime sour crush recall” are often mixing up two products. Sour Crush is the Ricky Joy bottle recalled in September 2026. Slime Licker is a different rolling candy, sold under the Toxic Waste brand by Candy Dynamics, that was recalled in 2023 — more on that below.

The recall covers “Ricky Joy-branded Sour Crush Rolling Liquid Candy bottles,” each holding 1.85 fluid ounces of sour liquid candy that is applied through a rollerball top. According to the CPSC, the front of the bottle carries “the Ricky Joy logo, ‘EXTREME SOUR’, ‘SOUR CRUSH’ and the flavor name” and the image of a green monster. They were sold one at a time and in packs of three or 12, in four colors:

• Blue — blue raspberry
• Red — strawberry
• Green — green apple
• Pink — watermelon

Where they were sold: “H-E-B, Forman Mill and other candy stores nationwide and online at Walmart.com, CandyFunHouse.com, RickyJoy.com and other online retailers from January 2023 through May 2026.” The CPSC notice lists no lot numbers or UPC codes as exceptions, so every Sour Crush rolling bottle in those four flavors from that period is part of the recall. The importer is International Trade Imports LLC, doing business as The Ricky Joy Company, of Cumming, Georgia; the bottles were made in Colombia.

Registration runs through the company, not through a store or a court. The official page is rickyjoy.com/pages/recall (also reachable from “Recall Information” at the bottom of rickyjoy.com), and the phone line in the CPSC notice is 404-975-0352, “from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.” As of October 14, 2026, the online form works like this:

1. Contact details: name, email, mailing address and phone number.
2. Product details: which flavors you are returning (there is a “Not sure” box), how many bottles, and — optionally — where you bought them.
3. Condition: two yes-or-no questions, “Is the product empty?” and “Is the product expired?” The answers decide whether you get $3 or $1.50 per bottle.
4. Photos: “consumers will be required to upload photographs of the product, including the label and cap showing the lot number and expiration date.” JPG, PNG or WEBP, up to 5 MB each.
5. Certification: you confirm that the product is part of the Sour Crush recall and that you have stopped using it and kept it away from children.

After you submit, the page says “You’ll receive a prepaid shipping label by email within 2–3 business days.” You box the bottles, attach the label and drop the package at a carrier location at no cost. “Once we receive and verify the unit(s), your refund will be issued to the payment method or address on file.” Two warnings from the form: “Please do not return the product to a retail store,” and if you decide not to take part, the company says to dispose of the bottle immediately.

We found no registration deadline on the company page or in the CPSC notice as of October 14, 2026. The company has not said how many bottles have been returned so far. If the company does not respond, the CPSC notice links a recall complaint form for exactly that case — “if you are experiencing issues with a recall remedy or believe a company is being non-responsive to your remedy request” — and the CPSC hotline is 800-638-2772.

The recall is real and on the federal record as CPSC recall number 26-748. The only contact points the CPSC gives are 404-975-0352 and the company’s own site, rickyjoy.com, with the form at rickyjoy.com/pages/recall. The genuine process starts with you: you register, and the company emails a prepaid shipping label. The form asks for your name, address, email, product photos and the number of bottles. It does not ask for a bank account, card number or Social Security number, and nothing in the recall involves a fee to get your refund.

Treat anything else with suspicion: a text or email saying you are owed money “from the Sour Crush settlement,” a link to a look-alike domain, or a request to pay shipping. There is no settlement. Top Class Actions reported on September 17, 2026 that “the company is not currently facing legal action over the recall,” and we found no federal case naming Ricky Joy or its importer in the court filings we checked (federal docket feeds from October 10, 2026). No injuries have been reported. If your child was hurt by one of these bottles, report it at SaferProducts.gov and keep the bottle and the ball.

The Sour Crush recall is the latest in a line of rolling-ball candy recalls. On October 5, 2023, the CPSC announced two of them on the same day. Candy Dynamics of Carmel, Indiana recalled about 70 million Slime Licker Sour Rolling Liquid Candies because “the candy’s rolling ball can detach from the product’s container into a child’s mouth.” Those had been sold at Walmart, Five Below, Amazon and elsewhere from June 2015 through July 2023 for between $2 and $4, after two reports of the ball detaching and no injuries. And Cocco Candy and KGR Distribution recalled about 145,800 Cocco Candy rolling candies after, in the CPSC’s words, “a 7-year-old girl who choked and died after the candy’s rolling ball dislodged and became trapped in her throat in New York in April 2023.”

Were Slime Lickers discontinued? The 2023 recall pulled the Slime Licker rolling-ball bottles from June 2015 to July 2023 and offered refunds. The CPSC notice does not say whether the product was discontinued or redesigned afterward, and we could not confirm that either way. That 2023 recall does not cover Ricky Joy’s Sour Crush, and the 2026 Sour Crush recall does not cover Slime Licker.

What are the different flavors of Toxic Waste Sour candy? We can answer this only for the recalled rolling candy. The 2023 notice lists Slime Licker in “blue (Blue Razz), red (Strawberry), green (Sour Apple) and pink (Black Cherry) packaging with ‘TOXIC WASTE’ brand.” The rest of the Toxic Waste range was not part of either recall. Sour Crush uses a similar color scheme — blue raspberry, strawberry, green apple and watermelon — so check the brand name on the front of the bottle, not the color.

Two other common search questions are about different products. “What two candy bars are recalled?” and “Is there an orange juice recall in 2026?” have nothing to do with Sour Crush, and this page does not cover them. Food recalls of that kind are posted by the FDA and USDA, not the CPSC; check fda.gov/safety/recalls for the current list.