“What kind of tea is hard to swallow?”/“Reality.”

A popular pun about tea is:
 
Q: What kind of tea is sometimes hard to swallow?
A: Reality.
 
The joke was from 9-year-old Benje Morris of Charlotte, North Carolina, who won a 1994 Laffy Taffy “America’s Funniest Kid” joke contest. Similar “tea” puns—on words such as “honesty”—have been published in newspapers since the 19th century.
 
 
Google News Archive
2 January 1994, Spartanburg (SC) Herald-Journal, “America’s Funniest Kid cracks one-liners in N.C.” (AP), pg. B3, col. 1:
CHARLOTTE—What kind of tea is sometimes hard to swallow?
 
The answer is—reality. Get it?
 
It may not be a sidesplitter, but the joke was good enough to win 9-year-old Benjie Morris of Charlotte the title of America’s Funniest Kid in a national contest sponsored by the makers of Laffy Taffy candy.
 
Twitter
Krishan Gupta
‏@NowImKrishan
“What kind of tea is the hardest to swallow?  Reality.”  ~Laffy Taffy.
12:26 PM - 24 Dec 2008
 
Twitter
JessicaPar
‏@JessicaPar
What kind of tea is sometimes hard to swallow?
Reality.
- Thank you Laffy Taffy!
6:33 PM - 16 May 2009
   
BuzzFeed
21 Painfully Corny Jokes That Are So Bad They’re Actually Good
LOLing for days.
posted on Aug. 8, 2014, at 10:04 a.m.
Kayla Yandoli
(...)
21. What kind of tea is hard to swallow?
 
YouTube
What Kind of Tea is the Hardest to Swallow? (Joke of the Day 5)
YourSecondMom
Published on Jan 25, 2016
Joke of the Day! Featuring a guest appearance of Queen Elizabeth.