Following a disastrous TikTok challenge, a father watched in horror as his 7-year-old daughter’s clothing was burned through and the skin was torn off her little body by the seething fluid from a squishy toy.
Scarlett Selby, a seven-year-old from Missouri, loved playing with her NeeDoh squishy toy like many kids her age, but what began as an innocent experiment ended up being a terrible accident.
Seeing videos on TikTok of individuals freezing and microwaving the toy to make it more pliable inspired the young girl from a St. Louis suburb to level up her toy.
A warning that says, “Do NOT heat, freeze, or microwave, may cause personal injury,” is attached to the squishy stress cubes manufactured by Schylling Toys.
Social media users were testing the product’s limitations in spite of the warnings, posting videos of themselves biting, freezing, or heating the rubber jelly toys with polyvinyl alcohol content.
explosive
Scarlett was determined to add a little more fun to her toy, so she put her squishy in the freezer overnight and then microwaved it for a little while the following day.
According to the New York Post, her 44-year-old father Josh Selby stated, “She had frozen the NeeDoh cube the night before, and the next day she showed me it was rock solid and was playing with it.” In the microwave, she placed it. As I watched her, I noticed that she touched it to make sure it wasn’t too hot before taking it out.
However, the seemingly innocuous experiment went horribly wrong as she took it off.
“A heart-stopping scream”
Selby relived the terrifying moment when the NeeDoh toy exploded and covered the child in scorching goo—which has been likened to a “napalm-like substance”—and remarked, “It all happened so quickly.”
It was like hearing a blood-curdling scream when I heard her. After hearing his daughter’s agonizing cries, Selby hurried over and attempted to brush the bubbling goo off her body and clothing. “It had exploded all over her chest, mouth, and chin,” he claimed.
However, the material was “thick and sticky,” which made it challenging for him to get rid of Scarlett.
My hand adhered to her whenever I touched her. It was sticky and quite thick. Regarding the event that occurred approximately five months ago, the father stated, “I tore her shirt off of her because it was stuck to her shirt as well.”
I was utterly disorganized. She was in a coma for three days of her week-long hospital stay. He went on, “I don’t think I could talk to anyone without crying all the time.”
“I’m still screaming.”
Amanda Blakenship, Selby and Scarlet’s mother, hurried their daughter to the hospital.
She was in excruciating discomfort. When we arrived at the hospital, which is about a half-hour’s drive from our house, she was still crying. The 35-year-old mother told the Daily Mail, “It was awful how scared she was and how much that hurt her.”
Scarlett was put in an induced coma for three days while medical professionals worked nonstop to stabilize her condition when the family got to St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Because her lips were so severely damaged, a feeding tube was also implanted.
She was eventually released from the hospital after a week, but her problems had only begun.
“Self-conscious”
Doctors chose against giving Scarlett a skin transplant when she was receiving treatment for her injuries, but her mother worries that it might still be required because of how severely scarred she is.
Furthermore, Blankenship stated that the “deep scars” are not limited to the physical realm.
After taking a bath, she frequently finds Scarlett gazing at herself in the mirror with tears running down her cheeks, a poignant reminder of the pain she has experienced.
“She gets really self-conscious, and sometimes when we’re out in public, I see her trying to hide her scar with her shirt, or she’ll come home from school and say another kid asked her about it,” Blakenship said. She doesn’t have to feel ashamed about it, I tell her. She endured a great deal, and the accident was awful.
The warning from the father
Scarlett’s father has been cautioning other parents to throw away the toys ever since the accident.
“I never would have imagined something exploding outside of the microwave like that,” he said.The most difficult thing I have ever experienced was for my daughter to experience that.
“I’ve told absolutely everyone to throw them out if they have them,” Selby continues. You basically have hot glue blasting on you because the substance in it functions similarly to glue. It cannot be removed once it has touched you.
TikTok, which states that it forbids the “display or promotion of dangerous activities and challenges or violence. This may include dares, games, tricks, inappropriate use of dangerous tools, eating substances that are harmful to one’s health, or similar activities that may lead to significant physical harm,” has since taken down clips of the NeeDoh microwave challenge.
How do you feel about this lovely little girl’s fate? In order to alert others to the risks associated with heating squishy toys, kindly share this tale with others.
