Christmas is only a month away, so don’t forget to stock up on this year’s hottest toys: They’re squishy balls that look vaguely like herpes sores named Bunchems, and their primary claim to fame is that they’ll get stuck in your kids’ hair forever.
Consumerist reports that Bunchems are meant to inspire creativity by allowing kids to stick them together in any way that they want to create beautiful masterpieces without the limitation of Legos. Unfortunately, interlocking Velcro pieces and children don’t mix. More and more parents are reporting that their kids are getting Bunchems stuck in their hair, leading to tears and possible emergency haircuts.
From Consumerist:
“A Toy Spawned From the Darkest Depths of Hell,” reads one Amazon review of Bunchems, detailing the more than two hours spent extracting “14 of these bastard balls out of my daughter’s hair.”
“Great if you want to pay $200 to have them professionally removed from the hair,” reads another. “I am a hairstylist and spent a total of 4 hours removing these from a little girl’s hair today! She had 45 of them matted into her hair!”
The company that makes Bunchems claims that instructions not to get the balls into hair are right on the box, but when was the last time you saw a kid read the instructions before doing exactly what the box says not to? And if kids are getting 14-45 Bunchems stuck in their hair at a time, it’s probably time to go back to the drawing board.
The video above, which shows parents how to remove the toys from kids’ hair, has been viewed nearly 300,000 times on YouTube and is one of the most popular results when searching for Bunchems online.
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