Search icon

Parenting

06th Jan 2019

Warning: If your kids like Bunchems, you might want to stay close when they play with them

Trine Jensen-Burke

My kids are obsessed with Bunchems.

So much so that those squishy, spiky little balls are currently littering every surface in our home. I find them tucked between sofa cushions, under rugs, inside sock drawers and even – yes, really – fished some out of the toilet bowl the other morning. (Don’t worry, they went straight in the bin after).

However; where I haven’t yet found them (thank GOD) is stuck in their hair. And just as well, because judging by this mum’s ordeal, that is a very bad place to put them indeed.

Melanie Seeley, a mum in Huntersville, North Carolina., is now warning other parents about the popular kids toy after her daughter got a bunch of them stuck in her tresses – an incident that nearly led to having to shave her head.

When 7-year-old Arielle tried to make a decoration on top of her headband using Bunchems, the balls rolled back into her hair, prompting her little brother to have fun with it.

“So, he now thinks it’s funny and grabs a bunch more of them and sticks them in,” Arielle’s mother told WCNC News.

Seeley explained how the whole thing happened in a matter of minutes, ensuring that in total, 50 Bunchems were trapped in her little girl’s hair – and they weren’t coming out.

Yikes.

“I was like, ‘Are we going to have to shave her head?'” Melanie said.

After a frantic hour of endless combing, with no end in sight, the panicked mum reached out to a local private Facebook group to see had anyone else been through this – and have any advice to offer.

“We had barely made a dent,” said Melanie, “and that’s when I posted on Facebook, ‘Does anyone have any idea how to get these out of her hair?’”

“Definitely conditioner,” one mum wrote on the Facebook page. “Start from the bottom and work your way up.”

Other parents got involved in the chat too, claiming the same thing had happened to their kids.

And apparently, this whole thing is nothing new to the makers of Bundchems, who way back in 2015, when similar complaints began surfacing online, issued this instructional video on YouTube, demonstrating how to extract the clingy toys from a person’s hair.

For Arielle and her mum, it took four hours (and a whole lot of conditioner) to get the clingy little balls out of her hair. Other parents, who have gone through the same ordeal, warn: “It’s worse than chewing gum – don’t put it anywhere near human hair!”

Has THIS happened in your house, mamas? How did you get the Bundchems out? Let us know in the comments or tweet us at @Herfamilydotie