If You Buy Your Kids “Bunchems” For Christmas, Maybe Get Them A Shower Cap Too

An in-demand toy for this holiday season has really got into kids’ heads — or rather, onto their heads, where they can remain for quite some time as parents struggle to free them from youngsters’ hair.

They’re called Bunchems, and it’s a neat concept — interlocking, squishy, plastic, spherical little bursts that can be used to construct whatever the kid imagines. But a number of parents say that the joy of Bunchems is spoiled when they end up in kids’ hair.

“A Toy Spawned From the Darkest Depths of Hell,” reads one Amazon review (see photo to the right) 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!”

In the above video, NBC Los Angeles put some Bunchems in a wig and confirmed that the tiny toys do indeed instantly latch on to your locks, and they don’t come free very easy.

The folks behind Bunchems defend their product, saying there’s a clear warning on the box to keep the toy away from hair (best of luck if your kid has long tresses). The company even has the following video to demonstrate how to more easily remove the snaggle-hooked toy from hair:

In a statement to NBC, the makers of Bunchems say that feedback for the product has been overwhelmingly positive. But the above video on removing the toy from kids’ hair has been viewed more than 250,000 times since August, indicating that maybe more than a few parents are having this trouble.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist