Girl, 7, in coma with horrific burns after TikTok challenge
A 7-year-old Missouri girl named Scarlett Selby was left in a coma after a squishy toy exploded while she was attempting a viral TikTok challenge.
“It all happened so quickly,” the victim’s father Josh Selby, 44, told Kennedy News while recounting the horrific ordeal. “I heard her scream, and it was like a blood-curdling scream.”
The tot, who resides in Festus, was copying a challenge she saw on TikTok and Youtube where people place NeeDoh — a squishy stress cube made of rubber with a polyvinyl alcohol filling — in the freezer and then microwave it for several seconds to make it more malleable.
“She’d frozen the NeeDoh cube the night before and the next day she showed me it was rock solid and was playing with it,” recalled Josh. “She stuck it in the microwave. I was watching her and saw her touch it to check it wasn’t too hot when she pulled it out.”
This harmless-seeming experiment went awry after the gelatinous toy exploded, showering Scarlett’s face and chest with molten goo.
Josh reportedly heard his daughter scream in agony, after which he ran over and tried to scrape the burning goo off her body and clothes, but this was difficult given how “thick and sticky” the napalm-like substance was.
“Whenever I touched her, my hand stuck to her,” lamented the distraught father, who said he “ripped her shirt off of her” because the jelly had adhered to it as well.
Her dad and mom, Amanda Blankenship, 35, drove their imperiled daughter 30 minutes to the St Louis Children’s Hospital, in St Louis. She was reportedly in so much agony that she was “still screaming in pain” even after arriving, according to Amanda.
“It was terrible how scared she was and how much that hurt her,” lamented her “heartbroken” mother.
Upon arrival at the facility, doctors placed Scarlett into an induced coma — where she remained for three days — because they were concerned that the burns on her mouth would cause her airways to swell up and close.
Her lips were so badly burned that she was placed on a feeding tube for the duration of her week-long hospital stay.
“I don’t think I could speak to anybody without crying the entire time,” said Josh.
Doctors decided against giving Scarlett a skin graft during her time in the hospital, but her mother is concerned she may need one eventually because her “scarring is so bad.”
“After consulting with the doctors we’re going to give her a couple of years, maybe until she’s around 12, to see how her body grows and depending on if the scar stretches out and grows with her,” said her mom, who works as a hairdresser. “We’re still putting creams and silicon ointments on it daily — they’re such profound scars that stick up off of her skin.”
And the scars are more than just physical, per Amanda, who said she’ll catch her daughter crying while looking in her mirror after her bath.
“She gets very self-conscious and I’ll see her trying to cover her scar up with her shirt when we’re out in public sometimes, or she’ll come home from school and say another kid asked her about it,” the hair cutter said. “I tell her she doesn’t need to be embarrassed about it. She went through a lot and it was a terrible, terrible accident.”
Despite the horrific scarring, Amanda said that “she’s still beautiful and those scars make her who she is.”
Father Josh is warning other parents to toss their Needoh products in light of the horrific incident, which he described as “the hardest thing” he’s ever gone through.
“I’ve told absolutely everyone to throw them out if they have them,” the Missouran cautioned. “The product that’s in it is like glue so you essentially have hot glue exploding on you. Once it touches you, there’s no way to get it off.
He added, “It should not be sold like it is and it definitely should not be marketed the way it is.”
The toy’s manufacturer Schylling Toys hasn’t yet responded to comment but they have a warning on their website that reads, “do NOT heat, freeze, or microwave, may cause personal injury.”
Meanwhile, TikTok warns on its site that they “do not allow 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,” they write.
However, this has not prevented people from trying out hazardous stunts that allegedly proliferated via the platform.
In April 2024, 12-year-old Arizona boy Corey Roper suffered burns all over his body when he attempted to light rubbing alcohol during a “TikTok challenge” gone awry.
