Eight-year-old Joseph Erskine walked into the living room holding a towel to his face, the skin already stripped away by burning gel that had burst from a toy he had put in the microwave. His mother, Stephanie Ewing, said they initially thought it was a chemical burn. ‘Then he told us that he had put it in the microwave. We were shocked as it had never crossed our minds that he would do that with a toy.’
Joseph, from Clackmannanshire, needed weeks of treatment and a skin graft after the squishy toy exploded across his chest and hand in May, requiring skin from his thigh to be applied to his chest. The toy, made soft and pliable for squeezing, had been heated to make it even more malleable — a trend spreading across social media. But the pressure inside can cause the toy to explode, releasing scalding gel that sticks to the skin.
“Six children treated at Glasgow hospital after squishy toys explode in microwaves, causing burns and skin grafts.”
Over the past eight months, the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC) in Glasgow has treated six children with injuries linked to the trend, with some needing surgery including skin grafts. Eleven-year-old Scarlet Rowe, from Irvine in North Ayrshire, was treated for burns to her face and eyelid after a similar incident in May. Her mother Gina said: ‘We didn’t realise what had happened at first, it just looked like slime on her face. It was only after a few minutes we realised it had been heated and was burning her skin. The swelling was so bad that we weren’t sure what the outcome would be.’
Sharon Ramsay, a burns nurse at the RHC, warned that the gel inside can remain extremely hot and adhere to the skin, prolonging the burn. Joseph’s mother urged parents to talk to their children about the trend. ‘He is normally such an active and sporty child with six clubs per week, but all of that is on hold until he heals,’ she said. Her son must now avoid direct sunlight on the grafted area for two years — ‘tricky over the summer months’.
Gina Rowe said of the toys: ‘We had no idea about the risks. We had only bought them that day.’