Viral TikTok challenge leaves 7-year-old girl in coma with life-threatening burns

In an age where children grow up with smartphones, it is very hard to maintain vigilance all the time. This leads to many kids having unrestricted access to content that seems harmless at first but can lead to devastating consequences. One such challenge left a 7-year-old Missouri girl, Scarlett Selby, in a coma after a toy explosion caused life-threatening burns.
Scarlett, who lives in Festus, Missouri, was attempting a TikTok and YouTube challenge involving a NeeDoh squishy toy—a rubber stress ball filled with polyvinyl alcohol. The challenge encouraged freezing the toy and then microwaving it to make it softer.
The night before the accident, Scarlett had placed the NeeDoh cube in the freezer, following the steps she had seen online. The next day, she excitedly showed her father, Josh Selby, 44, how solid it had become. Curious about the challenge, she put it in the microwave.

“I was watching her,” Josh recalled in an interview with Kennedy News. “She touched it to check if it was too hot when she pulled it out, and then—boom—it exploded.”
The toy erupted in molten goo, covering Scarlett’s face and chest in a burning, napalm-like substance. Josh rushed to his daughter’s side, trying to scrape the sticky, searing substance off her skin and clothing. But the gel clung to her body like glue, worsening her agony. “Whenever I touched her, my hand stuck to her,” he said. “I ripped her shirt off because the jelly had fused with it.”
Realizing the severity of the situation, Josh and Scarlett’s mother, Amanda Blankenship, 35, didn’t waste a second. They drove her 30 minutes to St. Louis Children’s Hospital while she screamed in pain the entire way. Even after arriving, her suffering didn’t ease.
“It was terrible how scared she was and how much that hurt her,” Amanda shared, devastated. Doctors immediately recognized the severity of Scarlett’s burns, particularly around her mouth and airway. Fearing that swelling could block her ability to breathe, they placed her in an induced coma for three days. Her lips were so badly burned that she had to be fed through a tube for a week.
“I don’t think I could speak to anyone without crying the entire time,” Josh admitted. While doctors opted against a skin graft at the time, Amanda worries that Scarlett may need one in the future due to the extent of her scarring.
“We’re waiting to see how her body grows,” she explained. “We put creams and silicone ointments on her daily, but the scars are thick and raised.”
Scarlett’s physical wounds may heal, but the emotional scars linger. Her mother often finds her crying after a bath, staring at her reflection.

“She gets very self-conscious,” Amanda said. “She tries to cover her scar with her shirt when we’re out, and sometimes she comes home from school saying kids asked about it.” Amanda reassures her daughter that she is still beautiful.
“She went through something terrible, but those scars make her who she is,” she said. Scarlett’s parents are now speaking out to warn other families about the hidden dangers of certain toys and online challenges.
“I’ve told everyone to throw out their NeeDoh toys if they have them,” Josh said. “The substance inside is like hot glue—it sticks to you, and there’s no way to get it off.” He also criticized the way the product is marketed, arguing that it shouldn’t be sold without stronger warnings.