Get This Zhu Zhu Pet Outta My Hair!

Watch out!  I love hair.

This past summer my 3 year old daughter discovered the infamous Zhu Zhu pet at a local Target store.  I did not know much about them beyond the fact that they were a Christmas shopping season phenomenon a couple years back.  The craziness of the Zhu Zhu brought back memories my childhood and my generation's obsession with the Cabbage Patch doll - which, now looking back, were not really all so cute.


Back to the Zhu Zhu hair debacle.  


I bought my daughter the Rockstar  Zhu Zhu and watched her have fun as she let him loose on the kitchen floor - watching all his twists and turns as he scampered about.  She was full giggles and amazement.  This went on for a good two days before all things Zhu Zhu turned hairy, no pun intended.


I was finishing cleaning the kitchen when I called out to my daughter.  She was in the dining room, under the table, and let out a faint - "here I am, and nothing is wrong".  This little statement speaks for itself.  We all know it spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e! 


When I glanced at her under the table, she slowly crawled out and looked up at me.  The Zhu Zhu pet was stuck in her hair - the left side of her head, to be exact!  Her hair is long, so my first thought was that I was going to have to cut off chunks of her thick, beautiful hair.  She was not crying or scared - she just seemed perplexed as to why this toy was hanging from her hair.  I calmly asked her to sit down as I tried to figure out how the heck I was going to remove this hamster from her head.


These are the lessons I learned while trying to detach the beast:

• Do not  press the button on the Zhu Zhu pets back.  This only tangles the hair as it turns the wheels forward and back.  If anything, this more tightly winds the hair around the wheels.
• Trying to unwind the hair from the Zhu Zhu pets wheels is next to impossible.  The sides of the hamster are low and cover half the wheels.  This heavy plastic has no give, so there is no way to safely unwind the hair without hurting your fingers.
• The only reasonable way to remove the Zhu Zhu pet from hair is not to cut off the hair, but to snap off the wheels with pliers.  This causes the demise of the Zhu Zhu, but better that than a bald spot on you precious child.
• After the Zhu Zhu is removed from the hair, the tangled section will resemble a huge rats nest.  It is ugly.  It took days of detangling spray and combing with a boar bristle brush to finally to the snarls out.

Thankfully, in our case, getting the stuck Zhu Zhu pet out of my child's hair turned out ok.  You would think this would turn off my daughter to these toys, but she wanted a replacement.  She now has two more in which she now wears a ponytail when playing with them on the floor - our new rule!