A battery-operated Cabbage Patch Doll that can chew had to be taken apart piece by piece when it munched a 7-year-old girl's hair up to her scalp and wouldn't let go.
Sarah Stevens' aunt and the owner of the hair salon where the incident took place worked for 30 minutes Thursday to remove more than 20 screws, open the battery compartment and pull apart the mouth to free Sarah's blond hair.Sarah was shaken but unhurt. "I have a little headache," she said.
The Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kids Doll is designed to chew automatically when plastic french fries or other items are placed in its mouth. It has no on-off switch.
Sarah's aunt, Kelly Nagy, who had brought her niece to the hair salon, had gone to check on the girl in the waiting room and found her leaning over a chair crying.
"She must have had it lying by her hair and it must have sucked it down," Nagy said. The hair salon owner sat Sarah in the barber chair and eventually was able to take the doll apart.
Glenn Bozarth, a spokesman for the doll's maker, Mattel Inc., said that the toy is safe and that he knows of no other safety complaints about it.
Bozarth said it is hard to imagine such a thing happening unless the child stuck her hair into the doll's mouth.
Asked whether she wanted another one of the dolls, Sarah answered "Yeah."