NeeDoh or NeeDon’t: Rethinking U.S. Product Safety Laws for Children

I. Introduction
Sensory toys offer children opportunities for play and may help relieve stress. For parents, these products may appear to be simple, harmless additions to a child’s daily routine. However, NeeDoh products—palm-sized squishy silicone sensory toys with a dough-like filling—have recently attracted scrutiny following a social media trend where users microwave the toys in an attempt to soften them. These concerns have been underscored by Mendoza v. Schylling, Inc., a proposed class action lawsuit filed in July 2026. The complaint alleges that NeeDoh toys can rupture after their filling is heated, releasing a hot, sticky substance that can cause severe burns. The plaintiffs argue that consumers were not adequately warned of this risk. The explosion can eject a hot and sticky burning substance that can cause severe thermal burns and possibly lead to hospitalisation. 

Clearly, Schylling did not design its line of NeeDoh products to be used in this potentially dangerous way. When handled as intended by the manufacturer, these sensory toys pose minimal risk to the consumer. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), federal law prohibits the sale or importation of children’s toys that fail to meet applicable safety standards. As an established and legitimate toy manufacturer, Schylling is required to ensure that its products comply with applicable federal safety standards, including “over 100 strict toy safety standards and tests required by federal law”. Nevertheless, reports of widespread injuries associated with these ostensibly child-safe products raise a broader question about whether existing product safety regulations adequately protect children from foreseeable hazards.

Children are not simply smaller versions of adult consumers. Their developing cognitive abilities, limited experience, and difficulty recognising danger can make them particularly vulnerable to potentially unsafe products. Although the United States has established important protections through federal product safety legislation, these frameworks do not necessarily provide a developmentally informed standard for communicating product risks to children. Many consumer protection frameworks rely, at least in part, on the assumption that consumers can recognise potential risks, interpret product warnings, and make informed decisions about product use. However, children cannot be expected to exercise the same level of discretion as adults. 

One might argue that product risks need only be communicated to adult purchasers, who are responsible for selecting products and supervising their children’s use. However, this overlooks the distinction between those who purchase products and those who use them. As the NeeDoh controversy illustrates, children may encounter potentially dangerous practices through social media and imitate them without fully comprehending the risks. Protecting children requires consideration not only of the information provided to parents, but also of children’s foreseeable patterns of product use. Congress should close this gap by establishing clearer, standardized safety-disclosure requirements for manufacturers of children's products.

II. Existing Framework
Federal law already provides substantial protections for children’s products. The Consumer Product Safety Act of 1972 established the CPSC, the federal agency responsible for protecting the public against unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with consumer products. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008 strengthened this framework by targeting products that were designed or intended primarily for children twelve and under. These requirements address several aspects of child product safety, including toy safety standards, durable infant and toddler products, lead and phthalate content limits, and mandatory third-party testing. 

Although these laws address a wide range of product-safety risks, their requirements operate through different mechanisms. The CPSC provides the general authority for regulating unreasonable risks, including through standards requiring clear and adequate warnings or instructions. The CPSIA, by contrast, introduced or strengthened particular safeguards for children's products.

The CPSIA’s toy safety standards include regulations that address particular hazards. For example, the small-parts ban, established under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) and implemented through 16 C.F.R. §§1501, aims to regulate children’s products that present a  choking, aspiration, or ingestion hazard by classifying them as a “banned hazardous substance”. Small parts are defined as any “any object that fits, without compressing and in any orientation, entirely into the small parts cylinder…which approximates the size of the fully expanded throat of a child under three years old”. This legislation particularly targets toys that are marketed towards children aged three and under. Similarly, while products containing small parts for children above three are not classified in this manner, they are still required to contain a clear and specific warning label depending on the toy in question. For instance, per §1500.19(b)(2), any latex balloon or toy containing a latex balloon must contain the following warning: “WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD – Children under 8 yrs. can choke or suffocate on uninflated or broken balloons. Adult Supervision Required. Keep uninflated balloons from children. Discard broken balloons at once”. 

Although significant, these protections do not establish a comprehensive duty to communicate risk in developmentally appropriate ways. Many existing rules are preventative quality-control measures (i.e., lead testing) and do not apply to scenarios where the child already has access to the product. Additionally, while a warning label may accurately identify a hazard, it may simultaneously fail to convey its seriousness, explain when it may arise, or provide practical instructions for avoiding it, especially for a young child who encounters the product without an adult nearby.

III. Proposed Standard
Given these limitations, Congress should consider legislation establishing standardized safety-communication requirements for children's products.

A. Safety Disclosures that Children Can Understand
First, manufacturers should be required to provide safety disclosures that are appropriate for both the consumer and user of the product. Warnings should be clear, prominent, specific, and suited to the product’s foreseeable risks. Children encounter products in circumstances that differ significantly from adults. Their ability to understand consequences, assess danger, and regulate impulsive behavior develops over time. Consequently, a warning written in technical language or printed inconspicuously on packaging may communicate information to an adult without meaningfully informing a child. Thus, depending on the product, effective communication could include age-appropriate written explanations, standardised safety symbols, illustrations demonstrating unsafe use, or videos accessible through a QR code. 

As is with the existing warning label legislation concerning small parts, the CPSC should establish guidance specifying when these additional materials are necessary, rather than requiring every product to use every format. To determine whether warnings are understandable, the CPSC could conduct comprehension testing with children in safe mediated environments. The CPSC could review this evidence during investigations or compliance assessments and require revised warnings where manufacturers cannot demonstrate that disclosures adequately communicate the relevant risks. Failure to comply could result in corrective labelling requirements, recalls where warranted, and civil penalties where authorised by law.

B. Pre-Risk Assessments
Second, manufacturers should be required to conduct and document pre-market risk assessments before placing products intended for children on the market. These assessments should identify potential hazards arising from the product’s design, materials, and foreseeable use, including risks of rupture, chemical exposure, burns, choking, and other injuries relevant to the product. Manufacturers should also evaluate how children of different ages are likely to interact with the product, taking into account their developmental abilities, impulsivity, and likelihood of imitating behaviours demonstrated by peers or on social media. Manufacturers would not be expected to anticipate every possible misuse, but should consider credible risks that could reasonably be identified before or during the product’s sale. 

Assessments should evaluate whether hazards can be reduced through safer design, whether additional warnings are necessary, and whether those warnings adequately communicate the nature and severity of the risks to children and their caregivers. Manufacturers should retain written assessments and submit them to the CPSC upon request, allowing the agency to review whether foreseeable hazards were adequately considered. Failure to conduct an adequate assessment or provide required documentation could trigger corrective action and, where authorised by law, civil penalties.

C. Transparent and Proactive Accountability
The complaint also challenges Schylling's response to reports of injuries associated with NeeDoh toys. It alleges that the company's warnings were “delayed, incomplete, and ineffective”. According to the complaint, a viral TikTok trend encouraging users to microwave NeeDoh toys to make them softer was circulating by November 2024, if not earlier. Later that month, an eleven-year-old child allegedly suffered third-degree burns after microwaving his NeeDoh toy and holding it as it burst. The injuries required months of treatment and resulted in an infection and lasting scars. Accordingly, the complaint alleges that Schylling was aware of the potential risks posed by NeeDoh products but failed to warn consumers promptly. It was not until January 14, 2025, following another incident in which a child suffered burns after a NeeDoh toy ruptured, that Schylling added a warning to its website.

However, that warning may have been largely ineffective in alerting consumers. NeeDoh’s popularity is driven largely by unaffiliated social media posts, and the products are sold through third-party vendors, meaning consumers may never have visited Schylling’s website or encountered the warning. Schylling did not announce the addition of warning labels on product packaging until March 2025. Even then, the complaint alleges that these warnings failed to adequately communicate the nature and severity of the risk. The packaging warns only of possible “personal injury”, without specifying the serious risk of burns posed by a rupturing toy. 

To address these shortcomings, manufacturers should be required to implement a clear and time-bound procedure for communicating emerging product hazards. A duty to issue a warning should arise when a manufacturer receives credible information indicating that a product presents a previously unrecognised hazard. Manufacturers should be required to investigate such reports promptly and notify the CPSC where the information triggers an existing statutory reporting obligation. Where an immediate warning is necessary, manufacturers should issue an initial warning at most 48 hours after identifying the hazard, followed by updated warnings as further information becomes available. The warning should explain the specific hazard, the circumstances in which it may occur, the potential consequences, and the precautions consumers should take. To ensure that warnings reach affected consumers, manufacturers should be required to communicate them through multiple channels, including updated product packaging, notices to retailers and online marketplaces, company websites, and the social media platforms through which the product is marketed or has gained significant popularity. Retailers should be required to display the warning on relevant online product listings and, where practicable, notify customers who have purchased affected products. To ensure that manufacturers adhere to these standards, the CPSC could monitor compliance, require corrective communications, and pursue applicable penalties for failures to meet established obligations.

IV. Conclusion
The NeeDoh controversy raises a broader question about whether product-safety warnings adequately protect children who encounter products outside adult supervision.  First, existing protections for children’s products, notably the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, are inadequate because they fail to communicate risk in developmentally appropriate ways. Children are not smaller versions of adult consumers, and their developing cognitive abilities make them especially vulnerable to unsafe products. Second, I have proposed a standard that addresses this gap by requiring manufacturers to (a) create safety disclosures that a child can reasonably understand, (b) conduct and document risk assessments before a product reaches the market, and (c) exercise transparent and proactive accountability. Such requirements would need clear implementation and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that warnings do more than satisfy a formal obligation.

[1]  Bureau of Justice Statistics, Drugs and Crime Facts (2026) 

[2]  Prison Policy Initiative, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie (2024). 

[3]  Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. § 801 et seq. (1970).

[4]  Richard Nixon, Special Message to Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control (1971).