Heartwarming Hugs Plush - Burn story and Possible Recall
Update** - I finally got a response back from the manager who was overseeing the quality control of these plush. Unfortunately I don't have any updates on what the quality control team has found or whether the plushies are coming back with upgrades. She mentioned that she had to have quality control actually track down a heart to send me as a replacement, and it should be on its way soon. That is all that I know. I don't know if they've made any updates to the heart or if it's just going to be the same. But the fact that quality control didn't just immediately send me a new one tells me that they are actually reviewing the hearts, seeing as how they had to "track one down" as a replacement. I can only hope that they are making upgrades to it and the plushies will be back on the site soon. If I find out any more info on that I'll probably update, but with all the backlash that I've gotten with this, this will probably be my last update. Even though I have given every ounce of information I possibly could, I still have been getting messages and comments saying that this was user error and I should have just asked for a replacement instead of "ruining it for everyone else". And I don't want to deal with that anymore. I apologize to those who wanted these plushies, and hopefully they'll be back, but I'm just tired of constantly being told I'm a liar and responsible for people not getting their new thing. Thank you to those of you who have supported me with all this.
Hi everyone!
I wanted to post because I've been seeing a lot of comments and posts about the new Heartwarming Hugs plushies being pulled from the website. I'm the one that had the burn incident and am working with BAB quality control about the issue. I just wanted to give my story so people understood what had happened, and that it was NOT in fact "human error".
So, I have the Heartwarming Hugs Teddy Bear (which I LOVE by the way, and I'm still hoping for a kitty). I had heated up the heart once prior according to the instructions on the insert. My microwave is 1000 watts with a turntable, so based on that and the included instructions, I should have heated it up for 30 seconds, checked it, and then 30 more seconds, for a total of 1 minute. The first time I heated the heart up, I did exactly that, and it was warm of course, so once it cooled slightly I then put it in the plush and had no problem. But the 2nd time I heated it up (days later and at room temperature), I did the exact same thing with the exact same microwave. 30 seconds, check, and then 30 more seconds. Well after the 2nd round of 30 seconds, I went to pick up the heart to check the temperature, and was instantly burned. I checked the heart where I had been burned at, and the beads inside the heart had burned a small hole through the heart fabric and melted to the fabric in a cluster. The beads ended up burning my pinky finger, and I didn't realize it was as serious as it was until a few days later when I ended up getting burn blisters. It's still not a bad burn and I didn't need to get medical attention. HOWEVER, if I hadn't caught the hole, and picked up the heart and had all the beads fall out onto my hand, it would have been a MUCH worse injury. It also could have been my young son that this happened to! And since these plushies are "usually" made for kids, that's where my concern lies.
Once I realized what had happened, I didn't want the beads falling out of the heart. So I wanted to sew up the heart because I still wanted to use it for the weight. But I had to cut out around the hole slightly to cut the burned fabric bits off. I then did a simple ladder stitch on the heart to close it up. I also included a picture of multiple tags with the warming instructions on them. One was the actual tag on the heart itself, and one was the insert it came with. The heart tag says you can heat it up for up to 2 minutes, but the insert says nothing about that and recommends 90 seconds with a lower watt microwave, so there's a discrepancy with the tag information.
I posted my story on several BAB group pages because I didn't want anyone else to get hurt, so I just put out a word of caution when heating up the heart. I DID reach out to customer service and hadn't heard anything for a few days. But yesterday, the Quality Control manager reached out to me to get more information. She said that this is a very serious situation that could potentially be a hazard, and requested that I send the heart back for further testing to see if it is an actual issue with the materials the heart is made out of, or if it was a fluke and mine was just defective. I will be sending it out first thing tomorrow morning.
I wanted to thank everyone who has stuck up for me with all of this. I promise I made sure everything was correct before I even reached out to customer service. I wanted to make sure I didn't make a mistake and accidentally overheat the heart, or not follow the included instructions in some way. I've dealt with heated plushies most of my life and this is the first time something like this has ever happened, so I know to check the warming instructions for each heated plush carefully, as they can differ from company to company. I truly am sorry for those of you who wanted to buy one and couldn't because they were removed from the site. I'm just hoping that it's temporary while they look into the issue, and that they'll find a fix for the heart so no one else gets hurt.
