The craze for NeeDohs is back and bigger than ever. NeeDohs and fidgets blew up back in 2020 when everyone was stuck at home during the pandemic, and the squishy fidgets have made a comeback. Today, NeeDohs such as ice cubes, ice creams, and tear drops have gone viral on social media with unboxings, ratings, trades, and ASMRs. They are fun to collect, and are very entertaining to play with because of their soft and squishy texture.
Ever since the trend came back, toy stores like Learning Express have seen the spike in popularity first hand. Their Needohs, particularly the ice cream cone, the jellyfish, and the palette ice cream, have been selling out rapidly.
“We get about 100 calls every day asking for NeeDohs. Roughly around 100, we definitely have had more, but we have broken quite a lot of our goals for the day because of NeeDohs. We have definitely made over 10k in one day on a Friday specifically because of NeeDohs,” said Nina Shalom, a Learning Express employee.
Our student body has bought into the trend. Many students maintain large collections at home, but problematically also at school. Here at Gulliver, administrators have not been thrilled with the return of this trend, and have even prompted them to reinforce a ban.
“I have had NeeDohs since 2020 and then they got popular again so I started to get more. I don’t know how many NeeDohs I have, but I have a lot. I like how each NeeDoh has a different texture and shape,” said seventh grader Kaia Exelbert. “I feel that the ban is wrong because some people need it for anxiety, stress and can help them do their work.”
Although most students think that NeeDohs are good for stress and are fun to play with, they have become a distraction at school. Students lose focus in class and that makes other people distracted. They are very delicate and break all the time, which creates a mess in the classrooms, making even more distractions.
“So it has been in our student handbook and it is because it becomes a distraction in our classrooms, however just this week we just started to enforce the policy. It was not only a distraction but it was making a mess all over the campus because the NeeDohs were exploding,” said Assistant Principal Heather Torretta.
