Mistakes were made

So, sometimes around the holidays, parents can lose their minds temporarily.  This happened to me on Christmas Eve when I, aka Santa, was perusing some 50% off toys at the hardware store.  I see this product, Squishy Baff,  on the shelf.  "Turn your bath water into goo, and back again!" it chanted at me. 

As the mother of two boys who love all things squishy, goo-ey and gross, this seemed like a no-brainer.  Scooped it up, at a discount! and left the store. 

When the kids opened it on Christmas morning it was all I could do to get them to wait until night to use it.

So, basically, there are two packets.  One is the absorptive gel they put in diapers.  (You know how well it works if you've ever seen a diaper swell after a swim.)  The other pack is the dissolver (which happens to be salt).  So, in theory, you add the first pack, the water turns to goo and the kids go wild playing in the muck.  Then you add the salt which magically dissolves the goo and you have happy, slime-free kids.

Each kit has 2 of each pack so that you can enjoy the process more than once.  Hooray!  Let's go!

So, let me state up front that I didn't read the instructions as thoroughly as I might have.  I thought, "it's not that complicated!" and just went for it.

Okay.  Step one:  Fill tub with water.  Easy.

Step two:  Add eager boys.  Super-easy.

Step 3:  Add packet #1.  Again, not difficult.  Look!  It's turning green!

Hmm... something is definitely happening.  It's green-ish and kind of gooey.  Let's give this a few minutes...

Okay.  It's definitely green and slightly gooey, but I'm expecting MORE people!  Where's my goo!?  (Cue the beginning of the 'mistakes-made' period.)

So, I think "Hey!  Maybe there's too much water in the tub.  MAYBE I should add the other package and double up the goo-factor!?"   Can you see where this is going?


I add the second package and, lo and behold!, we have goo.  Lots of goo.  Waaaaay too much goo.  Cue finally reading the instructions, ever-so-slightly too late.  "Goo will take 10 minutes to fully develop".  Riiiiight.  Okay.  I added package #2 after about 4 or 5 minutes.  And now it's really gooey.  And it's going to take 10 MORE MINUTES to fully develop?!  Oh oh. 

Very quickly it looked like this:

And then, this:

And, then finally, this:

Yeah, it was so thick in the end, that they couldn't actually move.  It was like I had encased them in gooey cement.  I don't think they could have stood up under their own power if I'd held free toys and candy in front of them.  I couldn't see their legs! Really, really gross.

But, as you can see, the boys thought it was hilarious.  Charley was trying to 'dive underwater' but I really couldn't see that getting it in one's eye/ears/nose/hair was a good idea.  In fact, not much of this process seemed like a good idea at this point.

So, finally, despite their protests, I added both of the packet #2s (ie: salt).  Thankfully, oh-so-thankfully, it largely worked and the goo-cement was returned to a water state and went down the drain no problem. 

The boys, however, were covered in gel-ly granules and had to be rinsed with the watering can (showerless, claw-foot tub, you see) and then finally removed from the tub.

So, what can I say.  It certainly worked (double power!) and the boys loved it, but I sure wouldn't want to deal with it every night.  Chris walked in at one point, shook his head and left again.  Haha!  He's no fun though!


Here's a hilarious review on Amazon of the same product.  I laughed out loud reading it.

Has anyone else been crazy enough to try it? 

Oh, and did I mention that the next day my mom gave the boys ANOTHER PACK?!?! (Great, insane minds think alike)  I feel a follow-up post coming on! 

That's all from the house of crazy.  Onward!