When you become a parent, you become a little bit, well, creepy. You do weird things. You sniff your baby. You save locks of hair from their first haircut in a little paper envelope in your baby book. You might even be tempted to tuck the first baby tooth they lose into a little baggy and hide it in a keepsake box in your closet (ask me how I know). But is any parent really sadistic enough to keep every single tooth their kid looses and sew it into a horrifying doll? That's what the Internet thinks, thanks to these horrifying "baby tooth monster dolls" going crazy viral right now. But hold on a sec, everyone. It's not what you think.
"Parents are sewing their kids' teeth into these 'tooth monster dolls,'" a viral meme warns.
The meme features a photo of two stuffed Gumby-like dolls with a full set of what appear to be pearly white baby teeth.
They're terrifying, and you can bet your adult molars that people seriously freaked out.
After the meme was shared on the popular parenting page Perfection Pending, it quickly amassed almost 2,000 comments and over 5,000 shares.
"That's some kind of crazy serial killer crap right there," one mom wrote.
Another person blamed it on the "lunacy" of our current parenting culture.
But one mom brought up an obvious problem with these so-called "baby tooth monsters": How do you sew teeth?
The answer is: You don't. Sorry to spoil the fun, but these dolls are not made with real teeth.
The dolls are actually called Fugglers, and they've been around since 2010. Every few years, they go viral again after people see them, assume they're made with real baby teeth, panic, and then go on a tear about "parents these days" and how we're all creepy helicopter moms who would actually do things like sew our kids' baby teeth into a little stuffed toy that looks like a homicidal alien.
On the official Fugglers website, the creator explains that the dolls were actually an accidental hobby that turned into a weird, viral empire.
"In 2010 I was wandering the stranger recesses of eBay late at night when I stumbled across a listing for a bag full of individual false teeth. At first I laughed, wondering why on Earth anyone would sell such a thing. Then I laughed harder, wondering who on Earth would buy such a thing," the creator writes. "My mind conjured up a vision of a little old lady buying the teeth to add to homemade teddy bears. I imagined her at craft sales … her portion of the fold away table infested with toothy monstrosities. Her confused face as people gave her a wide berth. I laughed until I cried. The teeth arrived in the post the next week."
Fugglers come in many forms, including this adorable (not really) little dog.
There's even a disheveled-looking carrot with a murderous glint in his eyes.
Alas, not a single one is made with real baby teeth (or any other sort of human teeth). But the Internet is right about one thing: These little dolls are creepy AF.
