You Don’t Really Need a NeeDoh—Do You?
· The Atlantic
When I heard there was a shortage of NeeDohs—the squishy, stress-relieving toys—I called the toy store in my town in northern Florida and asked if I could buy some. Unfortunately not, the nice woman who answered the phone told me. They were completely out. They’d last had a large shipment of 180 NeeDi two weeks prior, but those were gone within an hour, even with the store limit of three per person. Apparently, she added, some kids skipped the first hour of school to nab theirs.
NeeDohs—for the uninitiated—can take the form of a palm-size cube, sphere, heart, or other glob, all of which are satisfyingly squeezable. Since the product launched in 2017, NeeDohs have become popular among adults and children with autism and anxiety, stressed-out teens, and really all school-age kids. Maybe too popular. At some point recently, NeeDohs went viral on Instagram and TikTok, and kids quickly seemed to conclude that they’d better not show their face in homeroom without one.
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Tweens can be especially susceptible to the temptations of trendy toys—think Tamagotchis, Beanie Babies, Pokémon cards. Psychologists have found that tweens and young teens are uniquely sensitive to their peers’ influence and judgment; in children ages 10 to 12, hormone receptors in the brain regions linked to pleasure and motivation multiply rapidly, reorienting kids toward social rewards. What might appear to be a basic translucent cube can, in the hands of the school’s Popular Kid, turn into a must-have possession—and many parents are happy to buy their tweens’ good graces for a mere $5.99.
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Now all types of NeeDohs are sold out nearly everywhere. “In the first three months of this year, we went through about three times the inventory that we sold in 2025,” Paul Weingard, the CEO of NeeDoh’s maker, Schylling, told me. Schylling’s Chinese supplier couldn’t keep up. “No company could possibly plan for or anticipate—we’ll call it a 10-times surge in demand.” On its website, Schylling has posted a message that it is “taking a short pause” on NeeDoh orders. Weingard said the shortage should be resolved by summer or fall.
Toy stores, in the bargaining phase of grief, have taken to social media to remind customers that they carry many products that are a lot like NeeDohs. One store posted a reel of other squishy toys—memory-foam butter! mini fruits!—that you can buy instead. “If you’re holding out for NeeDohs,” a store employee says in the video, “the orders placed now will ship in June or maybe even September.” Another store posted that although they are sold out of NeeDohs, they do have other fidget toys, such as Gumps and Squish Goldfish, “both of which have a very similar texture to a Nee-Doh Nice Cube!” Yet another lamented the “Great NeeDoh Shortage of 2026” while depicting a pair of hands mashing a variety of other, widely available squishies.
These other squishies do not seem to suffice, however. Parents and kids alike are hunting for the real thing. On TikTok, one mom bragged about buying several NeeDohs and shipping them to her child’s friends around the country. A writer on Substack told of his travels to multiple stores and, ultimately, to a Facebook Marketplace rendezvous, where he secured a blue Nice Cube. Parents post on Reddit that they have looked “EVERYWHERE” for NeeDohs and are wondering if there is somewhere—other than everywhere—that they could be.
With the disclaimer that my child is not yet of NeeDoh age, I would urge parents not to drive themselves too crazy over this. One of the many jobs I had in high school was at a local toy store, and that experience, though soul-crushing, did impart to me a philosophy I like to call Meat Loaf parenting: I will do anything for my kid, but I won’t do that. Specifically, I won’t go to great lengths to buy him faddish toys.
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My rationale is that I, his mom, never had faddish toys. His grandma didn’t have any toys at all. His great-grandma was in a concentration camp. His ancestors on the other side were nomadic reindeer herders. The point being that his people have been surviving for many centuries without NeeDohs, Labubus, or anything else that compels parents to shoestring-tackle their fellow man on Black Friday.
Not to get all dictatorship-of-the-proletariat on you, but just because capitalism has convinced kids that they must have these things does not mean that they actually must. There are a lot of other squishies. There will probably be a new toy that goes viral next month. NeeDohs are probably not the key to these kids’ effortless and everlasting popularity. Maybe a shortage of a toy like this is an opportunity to notice what we don’t actually need-oh.