Father shares horror story of fidget spinner exploding in son's face

Remember when we told you that fidget spinners could be dangerous?

Well, here's another case that just proves our point.

In a Facebook post uploaded on June 14, an American father from Flowood, Mississippi shared the aftermath of a fidget spinner episode gone wrong, complete with cringe-inducing photos of his son's injury.

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/john.harris.35325074/posts/10155440791284158[/embed]

In the caption, John Harris wrote that he "knew this post isn't going to be easy for some to look at" but felt that it was necessary to warn parents how potentially dangerous the innocuous-looking gadget could be.

According to the post, he was holding an air hose and playing with the spinner by spraying compressed air across it.

After a while, the plastic on the toy suddenly exploded, hitting his son Ian, and resulting in a deep bloody gash above his upper lip.

In the comments section, Harris later shared an update that his child had to receive 30 stitches in total - 27 outside and three inside - at the emergency room.

"I am sharing so no one else has the same stupid idea that I had. We were lucky it missed his eyes. It could have been so much worse," he wrote in the post.

Commenters were understandably confused as to what he was doing combining an air hose and a fidget spinner.

From his reply, it seems like Harris was trying out a popular trend in the US which sees people experimenting with compressed air to propel their spinners to insane speeds.

On YouTube, several videos, dubbed the 1,000mph (1,600km/h) challenge, show people attempting to get spinners up to that speed and and some effectively weaponising the toy by attaching razor blades to the outer prongs.

One viral video with over 3.2 million views on Facebook showed a man using compressed air on a spinner held with a workbench vice.

The toy explodes after being revved up for a while and photos later show that it had lodged itself deeply inside a wall.

With over 275,000 shares, it seems like Harris' post did its job of warning parents about how dangerous spinners can be.

Unfortunately, he's not the only one with such an experience as other parents have reported their kids choking on spinner parts or getting their fingers stuck in the toy. One boy almost lost his eyesight while performing tricks with the gadget.

So next time you see children fiddling around with one of these whirring contraptions, take heed of what they might actually be doing. It might be more dangerous than you think.

ljoey@sph.com.sg