The Squishy Effect
Somewhere between doctor’s appointments, prescription refills, and trying to remember what day it is, I find myself standing in the toy aisle staring at a bin of neon squishy blobs.
NeeDohs, they’re called. Except these are knock offs because the actual NeeDohs are elusive as a Unicorn.
If you have kids, you already know. If you don’t, imagine a stress ball that somehow became a full-blown cultural movement. There are glitter ones, glow-in-the-dark ones, ones shaped cubes, and something called a “Dream Drop” that my child has informed me is very hard to find and therefore extremely important. There is also a separate squishy product shaped like dumplings that is just as in demand.
Apparently we hunt them now.
Not casually, this is a full scouting mission. Kids trading intel at school. I find myself checking store shipments and stock days. I’ve completely gone down this rabbit hole with my child. The thrill of spotting the exact one we’ve been looking for tucked behind a shelf at Five Below like buried treasure is what keeps us going. It is for lack of better words, ridiculous.
It would be easy to dismiss it as just another kid trend or passing phase. Here we go, another thing that will end up sticky and slightly mysterious at the bottom of the toy bin.
But I don’t think that’s what this is.
Because while our kids are laser-focused on finding the perfect squishy, the rest of us are living in a world that feels… a little on fire.
The news is heavy, politics is a dumpster fire, the economy is in the toilet, everything is expensive, and everyone is tired. To add insult to injury in my case, my family is navigating my cancer, which has a way of shrinking your world down to the size of the next appointment, the next test result, the next breath.
These are all BIG problems. The kind you cannot solve with a dollar store run.
And yet….here we are, driving across town because someone heard a rumor that a store “might have the glitter dumpling.”
There’s actually a name for this kind of behavior. Economists call it the “lipstick effect.” It’s been studied for years. When the economy dips, when the world feels unstable, people don’t stop spending entirely. They just shift what they spend on.
They skip the big, expensive luxuries like vacations but they still buy the small things.
A tube of lipstick.
A fancy coffee.
A $5 squishy toy that fits perfectly in your hand.
Because when everything feels out of control, small joy becomes essential.
It’s not frivolous, it’s survival.
If you think about it, the NeeDoh craze makes perfect sense. These kids are growing up in a world where they hear more than we realize. They feel the tension, the stress, the undercurrent of worry humming through our homes and our conversations.
So they squeeze something soft.
They collect something colorful.
They chase something simple and attainable and joyful.
And maybe we do too.
If I’m being honest, it’s not just my child scanning the shelves, it’s me too. Not because I particularly care about a glow-in-the-dark cube, but because for a few minutes, I get to care about something small and solvable.
This squishy hunt does not end with a diagnosis or a $10,000 bill or a hard conversation, but with a small victory held in the palm of my hand.
In a season where so much feels uncertain, I can say yes to this. I can say yes to the hunt, yes to the bright colors, yes to the tiny, squishy win.
I cannot fix the world.
I cannot fast-forward through the hard parts my family is living right now.
But I can stand in a store aisle at 7:30 p.m., holding a glitter dumpling like it’s the greatest prize on earth, and feel, just for a moment, that something is light.
Maybe that’s what this trend is really about.
The very human need to hold onto something soft when everything else feels hard.