Crayola Is Making Silly Putty That Looks Like Poop & Oh Man, Is It Ever Gross

What do Silly Putty and your kid have in common? They’re both going through a major potty humor phase. All sub-par riddles aside, this new iteration of Silly Putty is a far cry from the bright and cheery egg-shaped goo I remember from my youth. It’s brown, it’s sticky... that’s right friends, it’s Crayola's Silly Putty Ugly Putty Poop.

The good news is that with Crayola’s Silly Putty Ugly Putty Poop, your prank-loving kid won’t have to supply the gag themselves (or be psyched when your dog does.) Unlike the real deal, the faux-poop (words I did not expect to write today) is non-toxic and odor-free. Kids will love hiding it and seeing you react in horror — over and over and over again — when you lay eyes on the silly putty (and may I add that I feel like there was a real opportunity to call this product Silly Potty, but alas, no one asked me).

Part of what kids find alluring about pranks is that these tricks alter their expectations of how the world works. A 2017 study published in the journal Cognition found that “surprising events... can change children’s learning. When children’s basic expectations about object behavior were violated by impossible outcomes, children learned better than when their expectations were confirmed. This surprise-induced learning enhancement following violations of core knowledge may be one way in which the developing mind constrains the learning challenge it faces.”

How does this relate to Silly Putty? A great question indeed. It turns out, kids actually learn from the surprise that something they believe to be real is in fact, not real. When they see adults react in earnest to seeing poop on the kitchen floor, followed by the relief of realizing it's fake, it affirms that sometimes our notions are incorrect, that our expectations about certain situations can be destabilized.

Also did I mention that poop is just really funny? One of the amazing things about parenthood is how immune you get to bodily functions. I mean when you stick your face in a baby’s butt repeatedly and take a big whiff, you kind of have to get a little desensitized to the issue literally at hand. Lest you're afraid that this putty isn’t gross enough, rest assured that it's filled with corn kernels to really give it that authentic, I-was-at-at-barbecue-yesterday vibe. SO. GROSS. While we’re on the topic, another fun/ really disgusting fact for you is corn that’s visible in poop is actually cellulose, the outer casing of each kernel that cannot be digested by the body, according to Healthline. The more you know!

Look, kids love gross things: boogers, farts, urinal cakes, trash, eating off the ground, band-aids, you name it. Vomit, earwax, and rotten egg are all flavors made by Jelly Belly jelly beans and I’m pretty sure the market for those are almost exclusively kids. This Halloween, Zombie Skittles are mixing sweet and disgusting flavors in the same bag. I guess if I squint, I can kind of see this love of the repulsive as actually kind of sweet? It proves a lack of judgment and disdain from children, an accepting nature. It also proves a need for copious amounts of hand sanitizer.

So go ahead and buy the gross Silly Putty Ugly Putty Poop ($5, Crayola); it's cheap, it won’t dry out, and it’ll provide endless laughs and harmless pranks for your kids. Just make sure you (try to) keep the putty off rugs and soft surfaces, because it’ll definitely raise a few eyebrows when you explain, no no, that’s not poop mashed into my carpet, it’s fake poop... Sure.