The ‘NeeDoh effect’: Huge demand for squishy toys drives crowds at local businesses

April 20, 2026

It’s less than an hour before closing time on a Friday at Child’s Play Toys in downtown Sioux Falls, and the phone is still ringing.

“No, I’m sorry, we don’t have any in stock,” the store associate tells the caller.

Then, she heads to a small piece of paper kept behind the counter and makes another tally mark, bringing the total to 45.

“We probably get up to 30 calls every day at our downtown location,” store owner Nancy Savage said. “We’re starting to tally it. Once we get to 50 calls (a day), we’re buying coffee for everyone. That way, we can stay positive.”

The callers are all in search of the same thing: NeeDoh, a line of squishy, sensory, fidget-friendly toys taking on a level of viral popularity even industry veterans say is unprecedented.

“All of a sudden, it just went crazy,” Savage said. “I have never seen anything else like this in my 16 years of business. Ever.”

Blame or credit social media, depending on your perspective, especially TikTok, where NeeDoh unboxing videos and hunt recaps can amass millions of views.

“I have thousands of dollars on order,” said Savage, whose store has carried NeeDoh products since they launched in 2017. For years, it sold steadily but generally was readily available as the shop filled a couple of shelves with varieties of the toy.

Not anymore.

Earlier this month, she received 248 NeeDoh pieces, including popular varieties such as the “Nice-Sicle” popsicle-inspired piece. She posted a video on Facebook announcing the shipment, “and we sold out in an hour and 15 minutes,” Savage said. “We limited it to two per person, and there were well over 100 people that came to our doors between both locations.”

Not only that, “We had people calling from Texas, we had people calling from California, and my family in Arizona called and said, ‘Please, please, can you send some to us?’” she continued.

The attention has been a boon to her own social media accounts. After pushing to get to 5,000 followers for a while, “we increased our following by 500 in the last month. For us, that’s huge,” Savage continued.

“It’s bringing people in our store that maybe have never seen our store before, and they’re finding us, and hopefully they will come back.”

She knows they’re stopping plenty of other places too.

“It’s really not that expensive, and so people are going on NeeDoh hunts all over town,” she said.

NeeDoh is carried everywhere from national big-box chains to office supply stores, drugstores and mom-and-pop shops, making it easier to check multiple places with one trip to a retail center or neighborhood.

“I love that it’s building community, and it’s something for kids to do,” Savage said.

“A dad took the day off to take his daughter and friends around looking for NeeDoh, and they came in the store and waited around and came back and ended up finding it. They were so excited they came back and brought us a gift card. Those kids are going to remember that day.”

At Lewis Drug, where all Sioux Falls stores carry NeeDoh, two cases arrived at the location at 6109 S. Louise Ave. last week. With no promotion, in a few hours they were gone. The retailer also has carried the product for years.

“I had a whole section of them full, and one day it just snapped, and we were out of them,” said Madison Kennedy, who oversees the store’s toy department.  “Because they’re in such high demand, it’s hard to track down the order. We’ve had an order in for a while now. I think it’s supposed to reach here in a couple weeks, but we don’t have a specific time because demand is so high.”

Lewis has started merchandising NeeDoh at the register instead of the toy department “to watch it and keep tabs on it,” she said, but hasn’t yet limited quantities. “But one person probably shouldn’t buy the whole box. We try to keep it so everyone can at least get some when we do get it in.”

At Scheels, Pat Hagan has become the Sioux Falls store’s resident “squishy expert.”

He has worked there for eight years, and “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “We’ve had NeeDoh maybe four or five years, and at the beginning of the year, there were a couple weekends where it was getting busy around that area, and eventually the orders were getting further apart, and they were not lasting as long on the shelf. We’re trying whatever we can do to get them in now.”

A shipment arrived a couple of weeks ago “and they lasted less than 24 hours,” he said. “A lot of it is word of mouth. We’ll get someone coming up as we’re unboxing them, and they text friends, or moms text each other, and within an hour, the endcap is crazy with people coming in and buying them.”

Without knowing when the next NeeDoh shipment might arrive, “We’re trying to get our hands on anything you can squish,” Hagan said, adding that the store recently received a shipment of popular squishy toys packaged as dumplings in mystery colors.

“We hoped the shipment would last a month, and we were out in two days. We don’t have anything squishy right now. It’s absolutely insane. Anything we get right now, they’re just gone,” he said. “It’s definitely driving business. Business is really good in the toy area.”

Adding small squishy toys also has been a solid business move for Sweet Amber Lynn’s.

The candy store at 5111 S. Louise Ave. opened a few years ago and has found traction with “TikTok-trending candy,” owner Lori Gilliland said.

“Obviously, small business is pretty tough for everybody. I have so many friends that have closed boutiques. … I’ve had to add other things to make it worth keeping the doors open.”

She started with candy and food-themed squishy toys before adding an order of NeeDoh earlier this year, “and then it went crazy everywhere,” she said. “Had I known … I would have placed a way-bigger order. I had people coming in and buying boxes at a time.”

And that was at a price higher than what other retailers charge, she said. Because NeedDoh’s manufacturer, Massachusetts-based Schylling Toys, isn’t taking on new retailers for the product because of  demand, Gilliland ordered through a third-party reseller.

“I do still have orders coming, but I get a few here and there because it’s not coming directly from the factory. They’re sending them as they get them,” she said. “So finally I said, NeeDohs are great, but I’m going to do something different and get other squishes in. I order from 15 places, and I have people coming in and saying they would rather buy those than NeeDoh because they’re different and cute.”

They’re also selling fast. When the mystery squishy dumplings arrived recently, “we sold out between Friday and Saturday, and there were over 300 dumplings,” she said. “I do have a bunch more coming. … Little girls come in every day with a $50 bill. It’s nuts.”

This past Saturday, customers were waiting outside for a half-hour before her 11 a.m. opening time.

Once people discover the store, she’s able to show them the large variety of unique candy she also carries.

“It has helped,” Gilliland said. “I’m not going to lie and say the business has been a cakewalk … but I hold my own now. The biggest thing is staying on top of the trends because that’s what brings the kids in.”

NeeDoh also has brought increased awareness to Live Inspired 365, a nonprofit founded in 2022 by Chantelle Friedman and Michelle Thie to promote mental health awareness and suicide prevention.

A small gift shop staffed by volunteers at 3701 W. 49th has carried NeeDoh for a couple of years because they are used as “a great squishy stress reliever for a lot of people,” Friedman said. “We donate a lot of them to the addiction center and behavioral health … and they just went viral, and it’s very hard for us to get them.”

The nonprofit buys directly from the manufacturer and uses sales to support its mission.

“We have had some people come in truthfully that are kind of in dire straights because they depend on them and they work so well,” Friedman said.

“Someone with anxiety is worried about getting their NeeDoh and worried about breaking it, and I hadn’t really thought about that, but that stress is real for them. There definitely are some people that truly do need them and are struggling to get them.”

The store places a limit on how many one customer can buy and carries other squishy toys.

“We are very thankful it is bringing a lot of people into our doors that would have never heard about us,” Friedman said. “For us, it’s absolutely huge because it gets more people talking about mental health. Maybe before, they didn’t really think they needed a fidget, and some do have it for the fad, but they are realizing the importance of having something like this to relieve stress.”

The squishy toys can help curb everything from nail biting to self-harm, she added. Even business people have said “they didn’t know they need it,” she said.

“They mess with them on a phone call or in a meeting. I’ve had parents tell me their kids have buckets of them, and they sit with them on the couch at night instead of being on their phone.”

Meanwhile at her store, the phone keeps ringing.

“The craze is everywhere. We have people reaching out from other countries to see if we’ll ship internationally. It’s wild, absolutely wild. We could go a day in our little store and not have any phone calls, and now we have 7-year-olds calling to see if we have squishies,” Friedman said.

“We don’t always know when we’re getting shipments. They sometimes just show up, and as soon as we get them, we put them on social media. The last batch we got sold out in 28 minutes. Before, we could have them six months.”

Back at Child’s Play Toys, Savage has a newly arrived rack ready for her NeeDoh. Now, she’s just waiting to fill it.

“It’s hard to say” when the next shipment will arrive, she said.

“We haven’t gotten an invoice yet so still waiting on that. Every morning, the first thing I do is check my email to see if we have an invoice from that company,” she said.

That means the product generally will arrive three to five days later, she said.

Schylling Toys has been in regular contact with retail partners about the delays, she said.

“They sent the most-nice message to everyone who carried it and said they are no longer opening new accounts so they can try to get it to people who have been with them for years,” she said.

“They didn’t know either (that it would take off), and now they’re really trying to do the right thing. They obviously weren’t expecting it. It’s memorable, that’s for sure. So we’re riding the wave.”

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