‘Do You Have Any NeeDohs?’ The Squishy Shortage, Explained.
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In the world of squishysensory toysand fidgets, NeeDoh is king. The brightly colored blobs come in a vast assortment of styles and shapes that stand out on store shelves thanks to ’70s-inspired packaging covered in undulating neon lettering. The brand’s groovy designs, punny product names, and reputation for being high-quality — at least as far as squishies are concerned — have resonated with customers of all ages and forged a reluctant trust among parents who are grossed-out by slime and its kin. Best of all, NeeDohs are cheap: The smallest ones sell for $3, and the biggest ones top out around $15. Predictably, they’re a popular gift that kids can easily buy for themselves or their friends.
The brand has been around for nearly ten years; you may be familiar with its most popular product, a smooth-edged, goo-filled block of transparent “ice,” appropriately called theNice Cube, that is firmer, less sticky, and more durable than most other squishy toys. But over the last few months, NeeDohs have achieved a new status as the most covetable and hard-to-buy toys on the market. Right now, everything NeeDoh makes is so difficult to find and sells out so quickly when it restocks that fans have declared a national shortage (some are even posting videos of elaborateNeeDoh hunts). I wanted to know more, so I called Paul Weingard, the president and CEO of NeeDoh’s parent company, Schylling, to see if he could explain what’s going on — and possibly reveal the secret to scoring an elusiveJellySquish.
A classic tale of supply, demand, and TikTok
According to the brand, the reason for the shortage is simple: Schylling can’t keep up with NeeDoh’s sudden stratospheric popularity despite having tried to plan for it. Weingard says it’s a snowball effect of growing recognition, a steady stream of new and seasonal drops, and virality on TikTok and other social media. (He also specifically confirmed that last year’stariff uncertaintyisn’t to blame.) At the beginning of 2026, NeeDoh launched a bunch of new products with names likeFuzzballs,Nice Cream Cones,Squeezza Pizza,Nice-sicles, andHot Shots. Demand increased so quickly that Schylling had already sold through eight months’ worth of inventory by mid-February.
Kids and adults alike began posting ASMR videos of themselves squeezing the toys or unboxing seasonal designs, likeglittery conversation heartsthat came out ahead of Valentine’s Day and hatching chicks (Chicka DeeDoos) that launched forEaster. There’s also been an uptick of videos where people experiment with cutting the toys open,freezing them, or dangerouslyputting them in the microwave.
@jodiefidgets My top 5 favourite Needohs!🥰 @NeeDoh Official will always be my biggest obsession🫶 All of these are available at @Funky Fidgets Shop 𝙻𝚃𝙳 ᵗᵐ 🧡 Let me know your top 5 in the comments!✨#needoh#squishies#stressball#fidgettoys#fidgets
♬ Lofi/Fashionable/Rose Piano/10 minutes(1455693) - nightbird_bgm
Now they’re vanishing from shelves just as quickly as retailers can restock them. “They sell out so fast. We have a dozen people either calling or walking into the store everyday asking for them,” says Amanda Stewart, founder of Salt Lake City–basedMochi Kids. The same thing is happening at toy stores all over the country, including Learning Express on the Upper East Side. “Our phones are ringing all day long with parents of little kids looking for NeeDohs,” says owner Alexandra Garcia.
Learning Express locations across the U.S. — along with dozens of other toy stores, big and small — are using Instagram and TikTok to update customers on when to expect new shipments. At all sorts of retailers, it’s common to see NeeDoh status updates taped up on empty shelves and at checkout counters. During a recent visit toJungle Jim’s International Market, a famous grocery store in Cincinnati, Ohio, Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio noticed such a sign and learned from a store employee that the only NeeDoh the store had left was the bouncy ball-sizeWorld’s Smallest NeeDoh, a spinoff product that isn’t actually made by Schylling.
Bad news, NeeDoh hunters: Stock will be scarce for awhile
Weingard wouldn’t reveal any actual numbers, but he did say that NeeDoh is currently experiencing sales growth six times higher than last year and that the brand’s 2025 sales doubled its 2024 sales. “It’s just a wild scenario. We get products out on the shelf and they’re gone in an hour. We operate our own distribution center, and our team has been working nights and weekends to keep up with orders. We just expanded our warehouse. We added a second shift, and we’re doing all these things to be able to get our products through the pipeline,” he says, explaining that such a dramatic increase all at once is almost impossible to keep up with.
“We’re in constant production. But the reality is that there’s no magic wand. You can’t just say, ‘Hey, we want twice as much, or ten times as much’ and suddenly have factories produce more. Our products are injection-molded on the outside, so we are having to make new molds to be able to increase capacity. We’re moving as quickly as possible, but it’s still going to leave shelves empty for some time.”
Stewart recently received an email from her NeeDoh sales rep saying that going forward, all new orders will be on backorder from June until early fall. Schylling is also starting to cap NeeDoh orders so that it can ration products fairly across all of its retailers.
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This $9 NeeDoh Nice Cream Cone set is a good deal on eBay — no markup over the MSRP!
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JellySquish is one of NeeDoh's more popular newer designs. The MSRP is around $14.
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This swirly version of the jumbo Nice Berg is listed for exorbitantly high prices on resale sites.
How to find aDohnut, aMello Mallow, aDream Drop, or any other NeeDoh you desire
I asked Weingard if he had any insider tips for how to score a Nice Cube, aGumdrop, aFunky Pup, aPeace O’Cake, or other NeeDohs. His only advice was to call local shops and ask when they’ll be restocking — and to only buy from reputable sources. “We’re trying to keep a pretty even hand on where we ship and trying to give a little bit to everyone. But unfortunately for the consumers, the products are selling out so fast, and we are seeing a lot of knockoffs online trying to capitalize on the gap. We really don’t see any knockoffs at brick-and-mortar stores, though,” he says.
The shop owners I talked to told me that they usually post restocks on Instagram or TikTok, so make sure you’re following nearby stores on social media. And Garcia said she’s seen New York City middle- and high-school kids working together to find NeeDohs in stock: “A bunch of them will show up looking for NeeDohs, then they’ll all get a ping on their phones about a random hardware store that has them, and they’ll all run out the door.” Checking less-obvious retailers like local pharmacies, grocery stores, and hardware stores (or even chains like Ace Hardware and Staples) is a good strategy. But if that doesn’t work, Weingard says the next big drop of new NeeDohs will be this summer. “We’ve got a number of new products coming out midyear. So those should be hitting shelves in June or July,” he says.
Some other (mostly in-stock) viral squishies
In the meantime, Garcia as well as Trolio’s 10-year-old daughter, a fourth-grader, say the next most-popular squish toy is a semi-transparent stress ball from the brand Speks. The toys are called Gumps, and they come in a range of pretty pastels and two sizes. The regular size is sold individually, and the mini comes in a pack of six.
Garcia also said that squishies shaped like dumplings, giant bananas, sticks of butter, and blocks of cheese are very popular in her store. But those are starting to sell out now too. In fact, I could only find the blind-box mystery dumpling squishies from the brand RMS at the resale website StockX, but once they are restocked you should be able to find them at Target or Five Below.
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