Cabbage Patch doll `eats' girls' hair

Greenville, South Carolina (AP) - In the third such incident since Christmas, a little girl's hair got caught in the mouth of a battery-powered doll that mimics eating. Three-year-old Carly Mize was left partly bald on Thursday when her hair was snagged by her doll and pulled out of her scalp.

The girl's mother, Tammy Mize, of Easley, South Carolina, said: "When I picked Carly up, the doll was attached to the back of her head."

The Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kid doll, which is supposed to "eat" plastic chips and other fake food, has no on-off switch, and Mrs Mize said she tried to prise the doll off Carly's head with no success.

"It kept rolling her hair inside the head," she said. "It pulled her hair from the root. She is completely bald all the way down the back of her head."

In another incident, a doll belonging to seven-year-old Sarah Stevens, of Griffith, Indiana, had to be taken apart when it chewed its way up her hair to her scalp. Sarah's aunt, Kelly Nagy, took 30 minutes to free the little girl's hair.