In the fourth such incident since Christmas, a little girl's hair got caught in the mouth of a battery-powered Cabbage Patch doll that mimics eating.

Three-year-old Carly Mize started crying when her doll snagged her hair Thursday, and her mother said a patch of hair was pulled right out of her scalp.

"I thought maybe she had stuck her finger in the doll's mouth, so I checked her fingers, but she was still crying," said her mother, Tammy Mize of Easley. "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 french fries and other fake food, has no on-off switch, and Mize said she tried to pry the doll off Carly's head with no success.

Carly received the doll for Christmas, and the incident happened while she was shopping with her mother in a Greenville store.

Early Saturday, one of the dolls chewed the hair of 7-year-old Amanda Gomez of New Haven, Conn. Her family told WFSB-TV that emergency workers had to take the batteries out of the doll and cut the girl's hair to free her.

A doll belonging to 7-year-old Sarah Stevens of Griffith, Ind., had to be taken apart piece by piece Thursday when it chewed its way up her hair to her scalp.

Sarah's aunt and the owner of the hair salon where the incident happened worked 30 minutes to free the girl's hair.

And in Miami, the long hair of 5-year-old Carla Fernandez got stuck in the doll's mouth.

"It chewed her hair up to her scalp," said her mother, Carmen Fernandez. "It kept going and going, and finally I had to cut off her hair."

Fewer than 10 such incidents have been reported to the doll's manufacturer, Mattel Inc., since it went on the market in September, company spokeswoman Lisa McKendall said.

McKendall said she didn't know why the doll didn't have an on-off switch, "except that at the time we designed it, we didn't feel it was necessary."