FACT CHECK: Did using a Minion-themed, banana-scented bubble bath cause a girl to lose her eyebrows?

Claim: Using a Minion-themed, banana-scented bubble bath caused a girl to lose her eyebrows.

UNDETERMINED

Origins: On 6 August 2015, Facebook user Melissa Jolly Graves posted a status update reporting that her daughter had suffered the loss of her eyebrows after using a Minion-themed form of banana-scented bubble bath:

Please watch and share. My daughter was in the bath tonight using Minion banana flavored bubble bath. She was having fun making faces with the bubbles on her face. As a mom (and once a kid) I laughed and thought it was cute. That was until the bubbles came off, and with them, her eyebrows. I don’t know how I can fix this. The hair came out at the roots, it looks like she had them waxed. I placed some on a patch on my arm, and the hair came off on that too. Parents, please learn from my mistake and don’t allow your children to play with these.

The product in question is distributed by MZB Accessories, which offers a variety of (identically formulated) bubble bath products themed with popular children’s characters:

MZB’s bubble bath products list no non-standard ingredients on their labels, and we’ve found no reports of this brand of bubble bath (or any other) causing a loss of eyebrows. Without much more additional information, it’s not possible to definitively determine whether the product in question was wholly or partly responsible for the reported symptom. Possibilities include product contamination (either pre- or post-purchase), an allergic reaction specific to this particular child (perhaps unlikely given that the mother reported the product also caused her to lose some of her own arm hair), an unusual combination of factors (of which the bubble bath was just one element), or that the symptom was completely coincidental to the use of the bath product.

Last updated: 9 August 2015

Originally published: 9 August 2015