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Christmas morning nearly turned into an emergency room visit after a pair of British parents were “furious” to reportedly find a box cutter fall out of their young child’s gift.
Martin Sexton, 36, and his fiancée, Kelly Francis, 31, said they spent much of their holiday trying to reach the online retailer after their 2-year-old daughter, Maggie, allegedly unboxed a yellow wooden Peppa Pig campervan with a “rusty retractable knife” included in the package.
The couple also share 3-year-old son Archie. Both their children are autistic, Sexton said, so they already require eagle-eyed supervision while opening boxes that contain plastic ties.
“I managed to grab it just before Maggie did,” Sexton told the Daily Mail. “It was just as well I did, as it’s pretty likely Maggie would have put it in her mouth.”
“Kelly was absolutely furious, he added. “Had Maggie put it in her mouth, it’s very likely we would have had the Army rushing her to hospital in an ambulance.”
The couple claim they bought the toy from the online retailer Studio, which is owned by the Studio Retail Group. The company was acquired by Frasers Group in February 2022.
The Post reached out to Frasers Group for comment.
Sexton said the campervan was manufactured in China — and he guessed the person who boxed the present must have lost the cutting utensil finishing the task.
“There was a void in the bottom of the box where the plastic bindings were tied. Someone probably put the knife down for a second and forgot about it when trimming the ties. When looking at the product in its finished packaging, the knife wasn’t visible at all,” Sexton said.
“Some guy in China is probably still looking around for his knife.”
The couple say they were not able to speak with a customer service representative until Boxing Day — the British holiday celebrated the day after Christmas — and were transferred to the complaints department.
A representative reportedly promised the company would launch an investigation.
“They were pretty shocked,” Sexton recalled. “They passed on the complaint to the investigations team, saying they need to know how this happened.”
The parents can’t help but think how their holiday could have gone tragically wrong.
“We have played through the various horrible what-if-we-hadn’t-seen-it-when-we-did scenarios. What if our other child had picked it up?” Sexton wondered.
“What if the dirty work blade had cut someone, particularly with so many emergency services currently on strike? But the prevailing feeling is a sense of relief that nobody got hurt.”
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