Clickholed! People Were Tricked Into Believing Beanie Babies Were Stuffed With Spiders' Eggs

Sometimes you have to just shake your head in despair. The Onion's satirical sister site Clickhole, which spoofs clickbait-style articles, recently ran a fake story titled "’90s Kids Rejoice! The Spider Eggs They Used To Fill Beanie Babies Are Finally Hatching!."

The article described how the Beanie Babies toys popular in the 1990s were actually full of brown recluse spider eggs, and they were now finally ready to hatch.

Yep, I know. No one in their right mind should have any reason to believe it was a true story, especially when it featured paragraphs like this:

For nearly two decades now, your Beanie Babies have served as protective sacs for the spider eggs they harbor, providing a warm, dark atmosphere for the arthropods to pass through their larval stages. Manufacturer Ty Inc confirmed that each Beanie is stuffed with approximately 6,000 spider eggs, though unless you’ve been storing them in a secure, low-humidity environment, you should realistically only expect between 800 to 1,000 spiders to spawn through your Beanies’ fabric.

Aren’t sure if your Beanie Baby has released its spiders yet? Well, you’ll know your Beanies’ fur is about to tear open when you see hundreds of spider forelegs start piercing through the fabric in an effort to escape. You might even notice little Pugsly or Bongo lurching forward, inch by inch, as the spiders collectively attempt to break free from their snuggly resting place. Awwwww!

But people fell for it, sharing the story on social media and declaring how upset they were. One girl even posted a video (above) to YouTube describing her horror at the prospect of her Beanie Babies hatching spiders.

Even Snopes, the myth-debunking site, featured a post telling people it wasn't real.

Yet still it didn't stop people taking to twitter to declare their gullibility.

Oh. Dear. There aren't enough facepalms in the world.