What are Huggy Wuggy videos? Police issue warning

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Children as young as five years old have been imitating videos of the viral animated character, which is a blue bear named “Huggy Wuggy” with sharp, pointed teeth. The character originally appeared as a villain in the horror video game “Poppy Playtime”, released last year.

But the creepy blue bear has is now lurking in new online spaces on TikTok and YouTube, accessed by children just starting primary school.

A spokesperson described the distorted teddy bear character as having “long arms and rows of razor-sharp teeth”.

They added: “Set in an abandoned toy factory Huggy is a villain in the game who stalks the players from vents are unreachable places.

“Videos of the game are available to watch on YouTube, with other clips dedicated to Huggy in songs.

“One song includes the lyrics ‘I could hug you here forever, till you breathe your last breath together.”

Videos like these, pulling inspiration from the gruesome character, have appeared on social media like TikTok and can often slip through age filters online to reach the eyes of very young children.

Dorset Police cyber protection officer, Chris Conroy, advised: “If you were to use even YouTube kids, for example, it may slip through because there is nothing obviously sinister about the name of a video.

“It really comes down to paying attention [to] what your children are doing and making sure they are not just trusting YouTube Kids videos are safe because unfortunately with videos like this, things do slip through the cracks.”

He told Dorset Live: “It’s based around jump scares and things you certainly wouldn’t want children exposed to.”

The knock-on effect is the appearance of the sinister game even in school settings, where children will imitate the “spine-breaking embrace” of the character to whisper threats in one another’s ears.

Rhia Fearn, who is mum to five-year-old Harrison, described how she first believed Huggy Wuggy to be harmless before young Harrison told his mother Huggy Wuggy is “a baddie and he kills people”.

The mum of two from Derbyshire added: “He said children at school had been talking about it and one of his friends has been watching it. This weekend we were out shopping and he spotted a boy with the teddy and he said ‘that’s Huggy Wuggy, look, mummy.’

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“It was my first glimpse of the physicality of Huggy Wuggy and that prompted me to ask a bit more about him.

“He told me Huggy Wuggy kills everyone he meets and he’s not nice, he’s a baddie and he’s very mean.”

She said the character “snuck in under my radar as a parent and infiltrated my child’s mind without me even being aware”, before warning other parents against being “oblivious to this level of violence our children are being exposed to”.

Another worried parent compared the trend to previous viral sensations that could traumatise children not old enough to be prepared for such material.

They said: “All the children are talking about it and showing each other these videos, it’s become a bit of a craze that is getting really popular.

“It’s extremely concerning because this character is really sinister and frankly terrifying. It’s almost becoming the online version of that Killer Clown craze.”

Back in 2016, police across the UK began to hand out fines to those dressing up as intimidating clowns to scare passersby in a trend that began in the US before taking the UK briefly by storm.

Additional reporting by Neil Shaw and Phoebe Jobling.

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