A DAD from Wales has revealed that a major supermarket caused heartbreak for his family this Christmas.
Nathan Watters said that his four-year-old son was reduced to tears on Christmas day after his Hot Wheels race track turned out to be a box of rubbish.
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The dad of two said that he had bought the race track from a B&M shop in Neath and that the box was completely sealed and had no signs of having been tampered with.
Watters told WalesOnline: “The box itself was completely sealed of which we had made sure of from previous experiences where there’s been missing parts etc.
“It was bought as our four-year-old son’s main gift as he’s been asking for it for months.
“We’re currently going through testing for autism with him which already runs in both sides of the family.
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“When he unwrapped it he was super excited and his face lit up.
“He asked me to help him and open it for him. I opened the box which had no sign at all of tampering and as I opened the flap and saw what was in it, my heart sank.
“There was no way I could avoid tipping it out. As I did I could see the disappointment and Christmas being ripped out of him.”
Photos posted to Facebook revealed the contents of the box included items like clothes hangers, and pieces of photo frames.
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Watters speculated that these were carefully chosen to mimic the sounds of toy race-track parts.
Watters added: “He along with my wife immediately burst into tears quickly followed by myself and our three-year-old daughter.
“The first thing he said was ‘My Hot Wheels, why has Santa done this? Is it because I’ve been naughty?’
“We blamed it on a naughty elf who had tricked Santa. It made me feel like the worst dad ever, disappointing my son and there was nothing I could do about it.
“He was really upset all day, crying, asking why Santa left it, and couldn’t understand why it had happened.
“When we put him to bed, the wife told him that Santa had called us and to take it to a shop to get it replaced and that Santa had put the naughty elf responsible on to the naughty step to think about what he had done.”
Watters returned to B&M earlier today to exchange the product, and said that staff were “really sincere and apologetic”.
He said: We returned to B&M this morning where the manager had already seen it on Facebook and made staff aware of the situation and instructed that we were either to have an exchange or a refund.
“We exchanged it for a different track to what it was supposed to be and they also gave two packs of Hot Wheels cars to my son as a sorry gift.
“The manager was also upset and stated that they checked all returns and that it was a manufacturing issue.
“We just want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else as it has already, according to a comment on my Facebook post.”
Watters went on to say: “The look on my son’s face is something that will stick with me forever and with him being four (years old) now I fear this year will be the first (Christmas) he properly remembers and will be one of disappointment.
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“I just hope he forgets and continues his fascination of Hot Wheels and dinosaurs.”
The Sun has contacted B&M for a response to this incident.
