Erin Loudoun-Butler’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter was ecstatic Saturday when she won a small, portable fan from National Bank at the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival in Montreal.
“We arrived to go see George Ezra and when another band came on stage (because he had cancelled), she had a complete meltdown,” she told Global News.
“My husband took her to the Ferris wheel. We had to give her something, she couldn’t understand. She kept saying ‘where’s George? Where’s George?”
The toddler won the toy while waiting in line for the ride.
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“You can imagine a three-year-old with a toy like that is the best thing ever,” Loudoun-Butler said.
“She was so happy with it and I said, ‘oh, that’s perfect to resolve a day that didn’t go as well.'”
While playing with the fan Sunday, Loudoun-Butler says her daughter came to tell her the fan had become very hot to the touch.
She said she removed the batteries and was surprised to find the plastic coating was melted.
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“It was so hot when she brought it to me. It would have definitely caught something on fire if we had left it,” she said.
“I opened it up and the batteries were so hot. I burned my fingers, just a bit.”
Loudoun-Butler said she let it cool before putting fresh batteries in, but when she turned it on, it started smoking.
“She’s so upset because she’s desperate to have this little thing back,” Loudoun-Butler told Global News.
“I said, ‘sorry, darling, you can’t have this one back. It’s going in the garbage.”
The Beaconsfield mother said she tried to contact the bank, but was unable to reach anyone who could help her.
“Definitely, if it had been left, we probably would have smelt the plastic melting, but she could have easily tucked it into her toy box and we wouldn’t have thought anything of it,” she said.
After speaking with Global News, the bank put out notices on its social media pages.
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“This is the first time that we’ve used these fans. People that received one are asked to disable it safely,” Marie-Pierre Jodoin, a senior manager at National Bank, told Global News.
“We take this matter very seriously and are currently investigating the cause.”