Beautiful or creepy? The box that stores teeth, hair and an umbilical cord.

Imagine this. You’re a teenager, snooping around in your parents’ bedroom, as you do. You see a mysterious wooden box. You open it. Inside you discover… OH MY GOD, TEETH! HUMAN TEETH! AND HAIR! AND, OH MY GOD, A SHRIVELLED UMBILICAL CORD!

What the hell is going here? Are your parents serial killers who like to keep souvenirs of their victims? Or are they satanists? Or mad scientists, maybe?

No, no. The real story is that your parents bought a MEITK Wooden Baby Tooth Box, and lovingly filled it with pieces of you. There are labelled spaces for each tooth, plus bigger spaces for the umbilical cord and lanugo (the soft hair that sometimes covers a newborn).

Holly Nilsson, who blogs under the name Spend With Pennies, recently plugged the box on her Facebook page, raving, “This is the cutest BABY TOOTH BOX I have ever seen! It would make such a fun gift for new parents!”

Cute? Fun? Well, that’s a matter of opinion. It might seem like a perfect Christmas gift for some, but Nilsson’s followers were deeply divided on the matter.

“This is super creepy,” Sarah Campbell posted. “Who keeps human teeth? Are you a serial killer now? This grosses me out on so many levels. It’s old teeth!! What next – a baggie for nail clippings and dead skin cells? Eeeewwww.”

“What are they trying to do – trying to clone their kids if something unforeseen happens?” asked Joshua Shear.

“I’m pretty sure, like, 13 years down the road, if I showed my kids their baby teeth they would most likely be grossed out,” Brianne Marie added. “And I would too. This is weird to me.”

Nett Lynette Archer Chapman had another concern. “Imagine if the kids found this! They would realise their parents had been lying about the Tooth Fairy leaving money, and then question the story of the Easter Bunny and even Father Christmas!”

Straight into the box, thanks. Photo via iStock.

But some people thought it was a good idea.

"Not creepy at all," Donna Crupnick White insisted. "Wish I had this when my son was little. I have all his baby teeth taped in a photo album. He's 34 and thought it was cool!"

"Boy!!! I wish I had this years ago!" Lisa Marie Crowson posted. "I have a box of teeth and couldn't tell you which of the three kids it belonged to!"

Personally, I'm glad no one ever bought me a baby tooth box as a "fun gift". I think it requires a higher level of commitment than I'm capable of. My daughter lost her first tooth at school (as in, it came out, she dropped somewhere in the playground, and it was never seen again). She accidentally swallowed her second tooth (and no, I didn't think of poking through her poo to find it).

It's a collection I could never hope to complete. Nor, to be honest, would I want to.