"She said 'look Mummy there's rocks in this bag of balloons', but I didn't think anything of it until my son picked it up the next day. He was in the car and said 'look what [daughter] was playing with'."
She then discovered what looked like half a brown pill and crushed powder floating around the balloons.
"I had a panic because the balloon packets have hole punches in them for aeration so I thought 'Oh my god it's gone all over her', whatever it was. I don't know if it was crumbled before then but there was half of it left."
She went straight to the nearest police station, Glen Innes. There, officers took the bag. The next day an officer called her back and said it would be too expensive to test the pill-like product so they had decided to destroy it instead.
Hyams was flummoxed with their response.
"I thought you know, really that's not good enough. That's a product that's going to children. Even if it's nothing, it's a substance that's going to touch childrens' mouths.
"Would you want to put a brown pill in your child's mouth not knowing what it was?
"Surely with all the health and safety regulations that we've got around, it's not hard to test a product that's going to children?"
She decided to do go back to Look Sharp herself, with kids in tow, and see if there were any more broken pill-shaped products in bags of balloons - and there were.
She took the bag up to duty manager Bawan Saluja who was horrified, she said.
Saluja immediately cleared the product from his shelves and sent a complaint back to the manufacturer.
He told the Herald he had also sent the brown substance to their main Auckland warehouse for testing but was yet to hear back.
However, he believed the product was a mud-type substance as when he pressed it, it disintegrated before his eyes.
"When I touched it, it broke into pieces. It was like a mud and it turned into a dust."
A police spokesperson confirmed a package had been brought into the station on Monday.
"A senior officer at the station examined the item and organised for the package to be destroyed.
"In this instance, police were satisfied there was no wider benefit in taking further action."
The spokesperson thanked Hyams for taking the item to police.
"Our focus is always on preventing any potential harm.
"We would encourage anyone who has concerns for the safety of themselves or anyone else to let police know.
"When there are further concerns, on a case-by-case basis Police do take action as deemed necessary, which may include testing the items."
