While some parents would happily never see the elf on the shelf (and that smug smile) ever again, unfortunately our children might have something to say about that.

One mum has found out exactly what happens when you destroy the festive spy in front of your little one, and it isn’t pretty.

Brittany Mease admitted that she accidentally melted the elf after putting him in the oven to stop the children noticing she hadn’t moved him in two weeks.

Mease said she “can’t stand” doing the annual tradition, but has dutifully done it every December for five years to please her kids, Ily and Gray.

On the first day of the month she came up with a “mum win” and said that the elf had broken his leg and Doc McStuffins put him on bedrest for 14 days, so he would be staying in exactly the same place.

“I just got a free pass to not worry about moving that creepy guy for two weeks! Heck yeah,” Mease said in her Facebook post.

Unfortunately after the two weeks had passed, she forgot to move the elf, but the children didn’t forget. So when they weren’t looking she quickly tossed him in the oven: “Until I could move him later and not raise any suspicion.”

But she forgot about her plan and turned the oven on to cook lunch, when she smelt something “really funky”.

“Gray came in the kitchen with excitement thinking our elf was back; but his world fell apart as we were using kitchen utensils to get our burnt and melting elf, out of the oven,” said the mum.

In the incident the elf had sadly been decapitated as his head popped off from being too hot, not to mention his feet had completely melted off too.

“I would have thought that with Gray being older, he would have laughed at it, but it was Ily that laughed—and Gray that got his little heart broken.”

Now the mum has to spend her day ‘phoning the North Pole’ to ask Father Christmas for special dispensation and a secondary elf.

Better luck next time mum.