Having a temporary tattoo made you the height of playground fashion when you were a kid. The rush of sporting a Spider-Man graphic clinging to your skin, courtesy of those nostalgic candy stick packets, was unrivalled.

But when it started to flake away, you knew it was time for the dreaded scrub to get it off. However, it appears we’ve been doing it wrong all this time. A woman, who posts online as @lexiesimmonss, found herself dumbfounded by her partner’s astonishingly simple method for stripping away these adhesive skins without any abrasive action.

Garnering upwards of 37,000 likes, a video reveals her presenting an outstretched arm, with a temporary tattoo on the back of her hand. Her other half said: “This is how you can get off these temporary tattoos.”

He brandishes a strip of sticky tape, firmly applying it over the alien design, pressing decisively before commanding: “You gotta put it on. Push down. And then. Peel it off.”

Lexie, visibly astounded, admits: “No way. Do you not know that? I actually didn’t,” before musing that this trick allows youngsters to preserve their beloved transfers if they so choose, saying, “You could actually you could keep these because obviously a lot of kids really like the tattoos.”

She wasn’t alone in her cluelessness; countless TikTok users expressed similar amazement in the comments section. One confessed: “The way I’ve been scrubbing off half my epidermis my whole life.”

Others remained skeptically bemused, with one exclaiming: “Even though I saw you do it, I still don’t believe it,” and another reminiscing over painful past endeavours, sharing: “All the years of scrubbing until we bled to get them off before school in the 90s.”

Meanwhile, another user exclaimed: “Jesus Christ my mother scrubbed 3 layers of my skin off on a Sunday evening for nothing.”