Area resident Justine Reed was not expecting a world-famous basketball player to appear for dinner, but that all changed after opening a jar of alfredo sauce she purchased at the Dartmouth Target.

As she was preparing the sauce for dinner, out came the head of a LeBron James figure from the movie “Space Jam 2.”

“It’s crazy,” Reed said. “It just plopped into the sauce.” 

At first, the Acushnet resident thought a shell had fallen into her saucepan, while her daughter thought it was a chicken’s liver or heart. When one of her sons walked into the kitchen, he immediately recognized the object as James' head. 

While Reed said her family are big basketball fans, they weren’t all too excited to have the Los Angeles Lakers superstar over for dinner.

“He never played for the Celtics,” she said with a laugh.

According to Reed, the seal was not broken on the jar she said she bought around a month before the head fell out.

“If it was not sealed, I would not have used it,” she said. “I’m a mom — I’ve been cooking for 30 years and know when a seal is popped.”

It remains unclear how the head ended up in the jar. Reed said her son theorized that it likely came about from a TikTok trend this past summer in which people took the head off of the James toys and sold them for upward of $500.

Reed noted that her kids encouraged her to sell the head online, but the Acushnet mother wants to keep it as a reminder. 

The doll's head currently sits atop her family’s Christmas tree.

“He still smells like alfredo sauce,” she said with a laugh. “Who’s really going to buy that?”

Immediately, Reed reached out to Target’s corporate offices to alert the company.

“Something obviously happened at the plant,” Reed said.

A Target spokesperson said the company is currently looking into the incident.

Some had advised Reed to file a lawsuit against the Minnesota-based retailer for allowing a “potential choking hazard” through quality control, but the Acushnet resident said she felt there was no reason to sue since it brought her family such a big laugh.

“Plus this thing is huge, nobody’s going to choke on it,” she said. “It was hysterical and horrifying at the same time.”

She added that the incident will not prevent her from going on future Target runs, but that “it’ll probably just make me more leery of jarred food.”

After alerting the Dartmouth and corporate offices about the incident, she said the retailer will reimburse her with a $15 gift card.

“I won’t spend it on alfredo sauce,” Reed said with a laugh.