Last week, Samsung was in the news for recalling its newest launch, Galaxy Note 7, which was bursting into flames while being charged. The explosions are being ascribed to faulty batteries. While product recalls are common across a number of categories, read about the more freakish ones further on in this column.

Its reputation lay in tatters – that could be a likely epitaph for the detergent Persil Power, a brand Unilever launched in the mid-1990s to counter competition. It decided the product should have superior stain-removing qualities and came up with a formula that contained a special manganese ingredient called ‘the accelerator’. However, clothes washed with it started losing colour and disintegrating too. The company issued a product recall. It also faced a number of lawsuits by retail chains and customers but most of them were settled out of court.

Then there’s the embarrassing case of the lapel pins and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The CPSC was formed in 1972 amid concerns of unsafe toys harming children. It banned over 1,500 different toys by 1974. That year, it distributed around 80,000 lapel pins endorsing toy safety. The pins themselves had to be recalled for containing too much lead as well as sharp edges and clips that posed a choking risk.

In November 1999, Burger King released a set of Pokemon toys which came in round plastic containers. When an infant in California was found dead in her playpen with the container covering her nose, the local sheriff issued a warning and the CPSC asked the fast food chain to issue a recall.

Burger King refused, pending independent confirmation of the choking hazard the object posed. About two weeks later, another child had a near escape from being suffocated by the container. Ultimately, Burger King issued a recall and a campaign.

Despite these efforts, less than half of the 25 million containers were returned. One more death was attributed to the container after the recall. In the late 1990s, automaker BMW was forced to recall a GPS navigation system using a female voice as male customers in Germany did not want to take directions from a woman. Telling them the systems were made by men did not help. BMW was also accused of sexism for attempting to calm down its customers with this explanation.

Car maker Mazda was trapped in a web of recalls, literally. Spiders, of the yellow sac variety, caused a fire risk. They were attracted to the smell of petrol and made their way into the fuel tank where they could weave webs that blocked the air.

This could cause the tanks to crack and lead to a fire. In three years, 2011 and 2014, Mazda issued two recalls due to the same problem.

Compiled by Sravanthi Challapalli

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