According to a recent release from the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), popular cooler manufacturer Igloo is recalling over a million units of its Flip & Tow Rolling Coolers after getting a dozen reports of fingers being seriously injured by the coolers' tow handles. Below is everything we know so far.
Which Coolers are Affected by the Recall?
Information from Igloo and CPSC recall 25-136 say that 90-quart Flip & Tow Rolling Coolers, made between January 2019 and January 2024, are the target of the campaign. The recall estimates that around 1,060,000 coolers are in circulation in the U.S., with another 47,000 in Canada and 23,000 in Mexico. That puts the grand total at around 1,120,000 coolers in North America.
The Flip & Tow coolers are sold in almost every big-box location you can think of (Target, Walmart, Academy, etc), as well as through Amazon and Igloo's online store. They reportedly come in a wide variety of body/lid color combinations, and they all have tow handles—which apparently are the source of the potential hazard.
What's Wrong with the Recalled Igloo Coolers?
According to the recall,
The tow handle can pinch consumers’ fingertips against the cooler, posing fingertip amputation and crushing hazards.
If that sounds a little dramatic, keep in mind that something that serious actually happened to twelve people. Igloo reported getting a dozen reports of finger injuries "including fingertip amputations, bone fractures, and lacerations." That's clearly more than a bruise and a little embarrassment, and I have a feeling a lot of Flip & Tow owners will wonder what options they have to avoid those injuries.
What Can People with Flip & Tow Coolers Do?
If you have a 90-quart Flip & Tow cooler and you're worried about the risk to your fingers, you can check if yours is part of the recall. How? Well, you can flip the cooler over and check its manufacture date (printed in a circle of month/year on the bottom) and the model number (on a label attached to the bottom). The CPSC provided a long list of affected models and years on its own recall page, available here.
If your cooler is on the list, the first thing to do—as with most defective products—is to stop using it. As a remedy to make it usable again, Igloo recommends contacting them online for an at-home repair kit that includes a replacement handle that presumably poses less of a threat to customers' fingers.
Why Should Consumers Care about The Igloo Recall?
In our experience, people mostly associate the word "recall" with vehicles. That's fair; goodness knows there are enough auto recalls that we could write about them every day and never run out of material. Still, any consumer product that hurts people in a way it shouldn't can be recalled, and those are important to watch out for as well. Think about listeria outbreaks in restaurants and grocery produce, for example, or space heaters that catch houses on fire. Life is full of everyday items that can cause a lot of harm if they aren't made right.
Some might want to argue that the twelve injured victims should just have been more careful; in fact, Igloo would probably say the same if it had to defend itself. Maybe a jury would take that into account, but it's also understood that manufacturers are required to make products that minimize risk to their users. It's hard to believe that nobody at Igloo looked at the Flip & Tow handle and thought "Is this as safe as we can make it for fingers?" Whether they didn't consider that or just chose to ignore the hazard is anyone's guess, but if they could have prevented some crushed or amputated fingers then they should answer for their mistake—and alert the hundreds of thousands of other customers who may be in harm's way.