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Haribo made the best smartphone power bank. Then the dangerous defects emerged.
You know the old saying: If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is. You know Haribo, the gummy bear brand? It turns out that the company also sells gummy bear-themed electronics, and its power banks went viral this year for delivering an absurd amount of battery life in a cheap, lightweight package. Backpackers especially loved them because they were so lightweight, and I bought one to try it for myself. But as you can guess, it turned out to be too good to be true.The Haribo 20,000mAh power bank showed up on Amazon sometime in early 2025, made by a Hong Kong company called DC Global and licensed under the Haribo brand. It had three things going for it: It was light (286 grams), it was cheap ($22-$25), and it had a little fake gummy bear dangling off the USB-C cable.Ultralight backpackers lost their minds. For years, the gold standard had been Nitecore batteries that weighed significantly more and cost five times as much. The Haribo undercut them both on weight and price while supposedly matching their specs. Reviews poured in praising the thing. I read several before buying mine, and they all said the same thing: This is too good to be true, but it actually works.Then Amazon suddenly pulled them in November for unspecified safety issues. Two weeks later, CT scans revealed what the problem likely was: dangerous defects.Structural defects increase the risk of thermal runaway, the technical term for when a battery decides to become a flamethrower.Meanwhile, I'm still here, and my bag hasn't burst into flames. The thing works exactly as advertised. Which doesn't mean the concerns aren't real, but it does mean we need to talk about what's actually happening here, not just what the headlines say.What the CT scans actually showJon Bruner at Lumafield published his findings in late November, and they're not good. The battery cells inside the Haribo power bank show misaligned electrodes. In other words, the layers that should stack neatly are instead wavy, bulging, and shifted. In lithium-ion batteries, this kind of manufacturing sloppiness creates conditions for lithium plating and dendrite growth, which can eventually lead to internal shorts. Internal shorts mean fires.The scans also revealed irregular geometry and poor edge alignment, suggesting weak quality control throughout the manufacturing process. These aren't minor cosmetic issues. These are structural defects that increase the risk of thermal runaway, which is the technical term for when a battery decides to become a flamethrower.Bruner's post went viral: 4.4 million views on X. Amazon quietly canceled existing orders and pulled the listings, citing "potential safety or quality issues." No official government recall, just a quiet removal.The problem with 'dangerous'So here's where it gets complicated. Is the Haribo power bank dangerous? Yes, in the sense that it has manufacturing defects that increase risk. But how dangerous? That's harder to say.Lithium-ion batteries fail all the time. Samsung had to recall millions of Galaxy Note 7 phones in 2016. Anker recalled over a million PowerCore 10000 units just this year. Belkin, ESR, and half a dozen other companies have pulled products for overheating risks. The CPSC recalls portable batteries practically every month. It's not unique to Haribo, and it's not unique to cheap batteries.The truth is that most defective batteries never catch fire. They degrade faster, lose capacity, or just stop working. The fires are rare but catastrophic, which is why we treat them seriously. But "rare but catastrophic" doesn't mean every unit is a ticking time bomb.The other ugly truth is that these high-capacity lithium-ion batteries are small bombs in disguise.RELATED: Here's how to get the most annoying new update off of your iPhone Photo by: Nano Calvo/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images And eventually, they all go bad. Leave a laptop sitting for long enough, and the battery will swell. iPhones catch on fire all the time. But usually, they don’t, and the small risk is something that we as a society have decided to accept.I have been using my Haribo battery for months. It has charged my phone maybe 50 times. It has been in my truck, in my backpack, sitting on my desk. No heat. No swelling. No weird behavior. Does that prove it is safe? No. Does it mean I'm an idiot for still using it? Maybe. But it does mean that the risk isn't as immediate as the headlines suggest.The real problem: Trust and transparencyThe bigger issue here isn't just the Haribo power bank. It's that we have no way of knowing which products are actually safe and which ones are cutting corners until something goes wrong.DC Global, the Hong Kong manufacturer behind the Haribo, won't tell you what's inside its batteries. Neither will most companies. You're buying on faith — faith in brand reputation, faith in Amazon's vetting, faith that someone, somewhere is checking these things. And that faith is often misplaced.Amazon pulled the Haribo on November 12, citing vague "safety or quality" concerns but offering no specifics. Two weeks later, Lumafield published its CT scan investigation, revealing exactly what those concerns likely were. We still don't know what tipped Amazon off in the first place. Customer complaints? Internal testing? We're left guessing.What we do know is that it took an independent company with expensive CT scanning equipment to show the public what was actually hiding inside a plastic shell with a gummy bear on it. Without Lumafield's investigation, we would still be in the dark about why these disappeared.How many other products have similar issues that we just don't know about yet?What you should actually doIf you own a Haribo power bank, should you get rid of it?That's up to you. I'm still using mine, but I'm watching it. I'm not leaving it charging overnight. I'm not throwing it loose in a bag with other batteries. I'm treating it like what it is: a cheap Chinese import with questionable quality control.If you do decide to dispose of it, don't just toss it in the trash. Lithium-ion batteries are hazardous waste and can cause fires in garbage trucks and landfills. Take it to a proper recycling center — places like Home Depot, Best Buy, and other retailers have Call2Recycle drop-off locations. Discharge it fully first, tape over the terminals with electrical tape, and put it in a plastic bag. You can find a location near you at call2recycle.org/locator.Should you buy one? No. It has been pulled from Amazon anyway. But even if it comes back or you find one on eBay, don't. Not because it is guaranteed to explode, but because the uncertainty isn't worth it.Are there perfect alternatives? No. Anker just recalled over a million units. Nitecore costs five times as much. Every lithium-ion battery carries some risk. But at least with established brands, there is a recall process. There is accountability. There is someone to contact when things go wrong.With the Haribo, you get none of that. Just a disappeared Amazon listing and a manufacturer that has gone silent.The Haribo was appealing because it was cheap, light, kind of funny. But cheap comes with costs you can't always see until someone with a CT scanner shows you.A cautionary taleThe Haribo power-bank story is a perfect example of how modern consumer products work. A company in Hong Kong slaps a candy brand on a battery, ships it through Amazon, gets praised by reviewers, goes viral on social media, and then quietly disappears when something raises red flags.No accountability. No transparency. No consequences. Just a listing that vanishes and thousands of units still sitting in people's bags.Amazon knew enough to pull it but won't say why. Lumafield's scans showed us the structural problems, but only after the fact. There is no official recall, no manufacturer statement, no clear guidance for the people who bought these things in good faith — just a void where answers should be.The regulatory system should not ban everything that poses a risk. But we deserve to know what we're buying. We deserve manufacturing standards that mean something. We deserve companies that don't hide behind licensing deals and overseas production to dodge responsibility. And we deserve regulatory agencies that can move faster than a thread on X.
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