A family from Belleville, Michigan came home the other night to find their living room full of smoke. The culprit? One of their Wii Remotes had quite literally exploded.
It’s lucky nobody had been home when it blew, because when it did pieces of the Remote flew across the room and tore holes in stuff like so much white plastic shrapnel.
So what can make a Wii Remote explode? The family didn’t read their Wii manual front-to-back, meaning they missed the part where Nintendo specifically warns against putting lithium batteries in a Wii Remote. So they put a lithium battery in the Wii Remote.
While the local news report tries its best to turn this into a NINTENDO NEEDS TO DO MORE piece, the mother actually sounds quite reasonable, warning other parents to read the fine print on their kid’s toys.
Nintendo has offered to replace the family’s damaged equipment “at a discounted price”.
Richard
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:32 PMaren’t most batteries nowadays lithium?
Stephen
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:33 PMNo most are NiMH I believe
Nic
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 1:09 AMThat would be most integrated batteries; phones, laptops, tablets, etc. Rechargables (“normal” batteries) are mostly NiMH since they’ve come down in price, but NiCd’s are still around.
matt
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 8:19 AMmobile phones and wiimotes etc use lithium ion batteries, while lithium polymer batteries (used in RC planes/cars for one) are more powerful and :) explosive.
Zythrone
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:44 PMand that made it onto the news?
Mic
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 1:18 AMExploding kids toy? Would be headline news on Channel 7 and 9, with a follow-up in Today Tonight/Current Affair
lalaland
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:45 PMwhoaaaaa, who reads manuals nowadays , i never knew about the lithium thing until i read this, big thanks for the heads up…. i feel sorry for the parents, it could happen to aniiwun seriously
mcgarnigal clone
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:22 PMit was in your ass thats why
mchaza
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:45 PMLithium when exposed to air explodes, sodium, Potassium and other in the first group are very dangerous stuff. You can make a bomb out of Lithium, problem is that you will most likely blow your self up unless you are in a speically made lab
DKnight1000
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 2:48 AMInterestingly enough the warnings for Lithium Batteries are on the Batteries. Not just in the Nintendo Manual.
Heads up people, Lithium and Lithium Polymer batteries are highly volatile items.
Boomzzilla
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 6:35 AMImagine if they had to do a recaal, there’s proberbly hundreads of millions of those things.
El Kapitan
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 10:29 AM‘Proberbly’? Wow.
There’s not gonna be a recall, there was no equipment fault here. The morons ignored the warnings and put the wrong type of stuff in the wrong thing, and it exploded. You can also cause an explosion by putting eggs in the microwave, I don’t think there’s gonna be a recall on either of those items.
Robbo
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 5:19 PMLithium batteries are incompatible with Wii Remotes? Shouldn’t they be compatible with any AA battery? Why do they work in numerous other electronic devices fine? I just find it really strange. I use Vaarta 15 minute rechargeable MiMH batteries otherwise I would have tried Lithium batteries for their longer battery life.
Wil
Monday, December 19, 2011 at 6:27 AMI am also surprised there is a warning against using lithium batteries in wimotes too. I figure this is just a case of dodgy lithium batteries like what happens when phones explode.