A small decorative flame on a tabletop can turn into a burn injury in a second if the fuel misbehaves, and four people have already reported exactly that with Sharper Image fire pits. Allstar, the company behind the brand’s tabletop line, has recalled about 265,000 of them, with injuries that include third- and fourth-degree burns. The Consumer Product Safety Commission posted the notice on Thursday, Nov. 12.
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Escaping fuel and flame jetting in the Tabletop and Infinity models
The recall covers Sharper Image-branded tabletop fire pits and tabletop infinity fire pits, two versions of the same countertop-scale burner design. The hazard is not a single defect that fails in one way. Allstar’s account, as relayed in coverage of the notice, is that ignited flammable liquid can escape from the unit, and that the fuel containers used with the pits can trigger flame jetting, a sudden burst of fire out of the opening.
Four injuries were reported to the company and the agency before the recall went out. According to the CPSC recall notice, those four incidents included third- and fourth-degree burns, the two most severe grades of burn injury, which reach through the full thickness of the skin and often call for surgery and long recoveries. The agency classified the danger as a risk of serious injury from burn and fire hazards.
Burn grades explain why the agency’s language is so heavy. A third-degree burn destroys the full thickness of the skin, and a fourth-degree burn goes deeper, into fat, muscle or bone. Injuries at that level usually mean skin grafts, weeks in a specialized burn unit and permanent scarring, which is a long way from the singed fingertip that a small tabletop flame might suggest to a shopper at a checkout shelf.
The notice does not say how many of the roughly 265,000 units have failed in the field, only that four injury reports reached the company. A small number of reports against a large population is common at the point a recall is announced, since the decision to pull a product often follows a pattern across incident reports rather than a body count.
Retail channels and the January 2023 to June 2026 sales window
Shoppers could find the pits almost anywhere. As summarized by KIRO 7 from the CPSC alert, they were sold at Ace Hardware, Burlington, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Kohl’s, Marshalls, Nordstrom, Rite Aid, Target, TJ Maxx, Walgreens and Walmart, along with other nationwide retailers, and online at Amazon.com and HSN.com. Sales ran from January 2023 through June 2026, a span of three and a half years that overlaps three full fire-season gift cycles.
The timing also stands out. Sales stopped in June 2026 and the recall notice arrived on Nov. 12, roughly four and a half months later, so a large share of the 265,000 pits were already in homes by the time the warning went out. The window between the last sale and the notice is the period during which a fire pit could have been pulled out for a fall evening without anyone knowing about the four reported injuries.
That breadth matters for who needs to check a shelf or a closet. A pit bought as a gift in 2023 could still be sitting in a garage, and one bought last summer might never have been taken out of the box. The recalled units carry several identifiers: a “77” logo on the front, a lot-code sticker in the center of the base, a round black sticker reading “CHINA” with a five-digit code, the letters KS-CY or KS-FC, and a date code written year-month-day.
The coverage that relayed the notice did not list model numbers, colors or prices, and the retail list above is the one the CPSC alert gave. Owners who cannot match their unit to the identifiers by eye can lean on the recall’s registration site instead of guessing.
Refund steps, the marker instruction and the photo requirement
The CPSC’s wording to owners is direct: “Consumers should stop using the recalled fire pits immediately and contact Allstar for a full refund.” A refund is the only remedy offered. There is no repair kit or replacement part, which fits a design problem that sits in how the unit handles liquid fuel.
The process has more steps than a typical return. Owners register at the recall registration site, write “RECALLED – DO NOT USE” on the unit in permanent marker and submit three photos following the instructions on Allstar’s recall page. Only after registration is confirmed are they told to dispose of any leftover fuel under local hazardous-waste rules and then discard the pit safely. Pouring fuel out before that step, or tossing the unit first, would skip the order the company set.
Reporting a problem with a similar product is a separate matter, and the agency keeps its running list of notices on its recalls and product safety warnings page. Local reporting such as 95.5 WSB’s recall alert and a legal-news summary of the four burn injuries repeated the same unit count and injury figure, which matches the agency’s own page. What remains open is the count of units that will actually come back, a figure the CPSC typically cannot publish until the refund program has run for months.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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