A multi-purpose lighter manufactured or imported for American use has to be hard enough to operate that at least 85 percent of a test panel of 100 children, aged 42 to 51 months, fail to operate it. About 13,000 Jobon torch lighters sold online did not carry the child-resistant mechanisms that federal rule requires, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission told owners on December 4, 2025 to stop using them.
The warning names Wenzhou Zhongbang Smoking Set Manufacturing Co., Ltd., a Chinese company doing business as Jobon Official Store. It sold the lighters through Amazon.com and, in about 150 cases, through Alibaba.com between April 2021 and September 2025, at roughly $20 each. The manufacturer has not agreed to a recall or to any remedy for buyers.
The 85 Percent Child-Panel Test in 16 CFR 1212
The rule at issue is 16 CFR Part 1212, which applies to every multi-purpose lighter manufactured or imported on or after December 22, 2000. It defines the category as a hand-held, flame-producing product that runs on fuel and has an ignition mechanism, used to light candles, grills, campfires and pilot lights. Devices made for cigarettes, cigars or pipes fall outside it, as do matches and anything holding more than 10 ounces of fuel.
The child-resistant mechanism has to work safely in ordinary use, keep working through the lighter’s life, resist being disabled and reset itself after each use. Makers prove it with qualification and production testing against the child panel, and the panel is built to a specification: 100 children in the 42-to-51-month range with set age and sex distributions, checked for whether the lighter produces any signal when a child tries to operate it. The 85 percent threshold is the pass line, so a design that stops 84 children fails.
The CPSC warning on the Jobon lighters is built on that rule. Its title states that the product violates the mandatory standard for multipurpose lighters, and its text says the lighters lack the required child-resistant mechanisms. No test result is cited; the finding is that the mechanism is absent altogether, which puts the lighters outside the standard without any need to measure a pass rate.
Ann Brown and the 237 Fires
The commission’s 2000 announcement of the standard rested on a body count. Since 1988, CPSC had documented 237 fires started by children under age 5 playing with multi-purpose lighters, resulting in 45 deaths, 28 of them children under 5, and 103 injuries. The commissioners voted 3-0 to issue the rule. Chairman Ann Brown called the decision “a bold and responsible step” toward protecting American consumers, particularly children, from death and injury, and framed the choice as a rhetorical question: whether a child’s life should be the price of a parent’s or caregiver’s neglect.
The same announcement required multi-purpose lighters to carry child-resistant mechanisms equivalent to those already required of cigarette lighters.
Cigarette Lighters as the Test Case
The earlier rule on cigarette lighters supplied the evidence that the approach works. A 2001 CPSC report found that deaths from lighter fires fell 43 percent between 1994 and 1998, from 230 to 130. Deaths of children under 5 dropped from 170 in 1994 to 40 in 1998. Residential lighter fires fell 45 percent, from 11,100 to 6,100, and injuries fell 49 percent, from 1,600 to 810. For 1998 alone, CPSC credited the standard with preventing 4,800 fires, 130 deaths and 950 injuries, and with averting $76.4 million in property damage.
Brown put the reason in plain terms: children try to copy their parents, so a lighter becomes a tempting plaything.
Warning Without a Remedy
A lighter that lacks the mechanism strips out the protection those numbers measured. The Jobon warning describes torch-style lighters with a side ignition trigger, a hands-free operation lock and the name JOBON printed on the side, offered in a gray and brown combination and possibly in gold and black or camouflage. CPSC urged consumers to stop using them immediately, dispose of them under local requirements, and neither sell them nor give them away. Incidents can be reported through SaferProducts.gov.
Violating a mandatory standard also falls under the commission’s duty-to-report rules, which require firms to notify CPSC within 24 hours when a product fails to comply with an applicable safety rule. The warning itself details no specific incidents, so the case rests on the missing mechanism and on the decades of fire data that led to the standard in the first place.
Against that record, the roughly 13,000 Jobon lighters sold online without the lock are the exact gap the 85 percent test was written to close, with the commission’s December 4, 2025 warning standing in for a recall because the manufacturer declined to recall them or offer a remedy.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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