Corelle Brands review: explosive plates & bowls / injury, blindness, & death 69

Happened all by itself

I put a Corelle bowl with sliced cukes on the counter. 2 hours later, I was working a couple feet from the bowl, nothing was touching it. I heard a loud pop and the bowl had spontaneously burst into 2 pieces with some shards. Weirdest thing.

One exploded in my sons hand straight from the cabinet YES it is glass duly noted BUT to actually explode with out any temperature change or any reason AND YES it EXPLODED all over the damn place

We bought a whole new set of corelle for our new home last sept. been happily using it till this scary incident in my kitchen yesterday. i was wiping my corelle plate with a paper towel before scooping some rice and suddenly there was a loud explosion! instinctively my hands let go of the plate as i was too shocked and dropped my corelle. it was already shattered into a million shards like a horrible explosion in my kitchen with shrapnel flying into our bathroom and living room. it was not funny as 1/2 more inches nearer to my face, that piece of innocent looking plate-aka- hand grenade could have maimed me for life. i called corelle's World Kitchen Asia Pte Ltd and the cust svc officer sounded shocked that it happened. tried to give reasons why it could have happened and even asked if i dropped my corelle. in my heart, regardless what caused the explosion, plates are not grenades & should not self-explode. she told me to bring it down to the mall where i bought the corelle stuff and they would have it replaced by the corelle promoter. my gripe is, i do not want it replaced (nor do i wish for another corelle) but i needed redress for the whole freaking series which i bought at more than $300 and now will never feel safe to use them anymore. what if it exploded in my dinner guests'face or their children?can corelle assure me that all the rest of their products will not explode for no reason albeit the supposed due care rendered by owners? i don't need exploding plates & bowls but peace of mind. any possibility of a class action suit to be filed against them for no product warning? i will thus stick to porcelain or bone china, heavy ya, will break ya, but i won't get a million shrapnel and they won't self-explode in my face for whatever convenient reason.sheesh. (see photo: sample of original plate before and after self-explosion)

Okay; so, new Corelle dishes might indeed shatter under extremes of thermal differential when hit just right. Corelle dishes that are a few years old will indeed shatter more easily than new ones, but seemingly still under the same unusual conditions (uneven heating, or just being hot, and being hit just right). But the alarming thing seems to be that OLD Corelle may be subject to spontaneous shattering! One web site says it's caused by a thing called "bruising" and/or "water impregnation" resulting from the cavitation from boiling water in them (e.g. in the microwave). The "bruising" happens when a plate has been hit or stacked (like I stack mine), and the bruising is not visible to the eye, but it leaves the ceramic crystalline structure of the dish compromised. The water thing, also, can cause a "cascade failure" (I don't think that means dishwasher detergent) inside the structure of the dish. Both of these, the bruising and the water impregnation, happen over time through normal usage, and both can lead to "unpredictable catastrophic failure." Yeah. I just finished a bowl of cereal, had set the bowl down next to me (a little milk left in the bottom and the spoon was resting inside), and about five minutes later there was a "tink" and the bowl was in five pieces! This is the third Corelle dish in as many weeks. Last week a plate exploded in the microwave. The week before a bowl shattered violently when dropped. Is it coincidence that it's happening more frequently?

I was on the phone and a track type pop rang out & sounded as if one of my windows cracked, but found it to be the plate on the counter cracked right in half.. No slivers just two perfect halves. (Corelle). So very strange... But relieved it wasn't a window. I am wondering if its when they get old ? They are many years old.

Hi, I had a horrible experience with Corelle. It was a bowl that slipped into my hand while I was drying it. It fell on the floor an splattered into pieces. As a natural response, I leaned over trying to catch it, but unfortunately it went it my left eye and I sustained a FULL THICKNESS CUT on my CORNEA. I had 4 stitches for it and will be having another surgery since I developed a TRAUMATIC CATARACT because it damaged my LENS as well. Thank God My right eye was not affected. Has anyone filed a complaint about this? I don't know if Corelle claims that their product is unbreakable so I'm not sure if I can proceed with anything. Thank you!

hi, i have the corelle dinner set for few years when we went to Canada.everything has been fine until this morning when i was drying the plate. the plate exploded in my hand and the sharp pieces when every where. i was shocked couldn't understand. i knew that it was unbreakable to make sure i read the correct info. it does say that.it was very dangerous to clean, i was very careful and still had few cuts on my hand. i don't know who i should write and complaint about it. i spent 100s of pounds on to collect on the corelle...not very happy at all.:(

Have had several explode upon dropping them thru the years. The latest incident & by far worst was taking 5 dishes to feed my dogs & one slipped out of my hand exploding on the ground & about destroyed my dogs. Glass was everywhere as far as 12 feet away on top of a table & microwave. Glass was in my feet. I was yelling at the dogs to stay away cause they wanted to eat the food & didn't know that millions of pieces of sharp glass was all over. Well I had to check their feet for several days. I had to use a needle to get the glass out of my feet & legs. Took me hours to clean up this mess & found glass days later under furniture in a different room. Do not use for dog food. Wow. Scary.

We just had a plate explode, my husband had it sitting on the counter and it just exploded for no reason into millions of pieces, very dangerous, he said pieces of glass flew every where...

Sue Falls, I called Corelle and they were rather rude. They said that they never claim to be breakproof, just break resistant (not true, as per my above comment, they most definitely claimed to be breakproof at one time). They also told me that the dishes are DESIGNED to shatter in this matter because they found that smaller (sharper?!) pieces are safer than large pieces. No amount of arguing could change their mind. I told them I was cleaning glass for 2 days and they asked me what pattern I had. I thought I was finally getting through to them, but all she wanted to do was replace the broken bowl. I had already thrown away every Corelle piece I had in my cabinet. I told her nevermind replacing the weapon, how about sending a cleaning service to make sure all the glass is gone and no one in my home gets injured. She stood her ground and stood by her foolish claim that the dishes are designed to break in this shrapnel manner for safety reasons.

Gkenigmatic, We think they are unbreakable because when Corelle first made this product, they advertised it as UNBREAKABLE. They have since changed their marketing campaign and now say they are "break resistant" but there were commercials that had people bouncing the dishes on the floor and the dish would remain in one piece. I have had experiences of dropping the dishes and they don't break and then they just break for no reason at all. Also, if you have never had the experience of them breaking, you don't realize how dangerous it is when it happens. A regular ceramic dish breaks into several large pieces that stay in the area where the dish breaks. Corelle dishes shatter like a bomb and glass flies all over the room, as well as adjoining rooms. As I stated above, I was finding glass shrapnel in my cabinets because it flew up and the cabinet was open.

My husband dropped a saucer and this sucker shattered into millions of pieces! We found pieces from the kitchen into our living room! I thought that Corelle was supposed to be break & shatter-proof. Based on these othe comments, I am glad to know that we are not the only people that have had this problem! Is there anything we can do about this?

pic of exploded corelle plate

I have now had 3 corelle plates explode in this manner and I am banning them from my house. The most recent one was my 5 year old son wanted to be helpful and lift a plate from the coffee table up to the kitchen bench, he accidently dropped the plate on the way from a height of 2-3ft I guess. The plate literally went "pop" and exploded into thousands of razor sharp shards, for many feet in all directions. Many of the shards are tiny, only 1/10th of an inch (2.5mm) long virtually invisible unless you have your face against the ground. Much time was then spent cleaning this mess up, checking corners and pretty much everywhere within line-of-sight of the explosion. I previously had a Corelle explode and missed a shard when cleaning up, the shard got me in the foot, and what was most concerning was that every time i'd grip the shard with forceps in an attemp to remove it, it would just crumble and break off, almost like the plate hard gone very hard and brittle, hard enough to piece your flesh with ease, but so brittle any attempt to place any force on the shard and it will just break into even smaller pieces. I had written the previous incident off as some freak occurrence, but judging by repeat incidents and other people's similar experiences, I think these platese are just plain unsafe. I've never put these plates in the oven, they have been used in the microwave, but they state they are microwave safe. I bought these plates because there was an advertising campaign locally with Corelle 'unbreakable' plates rolling back and forth in a window alongside a Bus. Every time the bus would take off from the bus stop, the plates would roll to the back and bang against the one end, then every time the bus break roll forward and bang against the other end, you get the idea. Impressive you would think. The last thing from my mind was the very plates I bought for their supposed impact resistance and safety, was going to literally explode like a fragmentation hand grenade ! The more I read, I feel lucky that my plates haven't just exploded when put into contact with hot liquids or just spontaneously on the bench or dish drawer with no contact as others have !

I was eating my dinner when suddenly a plate on the counter exploded. I was trying to figure out how this happened as nothing fell on it and it wasn't in contact with any other dishes. Incredible spontaneous explosion. I'm glad I wasn't right next to it when it happened. The dish set is about 10-12 years old.

I had the dishes in sinkful of lukewarm water last night, waiting for me to get around to washing them. They had been sitting there for over 1/2 hour. Suddenly there was an extremely loud explosive sound- we thought someone had thrown a rock through our window. It was one of my Corelle dishes spontaneously exploding in the water. Thank goodness the blast was absorbed by the water, but I've never seen a dish break into so many tiny, incredibly sharp slivers. Bought the dish set 11 years ago for "safe" dishes for my son to eat from. They are now in the trash.

I totally agree with how dangerous these plates are. When I dropped a smaller plate on the counter from the cabinet it shattered into a thousand little pieces all over the counter, floor and flew across the room as far as 12 feet away. The broken hards are like little razors and are very difficult to see. It is very likely that these could fly into ones eye and cause serious damage or at least require a trip to the doctor to have it removed from the eyeball - yes, sounds very painful. I think the good Lord Jesus that he protected me from that worst possibility. I am thinking of getting rid of these and replacing them with regular ceramic plates that don't break into so many little pieces and "literally" explode all over the place from impact. I agree their should be a recall or at least a warning on these. The ironic thing is that on the back of the plate it says break and chip resistant, but if anything they break easier than glass or ceramic plates I have had. Even though it might be rare for one to drop or brake a plate, when it does happen it could cause serious injury if toddlers, little children, older people, or the disabled are nearby and step on the pieces. It took me like a whole hour to decontaminate the kitchen and then even later on I found a shard of glass on the rug, leading to the living room even though I made a point of not walking into the other oom until I swept and vacuumed the kitchen. The shards are very scary looking like they could penetrate an artery!