Source: NYT > Business
This recall exposes how consumer vigilance around product safety has fundamentally shifted—people now expect companies to anticipate failure modes and take preemptive action rather than wait for injuries to accumulate—signaling that brands face reputational extinction for even minor manufacturing defects in an age where one viral hospital visit becomes a class-action lawsuit. The real story isn’t the bristles; it’s that 10 million units being yanked from shelves has become economically rational precisely because dispersed consumers armed with smartphones and social platforms can now extract massive costs from negligence that would have been absorbed silently a decade ago.