Lame in death as in life: Pixy selfie camera ‘drone’ is recalled as potential fire hazard

It’s poor form to speak badly of the dead, but we’re not Mary Poppins, so hard cheese: Pixy, arguably the dumbest product idea ever – and definitely the most egregious bastardization of drone tech – may well be quite logically no more, bereft of life, resting in peace, pushing up the daisies, off the twig, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible; but it’s now being yanked from its well deserved early grave by a recall for posing a potential threat to the people who made the shameful error of buying one in the first place.

Launched in April 2022 by messaging app company Snap – formerly known as Snapchat, and destined to be rebaptized an annoying letter if Elon Musk ever decides to buy another money losing social media business – Pixy was created to profit from humanity’s lamest corruption of sophisticated tech to serve its most base conceits: the selfie. But because the popularity of snapping those self-portraits at arm’s length had already provoked an epidemic of global bicep cramps, Snap decided to go one worse than the companies selling articulated broom handles for 20 bucks a pop, and created a truly cheap-ass, rinky-dink plastic sub-toy drone to do it.

Ever so predictably, that aerial adaptation of the selfie stick was pronounced dead a mere four months later, after a clearly unsustainable number of self-obsessed teens with hefty allowances – or generous parents who secretly hated them – bought a Pixy and realized their “d’oh!” error of blowing up to $250 for countless blurry shots of head tops. What was not-not to like about that?

Fire and injury, as it turns out. 

Those are the reasons why less than a year and a half after halting Pixy production and sales – which is nowhere near enough time for customers to live down the shame of having bought one – Snap and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) are recalling the jaundiced affront to drone-ery as a potential danger. Talk about injury to self-inflicted insult.

“The lithium-ion battery in the camera can overheat, posing a fire hazard,” the CPSC said in an alert announcing the dismal drone’s recall Thursday. “The battery was sold separately and paired with the Pixy, which takes pictures and videos and measures about five inches long by four inches wide… Consumers should immediately stop using the Pixy Flying Camera, remove the battery and stop charging it.”

Going to confession and copping to consumer product sin isn’t a bad idea, either.

The good news is, the risk of Pixy’s innards actually causing owners even more discomfort than the memory of buying one is very remote. The even better news, according to the CPSC, is owners can nevertheless go to “www.pixy.com for instructions on how to participate in the recall, receive a refund of the purchase price, and dispose of the battery.”

The bad news is, to get your money back, you’ll have to admit to another human you bought one.