What the Expanded Frigidaire Mini Fridge Recall Means, and What to Check on Yours

On January 15, 2026, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced CPSC recall 26199: Curtis International expanded its Frigidaire-brand mini fridge recall to cover about 330,000 additional units of a fifth model, the 6-can EFMIS121 sold at Target. The hazard is the same one behind the original action: internal electrical components can short circuit and ignite the surrounding plastic housing, posing fire and burn hazards. This guide explains what the expansion covers, how to check the unit you own, and what the refund remedy requires. Every fact here comes from the official CPSC notice and the Fridge.com recall record; the full record for this notice lives on the Fridge.com page for CPSC recall 26199.

What Happened

Curtis International Ltd. — the firm that sells mini fridges under the Frigidaire name, with the CPSC notice listing ShangYu North Electron Manufacture Co. Ltd. as the manufacturer — had previously recalled 634,000 mini fridges across four models under CPSC recall 25395. This notice expands that action to a fifth model. According to the notice, Curtis International has received at least six reports of the EFMIS121 mini fridges catching fire, with property damages.

An expansion is worth reading carefully precisely because of what it implies: the failure that drove the original recall was not confined to the four models first identified. If you cleared your unit against the original notice because its model number was not listed, that clearance is now out of date — the EFMIS121 was not part of the original list.

Which Mini Fridges Are Covered by the Expansion

The expansion involves one model within one serial range:

"Frigidaire" is printed on the front of the units, and the model and serial numbers are on a label on the back. The previously recalled models — EFMIS129, EFMIS137, EFMIS149, and EFMIS175, each within their own serial ranges — remain recalled under the original notice, which has its own record page.

How to Check the Mini Fridge You Own

1. Unplug the unit and turn it around — the identification label is on the back.
2. Read the model number. If it is EFMIS121, continue to the serial check here. If it is EFMIS129, EFMIS137, EFMIS149, or EFMIS175, check the original notice, CPSC 25395, instead.
3. For an EFMIS121, compare the serial number against the included range: between A2001 and A2310.
4. If the serial falls in the range, stop using the unit and follow the remedy steps below.

The color is a practical shortcut only: the notice states the expansion units were sold in red at Target. But the label, not the color, is the authority — read the model and serial numbers before drawing any conclusion.

The Hazard, in Plain Terms

The hazard statement is identical to the original recall: internal electrical components can short circuit and ignite the surrounding plastic housing. A mini fridge this size is a plastic box with a powered circuit inside, typically running day and night on a desk, a nightstand, or a bedroom floor. The failure mode in this recall is not that the unit stops cooling — it is that the unit itself becomes the ignition source. That is why the remedy removes the unit from service permanently rather than repairing it.

Incidents on Record

According to the notice, Curtis International has received at least six reports of the model EFMIS121 mini fridges catching fire, with property damages. Those are the incident facts on record for the expansion model specifically; the original notice separately recorded at least 26 incident reports, two smoke-inhalation injuries, and more than $700,000 in property damage across the four earlier models. Nothing beyond what the notices state should be assumed.

What to Do Now

The official remedy is a refund, with the same physical steps the original recall attached:

• Immediately stop using the recalled mini fridge.
• Unplug it and cut the power cord.
• Write "Recall" on the front door of the unit using a permanent marker.
• Register for the refund at www.recallrtr.com/minifridge, following the instructions there.
• Dispose of the unit in accordance with local and state regulations.

Cutting the cord matters: it guarantees the unit cannot drift back into service — in a garage, a kid's room, a donation box — while the refund processes. For questions, the notice lists Curtis International toll-free at 888-727-0198 from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. ET, Monday through Friday, and by email at recall@curtiscs.com.

Where the Units Were Sold

According to the CPSC notice, the EFMIS121 units were sold exclusively at Target stores nationwide and online at Target.com, from January 2020 through October 2023, for around $30. The exclusive channel makes this expansion unusually easy to self-screen: if you bought a red Frigidaire-brand 6-can mini fridge at Target in that window — or received one as a gift that plausibly came from there — the label on the back deserves a check. At a $30 price point, these units were bought casually and given casually, and the person who owns one today is often not the person who bought it.

What an Expansion Means for Owners Who Already Checked Once

Recall expansions punish a reasonable assumption: that a recall, once announced, has named everything it covers. In this product family the original notice drew its line around four models, and the expansion moved that line. The practical lesson generalizes beyond this recall. A model cleared against a notice is cleared against that notice as written on that day — it is not cleared against the failure itself. When a product family you own has an active recall on some models, it is worth rechecking when the recall is in the news again, because news usually means the scope changed. The Fridge.com recall record tracks each notice separately, so the original action and its expansion each have their own page, their own model list, and their own official source link.

Refund Recalls and the Temptation to Keep the Unit

A refund remedy on a roughly $30 product invites a quiet calculation: the unit still works, the payout is small, why bother? The incident record is the answer. The units on record did not fail by going warm — they failed by catching fire, and the property damage a bedroom fire causes is unrelated to what the appliance cost. The remedy steps are also deliberately terminal: cutting the cord and marking the door exist so the unit cannot be resold, re-gifted, or quietly returned to service by someone who never read the notice. Following them all the way through — cord cut, door marked, refund registered, unit disposed of properly — is the only version of "done" this recall recognizes.

How This Recall Fits the Record

The Fridge.com recall record, built on U.S. CPSC filings, lists four Frigidaire recalls between 2022 and 2026, together covering 1,714,740 units. Two of the four are this mini fridge family — the original action and this expansion — and together they account for roughly a million recalled units under a single brand name in under two years. The record's other Frigidaire entries cover full-size refrigerators with ice-system hazards, a different product class entirely.

Three useful places to go deeper:

• The original mini fridge recall record — CPSC 25395, covering models EFMIS129, EFMIS137, EFMIS149, and EFMIS175.
• Every Frigidaire recall on record — each notice with its official hazard, remedy, and source link.
• The full Fridge.com recall record — every CPSC refrigeration recall tracked, newest first, refreshed from CPSC.gov.

Tracking Recalls for the Unit You Own

Each appliance tracked on Fridge.com carries a FIN — Fridge.com Identification Number — the permanent canonical ID that links each appliance across retailers, covering prices, specifications, and recall history. Product pages with a FIN carry a recall-alert signup: subscribe on the page for the model you own, and a new CPSC match against that FIN triggers an alert. Expansions are the clearest case for alerts over one-time checks — an alert fires when the scope changes, which is exactly the event a manual check cannot anticipate.

If a recalled unit leaves a gap to fill, the current compact market is cataloged at mini fridges and compact refrigerators, with specifications and price history per model.

The Short Version

• CPSC recall 26199, announced January 15, 2026 — about 330,000 Curtis International Frigidaire-brand mini fridges, model EFMIS121, serial numbers between A2001 and A2310, sold in red exclusively at Target from January 2020 through October 2023 for around $30.
• This expands the earlier recall of 634,000 units across models EFMIS129, EFMIS137, EFMIS149, and EFMIS175 (CPSC 25395).
• The hazard: internal electrical components can short circuit and ignite the plastic housing — fire and burn hazards, with at least six EFMIS121 fire reports on record.
• The remedy is a refund: stop using the unit, unplug it, cut the cord, mark "Recall" on the door, register at recallrtr.com/minifridge, and dispose of it per local rules.
• A unit cleared against the original notice is not cleared against this one — the EFMIS121 was not on the original model list.

Sources: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recall notice 26199 (CPSC.gov) and the Fridge.com recall record.