Turns out people leave perishable and fermenting foods in the thermos, and after a while when opened, the pressure lifts the lid of the thermos at quasi-unimaginable speeds, striking the curiously unsuspecting humans straight in the face, with some instances causing permanent damage to vision.

Coffee is hot, but a pressure release system is cool too..

I didn't consider it a defect, though. I can hardly imagine cheap products adopting this solution.

But then I read the words "The malfunction is due to multiple models of containers missing a pressure relief function in the center of the stopper."

How non-existent does your quality assurance have to be in order to miss such a critical, obvious and easy to identify flaw ?

Looking at the published photographs, you don't even need training to identify that manufacturing defect. A five year old could spot the difference between "lid has a hole" and "lid does not have a hole".

My partner has one of these so just checked it. It does have the pressure relief feature, but it turns out it's also missing all the seals anyway so never would have been a problem!

Looking at the version that's not recalled, I would guess it costs more to make.

Me standing there, kombucha and peach slices pulverized against the cap, kombucha leaving a large mark on the ceiling it all happened so fast, glad I was wearing my glasses.

No injuries except my pride, but it did take some hours to clean up.

I wouldn't do it in a thermos, but I guess those are mostly accidents?