One of the hottest toy this season holiday is the Hoverboard. The meteoric rise of hoverboard has been marred recently following a controversy over its safety.

There have been many reports in recent weeks of hoverboards catching fire and causing significant property damage. Generally, the devices catch fire because they are thought to be cheap or knockoffs. However, a hoverboard from Swagway, known to be one of the better hoverboard makers, purchased from Modell's Sporting Goods also reported to caught fire in a Chappaqua, New York home.

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Following the incident in Chappaque, Amazon also removed all listing for Swagway branded hoverboards on its site. Sometime ago, overstock.com also stopped sales of hoverboards due to mounting safety concerns surrounding these devices

With the increasing reports of exploding hoverboards and major retailers pulling the devices from the shelves, many are left confused about which hoverboards are safe and which is not. The main problem is there's no definitive guide to getting a safe hoverboards.

Many hoverboard manufacturers seem to use cheap, low-quality batteries, which are more susceptible to short-circuiting due to poor separator design, according to Jay Whitacre, a professor of Materials Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Hoverboards, made in hundreds of factories in China, are usually purchased by Western distributors to be labelled and shipped to consumers. These factories began chunning out hoverboards quickly and cheaply to capitilize on the virality of these devices. A hoverboard can be easily come from a number of different factories who are making the origins of their devices and their batteries unknown by using fake brand names.

TagsAmazon Hoverboards, caught in fire, Swagway, Chappaqua, safe devices, hoverboards news, Safe Hoverboards, news Hoverboards, Safe Hoverboards, defective Hoverboards