In March 2023, Yeti issued a voluntary recall and "stop sale" for nearly 1.9 million soft coolers, including the popular Hopper M20 Soft Backpack Cooler and the M30 Soft Cooler. The reason for the withdrawal was a significant safety hazard involving the magnet-lined closures. Yeti discovered that the high-powered magnets enclosed in the heat-sealed plastic strips could fail, leading to detached magnets. If two or more of these magnets are ingested, they can attract to each other through the intestinal walls, leading to "perforations, twisting, or blockage of the intestines," which can be fatal. While Yeti reported over 1,300 incidents of the closures failing, no actual injuries were reported before the recall. In 2026, Yeti has returned to the market with "re-engineered" versions of these backpack coolers that utilize safer, more robust closure systems that do not pose the same ingestion risk. The original "Hopper BackFlip" (which used a zipper) was phased out in favor of the magnetic M20, but the subsequent recall briefly left a massive gap in Yeti’s backpack lineup as they prioritized consumer safety over sales.