A question was posed on reddit asking why, if they were so dangerous, were they still even being manufactured.

I had this to say on the topic and posed some questions that I thought were relevant to the conversation as to WHY they might be still making them.

Disclaimer: I'm not recommending anyone get a heat rock, I'm just posing questions that could encourage some discussion on the topic that I felt were relevant so please don't eat my head off about it.

There is still a generation of old timer keepers who've been keeping reptiles longer than some of us have been alive and use them. I imagine these people are few and far between because it's clear heatpads are superior in every way just due to coverage and other such reasons.
The other reason is the people who are in that 40-70 range purchasing a reptile for their kid will have known a person who kept a reptile with a heat rock. It's unavoidable. When I was a kid 20 years ago my uncle had an iguana for like 14 years with a hot rock, turned out to be a female and died of egg retention or something like that I don't really remember. If I did no research though. It would be reasonable of me to assume that heat rocks are perfectly safe. I mean, my uncle just raised a lizard with one and it lived longer than most dogs.
As far as I can tell the only heat rocks left on the market are made by zoomed and Exo Terra. Now I'm gonna offer some contrarian thoughts that I don't agree with but just to encourage a discussion and help inform people of the risks.
Zoomed and Exo Terra are the two premier reptile product producers. Exo Terra is one of the best innovators in the business with their awesome terrariums, hide boxes and other various products.
Would it be unreasonable to assume that these companies have made improvements to their designs that have greatly reduced or even eliminated the old dangers associated with these types of heating devices?
The Exo Terra heat rock comes with an internal thermostat in it that automatically shuts it off in the event that it gets too hot. Zoomed's doesn't appear to have this feature and had discontinued their heat rock with the rheostat (most likely because their rheostats are pretty much useless). The zoomed brand is made of actual rock, the exo terra is made of a conductive resin. These would appear to be materials that would prevent the old REALLY hot spots that happened with these products in the past.
The hot rock my uncle used was made of plastic. So that getting hotspots makes a lot more sense than something made of a heat conductive material.
When is the last time you've seen someone on a forum complaining that a heat rock burned their pet? I haven't seen that in like 15 years. All the burns now come from unregulated heating pads or lights.
Even looking at the reviews on the major retailers. Amazon and Petsmart both have minimum 4 star overall ratings. The only 1 star rating on petsmart is someone warning people about them. The 1 star ratings are almost universally from people complaining the rock doesn't heat up enough or was flat out broken. Only one person reported that the zoomed product was too hot. Perhaps it was under a light because no one else was complaining about this. More importantly, not one person complaining about an injured animal. If they are so dangerous certainly one person would have reported an injured animal I know I would.
Now I pose the question, could these once dangerous products have been engineered to be at least as safe as heat pads? I say why not? If they have been, then I think that the companies have done a poor job of trying to get that communicated to the hardcore reptile community as a whole and there are plenty of people out there who have a hard time getting hotspots in their tanks who could benefit from a product like this if it was actually safe especially the people looking for those 120-130 degree hotspots (lizards).