Family's $99 Aldi microwave explodes seconds after father puts his one-year-old daughter on floor

A Bathurst man and his young daughter are lucky not to have been seriously injured after a $99 microwave he had purchased just days before in Aldi exploded.

Disability worker Mitchell Pritchard, 24, was at home with his partner and one-year-old daughter on August 26 when they decided to make some popcorn.

Mr Pritchard said he had used the new microwave once before, to heat up some milk, without incident.

But the next time he used it was also the last time.

"I put the popcorn in and picked up my daughter because she wanted to have a look," Mr Pritchard told Yahoo 7.

"With about ten seconds to go, I put her down and just before the timer ended there was this huge bang, so I leaned forward to see what had happened.

"The door busted open and hit me on the forehead.

"The plate had shattered, and the turntable had shattered as well."

Mr Pritchard said if he hadn't been hit in the head by the microwave door, he and his daughter would have been seriously injured by flying shards of glass.

"There was glass everywhere," he said.

"The explosion sounded like a gunshot; my daughter was screaming her head off and I had to calm her down.

"I had to pick her up again because there was glass everywhere - on the floor, all through the kitchen."

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Mr Pritchard and his partner took photos of the shattered microwave and took it back to Aldi the next day, where they were immediately offered a refund.

"They were really good about it, but it's still worrying," he said.

"Someone could have been really seriously hurt."

Mr Pritchard has sinced replaced the microwave with one from a different retailer and said he would never buy cheap whitegoods from Aldi again.

"I'm even still a bit nervous using this new one," he said.