What should I do with the old charger?

Battery charger seemingly exploded; "POP" noise followed by smoke billowing out and a bad smell, what happened?

• I bought a new battery charger for my camera's batteries two or three weeks ago off Amazon after losing my old one and it's worked fine up until tonight. A few hours ago I plugged it into an outlet (it was an outlet on a power strip if that makes any difference) and put the battery in to charge. Then about 2 hours after that I heard a pop/crack and turned around to see smoke pouring out from under the charger and smelled a bad hot-electric odor. I unplugged the power strip and took the battery charger out (which was very hot to the touch) and there was a noticeable burn mark on the power strip. There were two other things plugged into the power strip at the time; a lamp and my laptop's power cord, but I've used them for years without anything blowing up like this. I tried plugging the battery charger into another outlet after but the light didn't come on so I assume it's toast. Anyone got any theories as to why this happened or how I can prevent it from happening again with a new charger? I'm not sure if the power strip is at fault or the battery charger is or what. You'd think at $75.00 for just a simple charger it wouldn't blow up in its first month of use :/

• Answer:

  Its dead, dump the charger. There is no doubt. The one you got was a cheap one made probably out of bad materials. Getting a new one is definitely the way to go. 75 dollars for a charger to blow up is expensive. Make sure you get it from a reliable source and that its the right voltage for the usage you are using it for. Good luck!