I believe there are 3 reasons why you hear more exploding Quark stories:
1) There were (until recently) one of the few sensorless ESCs that were US-based. This made them desirable for warranty purposes.
2) They are actually a
10th scale controller. They have the same FETs and same number of FETs that the original MM used. However, since they can take up to 6s (sorta), people use them in applications where they were not designed to work in and things go poof. Heavier vehicles draw higher burst currents, not to mention higher brake loads.
3) They were one of the few ESCs that Mike carries which can run pretty much any type of motor (especially Neus where the MM was weak until recently). So, they were understandably popular and you are naturally gonna see more bad stories because there are a lot of them out there.
True, the Quarks had heat issues and other small irritations (like possible programming troubles, unclear LVC functionality, no true reverse brake, price), but they really are solid controllers. I'm still using both of mine (one in Revo on 14 cells and one in Hyper8 on 4s), and they still work just fine.
You want exploding ESC stories, just ask Serum to show you his Schulze hall of shame sometime!