The big version of the meme tool is getting its best trick back. Harbor Freight showed an updated ICON 52-piece socket set at SEMA, and the big change is the ratchet: the pass-through design from the smaller 35-piece kit is moving up to the big set. Updated sets reach stores in summer 2027.
Quick backstory if you missed the saga. The 35-piece kit got famous by being cheap, tiny, and weirdly useful, and its ratchet has a hole straight through the head. A bolt or a length of threaded rod passes through the socket instead of bottoming out, so long fasteners stop being a fight.
ICON 1/4 in. Drive Compact Socket and Bit Set, 52-Piece
52 pieces, SAE and Metric · Chrome-molybdenum steel · Locking flex-head ratchet
Price: $79.99 at Harbor Freight
Where to buy: Buy at Harbor Freight
The bigger set never got the pass-through ratchet.
It shipped with a locking flex-head ratchet instead, a good ratchet that just isn’t why anyone fell for the little kit. Owners have complained in reviews ever since. One reviewer on Harbor Freight’s own product page tells shoppers to buy the little set and swap its ratchet and extension over.
What pass-through actually buys you
A pass-through socket doesn’t care how much stud sticks out past the nut. The fastener runs through the socket and out the back of the ratchet head, so a shallow socket handles work that would normally need a deep-well. Toilet bolts. Threaded rod. Long alternator studs. The annoying jobs cluster right there.
That hollow head also pulls a second shift.
Grip the ratchet sideways and it works as a T-handle, with two-handed torque in spots where a swinging handle has no room to swing. Half the little kit’s glove-box appeal lives right there.
The spinner handle changes too
Right now the set’s spinner handle takes 1/4-inch drive accessories. The updated handle switches to a 1/4-inch hex shank, and the 24 bits in the case fit it directly. No adapter hunt every time you move between a socket and a bit, which on a kit like this happens about every thirty seconds.
Bits do the daily work in a kit like this: furniture, electronics, flat-pack bolts by the dozen. The Torx bits are the tamper-proof kind, center holes and all, which is the style game consoles and appliances actually use. The spinner handle is how most people will run them, so the hex shank turns it into a proper little screwdriver.
What’s in the set you can buy today
Inside the red case: 21 chrome-moly shallow sockets running 5mm to 14mm and 3/16 to 9/16 with no skipped sizes, plus 24 S2 steel bits covering Torx, hex, Phillips, slotted, and Pozidriv. The whole case weighs 2.44 lb and disappears into a tote or a truck box.
Around the sockets sit the locking flex-head ratchet, the spinner handle, 2-inch and 4-inch extensions, a universal joint, a bit holder socket, and a bit extension. Like every ICON hand tool, the set carries a lifetime warranty.
Its ICON screwdriver and wrench siblings are on sale this week too, if the toolbox has other gaps.
Summer 2027, price still open
Harbor Freight hasn’t priced the updated set, and final specs aren’t locked, so treat the SEMA hardware as near-final. We rounded up the rest of the Harbor Freight SEMA reveals earlier this week, and this one fits the pattern: the ICON line keeps absorbing the feedback owners leave in its reviews.
Pass-through isn’t a 2027-only idea, either. The 35-piece kit is still on the shelf at $39.99, hollow head and all, if you want the trick today.
The current 52-piece set sells for $79.99, and ICON socket sets show up in Harbor Freight’s parking lot sales often enough that patient buyers rarely pay full price. Need the kit today? Buy the flex-head set. The pass-through is the reason to wait.
ICON 1/4 in. Drive Compact Socket and Bit Set, 52-Piece
52 pieces, SAE and Metric · Chrome-molybdenum steel · Locking flex-head ratchet
Price: $79.99 at Harbor Freight
Where to buy: Buy at Harbor Freight
