In this paper we extend and generalize, up to a natural bound of the method, our previous work Badziahin and Zorin [‘Thue–Morse constant is not badly approximable’, Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN 19 (2015), 9618–9637] where we proved, among other things, that the Thue–Morse constant is not badly approximable. Here we consider Laurent series defined with infinite products
$f_{d}(x)=\prod _{n=0}^{\infty }(1-x^{-d^{n}})$,
$d\in \mathbb{N}$,
$d\geq 2$, which generalize the generating function
$f_{2}(x)$ of the Thue–Morse number, and study their continued fraction expansion. In particular, we show that the convergents of
$x^{-d+1}f_{d}(x)$ have a regular structure. We also address the question of whether the corresponding Mahler numbers
$f_{d}(a)\in \mathbb{R}$,
$a,d\in \mathbb{N}$,
$a,d\geq 2$, are badly approximable.