21 May—The lousiest batteries in the world. Well, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic. It’s entirely possible, even likely, there are lousier batteries being manufactured and used all over the world. But Kodak Super Heavy Duty Zinc AA batteries are the absolute lousiest batteries I’ve ever used. Ever. Their AAA brethren are just as lousy.

On the other hand, what could I have expected when I bought them a couple of years ago at Price Rite in Torrington? Something like $2.50 for a pack of 20. That was 12½ cents apiece. As opposed to the big-bucks for Duracell and slightly smaller-bucks for Energizer and other brands.

Sure, the Kodak batteries were made in China. But isn’t everything? Not Berkshire Hathaway’s Duracell batteries, it happens, many of which are made in the good old U.S.A, nor many Energizer batteries, also made domestically. Sure, the Kodaks were zinc rather than alkaline. But the packaging made it clear they were “excellent for low drain products” and I intended to use them in ultra-low-drain digital thermometers and clocks.

Three-year asterisked guarantee, the asterisk being “in storage” in one-point type on the back of the package. And the Kodak brand is impressive and reassuring even today to an old fart whose first camera, bought in 1950 for just under eight dollars, was a Kodak Brownie Reflex Synchro Model. It used 127 film, 12 little square shots on a roll. The synchro alluded to the flash attachment, which was another two bucks or so the following month.

(I progressed to other cameras and photographic and darkroom equipment through half a century but continued to use mostly Kodak film, paper, and chemicals before the digital invasion.)

Even though “the Kodak trademark, logo and trade dress [package design] are [only] used under license from Eastman Kodak Company,” and really have nothing else to do with Kodak, how could I resist 12½ -cent batteries? Even though Kodak’s licensee was located in Yateley, Hampshire, UK (about 35 miles from Litchfield, Hampshire, UK, by the way), with no corporate presence in the U.S.A. should I have a warranty claim, what was there to lose?

So I sprung for the Kodak AAs and AAAs. Not a big mistake. Just a little one. Talk about battery morbidity. Regular Duracell so-called copper-tops and Energizer bunny sticks usually last about a couple of years in digital thermometers and clocks. (Duracell premium Quantum batteries aren’t much better, by the way, despite their astronomical price.) The Kodak zincs don’t even make it to four months. So in the long run the net price for the Kodak crap probably works out to just about the same as for the more expensive but longer-lived crap. Just a bigger pain in the ass to deal with.

Kind of like penny-wise-pound foolish town buildings in Litchfield . . .