While the up and coming Chinese light companies are fighting the lumen wars while making them cheaper and cheaper the 2 worlds oldest light makers are developing products aimed squarely at the budget minded consumer. An old school idea being rekindled.
Is it working in 2018? Eh, time will tell.
A look back at history shows that battery makers made flashlights. Some were nice, like Burgess and Bright Star who produced a nicer version of same ole sameness where Eveready and Rayovac both made lights at the lower end of the cost scale. Profit was made by selling batteries. It worked for 100 years.
Now that rechargeables are moving forward battery sales are slipping and sliding faster than a World Cup skier in Switzerland. Yet the average consumer still prefers convenience.
Folks, we are at a point where 35% of Americas population below the age of 40 says preparing a bowl of breakfast cereal takes to long. So folks would rather pay $6 for a box of 6 breakfast bars than $3 for enough Cheerios to live on for 2 weeks.
Enter Rayovac Brite Essentials and Eveready LED/DEL lineup. They arrive with uber cheap carbon zinc cells, (sometimes already installed) and tout lots of hours runtime. And hey, their $3 each. Battery leaks, switch breaks, goes dim.... toss 'em in the trash and move on. It's the Bic lighter for the new millenium.
It worked for them from the 1970's (and before) until a few years ago when the incan and LED were equally costly to produce. And thanks to lumen wars these two companies can easily and cheaply produce lights with enough output for the average consumer while able to run dozens of hours on fuel cells that probably cost a dime a dozen (or less) to produce.
I have the 2aa version of the 1D xxo and flatline mention. It was $3 and is similar to $1.99 lights from the 70's and 80's but is brighter than the 2 cell light bulb and is stated to run 45 hours.
Not only that, but they can be found in gas stations, grocery stores, drug stores and other places Amazon hasn't taken over.
It's simple genious marketing that began in New York by a man named Conrad Hubert in about 1915.
I'm doing a thread in the budget section about these style flashlights. While the plastic ones are... well, plastic, there are actually some decently made metal products being sold by these two companies. Eveready owns Energizer and they are producing some fairly durable forward thinking lights that compete with the Rayovac Indestructable line. So while ching-ping and fong-gong are trying to out SureFire SureFire, Rayovac and Eveready are quietly taking back the consumer market using old school products with new school technologies.
It was something I think Maglite had in mind with the ML25 in 016 where a 2c (or 3) sized tube was built around the minimag platform. Meanwhile they are being found in less and less spaces so they are attempting to find a spot in the online market place. Coast, Defiant, Lux Pro and others squeezed Maglite shelf space smaller and smaller into near extinction. So they are in rebuild mode right now. But don't count Maglite out just yet. Tony Maglica has some pretty savvy people around him and their new lineup is quietly picking up steam.
I hope to see something like an ML12.5c (or D) where it's an uber runtime 1 cell light, but Tony seems stuck in those lumen wars right now.
