and its really a pity that they make a better lamp like the dubai leds.

and trying to find the right size that is dimmable (and dimmables tend to cost more too).

The CFL lamps are not.

the dimmables are far more expensive than the non-dimmables and you have to hunt for them.

And I was never a fan of CFLs and only had a couple briefly until I could get the LEDs equivalents. I have had to buy my bulbs online at places like Bulbs.com because I can't walk into a supermarket or even a big box store and find a 200W (or greater) equivalent bulb (which I think are 18W LEDs) with something close to 3000 - 4000 lumens. Trying to find that in a 3-way (100W/150W/250W) is also a challenge.

The issue was AC/DC conversion for dimming LEDs because of the input voltage swings.
No monger an issue.

have dire consequences where I have seen the base of one heat up and start to fry. The availability of certain LEDs in common places like a s supermarket is still a challenge because the stores only want to stock what they think is the (only) desired "base" models like the 60W equivalents (non-dimming).

I recently had to get a GU24 2-pin (twist-lock) CFL for a porch light and finally seeing more of the LED alternatives for those being made available -

Dimmable light that will give me three other colors and plugs into a normal socket for about 3 euros for my reading lamp. Here you can only buy led for home use.

I recently was looking at replacing some first generation BR20 lamps (recessed fixture flood lights, for those who are not techno-geeks). The 1st generation lamps are 9-1/2 watts/500 lumens, and never, ever burn out. The current generation is 7 watts/550 lumens. I noticed that 4-1/2 watts 650 lumens are now available. That's 145 lumens per watt. That rolls with the Dubai lamps.

They're light bulbs!

They are an extremely important topic in the bible and even more essential to heterosexual, gender appropriate, family-friendly... Never mind, I can't even fake trying to figure them out.

It was my favorite toy for a long time…and you could get a heck of a burn if you weren’t careful.

(and that doesn't count the "microwave" one that at least looks like a microwave )

I’ll have to check that out.

wanted one, but never got one.

They did "bake a cake".

I *think* the newest ones use electric coils now.

so ours was "the household" one for all 3.

They are all in their 50's now but this still gets mentioned occasionally. Thanks for the reminder.

and have gone through various changes over the years. I had one in the '60s and the one PITA was getting the sliding cake pans lined up properly so they would work correctly.

or many other types of kitchen gadgets. There are children's cooking utensils and cookbooks out there these days. Get em while they're young.

most people had no "small"/tabletop heating appliance like that and there were very few microwave ovens out there, so it was innovative at the time to use the heat of the incandescent to "bake" (cook) the cake. Over the years, a number of models had been recalled and they eventually removed the bulbs and I think there is some kind of electric heating element in it.

The newer ones look like this posted upthread - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3108205

They eventually got with the program to make "gender neutral" models/colors a decade ago -

But that was a while ago also.
Just shows you how much electricity was wasted to get light out of them.

although I suppose you could have put a 100W in there but then it's that directed heat issue when the little pan of batter is up close to the bulb and the pans themselves were aluminum I think (which heat up fast).

According to Wikkipedia. they had 2 100 watt bulbs...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy-Bake_Oven#:~:text=The%20original%20Kenner%20Easy%2DBake,if%20heated%20from%20both%20sides.

... to cook dinner for everyone in a real oven.

Me and my siblings were thrown into real world day-to-day life early on, sink or swim. I remember being shocked that a friend of mine didn't do his own laundry, his mother did. I was ten years old, and changing the diapers of my youngest sibling while my mom was banging away at her typewriter for her work.

Probably why I wasn't super eager to have kids of my own!

It's been CFL and then LED bulbs ever since.

Got tired with how quickly they burned out. Outside of a few dud light bulbs, I have been pleased with the CFL and (later) LED's. Last a hell of a lot longer and they consume less energy.

Hopefully, the companies won't start making them to fail sooner so that they can sell more.

I bought a whole bunch of CFL bulbs to replace the incandescents... They were terrible. They usually didn't last nearly as long as promised (if not failure, then at least diminished performance) making them pricier to use than claimed. They were ugly. They had to be disposed of carefully. They had to be on for like 30 seconds before they achieved full brightness... which also meant that, for many uses, they were disappointingly dim for the amount of time you needed to use them (a kitchen snack, the bathroom, getting something from the basement or garage or an illuminated closet, etc.). Because of that warm-up time, we tended to leave then on in rooms, whereas with the incandescents they replaced, we would only turn them on when we went into those rooms, so the extra time on meant that they probably used more energy than the incandescents they replaced. Colossal failure, from my perspective.

Wretched color, flickering, short life, etc..

It may have been some kind of conspiracy.

Here in California the electric utilities were subsidizing higher quality compact fluorescent bulbs. The crap unsubsidized bulbs cost more than the good ones did.

I had a moment of sadness recently when one of my oldest compact fluorescents, one I'd bought in the 'nineties, died.

I do not miss replacing short-lived inefficient incandescent bulbs.

... for a while. But once they're gone, there won't be more made to replace them.

You know, General Electric figured out - at least 15 years ago - that they can make lots more profit on the LED bulbs. That's the real reason why they stopped fighting to save the incandescent bulbs. It's all about the benjamins.

that were for my mom since she originally had them all over in ceiling lights in the bedrooms, kitchen, basement, front porch, and hallways (and her chandelier). Everywhere else she used 200W bulbs (in the reading lamps). Once she passed, I just hung onto them.

I use 200W/250W equivalent LEDs (which I think are 18W and were expensive at the time I bought them) in my reading lamps. The smaller lamps that I have (including those I have for plants) use the 100W equivalent LEDs that I think are 14Ws (and I have a couple using 60W equivalents that I think are 9.5W).

It was the entire industry.

LED bulbs are vastly superior.

The consumer is the one that dictated the move.

That's what GE figured out, they could get the extra price for the LEDs.
That's when the lobby-dogs were called off.

LED bulbs have a longer lifespan and use 25% of the energy of their incandescent counterparts.

Over the lifespan...LED lighting is far cheaper.

I always used 200W incandescents in my reading lamps and I think I was replacing them about every 3 - 4 months so rounding off, maybe 4 a year per lamp. And those bulbs were running about $4 each so that was $16 a year.

The 200W-equivalent LEDs were like $27 a piece and I have had them now for about 7 years and they are starting to get dim. Similarly I have some 3-way (50W/100W/150W) that were $28 and those are starting to go now after the same 7 years. I have had to replace the lower 100W-equivalents in smaller lamps more frequently though but the 4-pk (name brand) of those are running about $10 and they seem to last about 3 years before they just stop working.

If they think they're they're gonna take my steam-engine car....

My issue for a while is that the newer ones did not work well as reading lamps. Prior to my cataract surgery, I really needed a strong reading lamp and I know I was not alone.

I have never used an e-reader - I don't like them*, so I need a reading lamp. I also need light for reading recipes and doing crosswords, and I am going to guess my quilting friends need proper light, too.

I was never against the concept of this, but when I couldn't get a good reading light, I totally understood the complaints. They diffused differently or something, and didn't spotlight the page. I am glad they improved them.

*I don't like reading on a Kindle, but it's also highly amusing when you ask someone where they are in a book and instead of telling you a plot point, they say something like "I'm 42% done".

I had to get bulbs that were at least 3900 lumens (which were in the 200W - 300W equivalent range and were expensive as hell). I bought my current ones about 7 years ago and they are starting to fade so it's probably time for replacements. I have a bunch of "vase" type lamps with "Empire" style lampshades and had to get (taller) lampshade harps to replace the existing ones to accommodate the huge bulbs.

It was aggravating that the early ones didn't function for reading. Isn't that what lights are FOR?

where they "always" recommend 60W bulbs for "reading". My mom was like "oh HELL no" and we had 200W bulbs when growing up and in some cases, the 3-way 100W/150W/250W bulbs. She had one of those crystal chandeliers in the dining room that took the A19/E26 bulbs and she would put 6, 100W incandescents into it. There were none of those 25W "flame-look" type bulbs in that chandelier!

I originally started with a couple CFLs but quickly replaced them once I could because I didn't like the color temperature on them and then there is that disposal issue. I do still like the yellow 'incandescent" type lighting so I usually use the "warm whites" (2700K) and will tolerate the "daylight" (5000K) bulbs... but ABSOLUTELY NO for the "cool white" (6000K-6500K) bulbs. Can't do that harsh "blue almost purple" stuff.

I just now changed the LED bulb in a lamp on my kitchen counter…I have to change LED’s much more often than incandescent bulbs of the past. Lamps are easy…it’s the ceiling fixtures that require a ladder that annoy me. Oh well.

I put on a big Halloween display in my front yard every year…I’ve been slowly replacing regular light strings with LED strings. The cool thing about the colored LED strings is that they have a remote that can change the light color to any color you want. I can re-use the strings for Christmas, Valentine’s Day or St. Paddy’s day. It makes lighting the display really fun.

AT THIS TIME, incandescents are still needed, until research and technology catches up. Sorry, but it is true........

I have been disappointed, that corporations, in their "hurry up first to market" development of alternatives have plagued us for years with poor designed and poor quality non incandescent lamps........for starters, think of that "curly" light bulb that was first on the market that contained Mercury and the numbers of them that ended up in landfills.....

Believe me, with Xcel Energy as our for profit, Corporate power *MONOPOLY,* (Not a PUC, anymore) I am more than happy to try to offset their SCANDALOUS electrical rate increases these past years......

The modernization of lamps, should have been preceded by much research and development, without "shoot from the hip" legislation.
(Of course, there were the profit oriented electrical lamp and fixture manufacturing corporations who were gun ho which helped immensely.).......

On a similar note, the rush to EV Vehicles frightens me, due to all the individual car manufacturers racing to get their products on the road with in-adequate Research and Development......I also feel that the use of "Lithium" batteries has not been fully researched, nor the manufacturers that use them for certain applications.........Think of the "Boeing Dream Liners" being grounded because of a few lithium batteries being used in the plane's design without proper research and development.

The Corporations combined "Race to Market" and their "Race to the maximum bottom line", is going to be our downfall......

Other than scientific reasons?

you want a strong light? Reading, any kind of fine work...

Uses 25% of the energy.

Not bright enough? Buy an LED with a greater lumen output.

Strong light? I can easily go out and purchase LED lamps that will blow you off of your chair and through the next wall with their light output. Any kind of fine work? Whether you want task lighting, area lighting or pinpoint lighting, there are LED lamps readily available for those purposes.

If you would, can you be a bit more descriptive in where you find LED lamps to come up short? Perhaps I can guide you to an appropriate device.

The 75W bulb wasn't bright enough.

the problem, I don't have the light physics vocabulary. Normal, everyday LED bulbs give off light, but they don't light the subject enough. Their light is very flat, kinda gray. It's light, but it's not LIGHT. It has no depth. That's the best I can do. I find digitally projected movies to be the same way. I find myself getting irritated because I can't SEE anything. PreCOVID when I still went to the movies, of course.

Digitally projected movies use incandescent light, and not LEDs.

for example, EVERY traffic light in colder/snowy climates across the U.S. and Canada...........I am not sure that even years later, they have found a solution to that problem.......

Same with the Warning beacons on every tower/tall building in the U.S. and Canada....

I only have to imagine the problems with a bulb that doesn't give off heat on the lamps on aircraft and even more so on landing strips and taxi strips at airports..........

My point is, that we go "All In" on something way way before proper vetting, research and development........

Another point is the lamps used in Fluorescent fixtures....the new bulbs, if I am not mistaken, require different internal components in the fixtures. (ballasts?) which, last I heard, required he labor intensive process of replacing the ballasts on every fluorescent light fixture in the U.S..............The cost of the labor, let alone the cost of the new Ballasts, made it more economically more cost effective, just to replace the entire "Troffler"?? suspended ceiling, four lamp fixtures...............Maybe their needs to be a longer phase in period if there isn't gonna be more research and development is all I am saying. Can you even begin to think, about the absolutely, un-fathomable number of those ubiquitous four lamp, suspended ceiling light fixtures there are in the U.S.???????????Every sky scraper, every office building, every store, every school, every public building, the list is endless......
Again, my point is, that we should make sure that we have a viable alternative before shooting from the hip and having a constant state of expensive do overs..........

Makes sense. Conserves a lot of energy, which is good for the planet.

LED bulbs can be used to replace incandescent bulbs without any hassle.

Buy one and try it.

per my examples, that I posted in this commentary........

I totally disagree with your blanket statement: "LED bulbs can be used to replace incandescent bulbs without any hassle."
Again, PER MY EXAMPLES, that you chose not to address or consider, or research.............

What examples are you referring to?

Specifically, for instance, the problem of LED's in Traffic lights......

Denver installed them, and the next winter storm was saying: WOW.....It seemed like a really good idea at the time".......
Last I heard, they are still trying to figure out a solution.............

The same lack of "heat generating lighting" to keep clear snow and ice for Aircraft exterior lighting and runway lighting has got to be a problem also.

BACK TO MY MAJOR POINT OF ALL THIS IS THAT CORPORATIONS/GOVERNMENT HAVE TO DO MORE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN AND TESTING BEFORE JUST SHOOTING FROM THE HIP. THEY LET US BE THEIR "TESTING" APPARATUS, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, AND WE PAY THROUGH THE NOSE FOR IT...............

You might also research what Fire Departments are saying about the lack of knowledge and training in fighting EV car fires as an example of the manufacturers not being much help to them out in the real world.......

BACK TO MY MAJOR POINT OF ALL THIS IS THAT CORPORATIONS/GOVERNMENT HAVE TO DO MORE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN AND TESTING BEFORE JUST SHOOTING FROM THE HIP. THEY LET US BE THEIR "TESTING" APPARATUS, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, AND WE PAY THROUGH THE NOSE FOR IT...............

Not incandescent.

I don't see why governments need to do any more verification testing of the use of LED lighting in municipalities.

They are a money saver and are good for the environment.

you proved my point..........xenon lights are hotter than LED's AND they use more energy than LED's

If LED's were operationally superior, they would use LED's on aircraft and the lights on runways and taxi ways...............not just categorically/automatically switch to all LED's for any and all situations....................

Re, why gov'ts need to verify??????, I hope you don't live in a northern state with Cold and Snow, and have to go thru an intersection in the middle of a snowstorm, if they use LED lights in their traffic lights..........................



I am over with this disagreement.............

And many of our skyscrapers in downtown Philly have replaced their exterior lights with LEDs over the past 15 years. And not just for efficiency but because they then have an incredible range of colors that can be utilized to do commemorative lighting! E.g., Breast Cancer Awareness or Pride Months -





And even when the Eagles were in the Super Bowl.



They were even playing video games on the side of one of the buildings downtown (Cira Center that me and my sister call the "Gumby building ) -

...You integrate a heating coil into the light, and run them during the snow. Still far more power efficient.

Good video that addresses your specific "But sometimes!!!" concern.

another item to address, would be running an Orange changing to Red lights.....Every hour, every day across the U.S. there are constantly drivers trying to run an orange light from even quite some distance back. A week ago, I got the left turn light, started to pull forward and a car at race car speed shot thru the intersection.........It is bad enough to get in a T-bone accident to the driver's side, often resulting in death, but at increased speeds, it is more likely to produce a fatality.......

Anyways, I was driving with a friend from Denmark when we saw an Orange Light runner. He said, you know when you are driving along, and the light turns orange, and you immediately try to judge whether you can make it or not instead of just stopping? Sometimes you brake, sometimes you go ahead and go for it. He says that there was such a problem in Denmark, with the people "going for it" and getting in serious accidents, that they changed their traffic signals. On a green traffic light, ten seconds before the light is going to turn orange, the green starts flashing displaying that it is a stale green light, and to begin stopping. He says there are still people that "go for it", but most people use the flashing green as a warning and stop.... He also said that the length of the yellow light is determined by the number of lanes in the cross street. Two lanes is six seconds, a six lane street will have a 12 second yellow light.

Simple change to save accidents and lives.......

If someone knew the traffic laws at one time, doesn't matter if they have forgotten them as soon as they took the test.....
The studies have indicated that 20% of the drivers are either driving without a license or driving with a suspended license anyways.
In either case, they are driving without insurance, so the rest of us have to purchase "un-insured" driver insurance. With insurance getting prohibitive in cost, many drivers go with the absolute minimum (ludicrously low) insurance. I recently bought "under-insured" insurance at an additional add on expense........
The interesting thing is that cops seemingly can't be bothered to look for traffic law offenders anymore....We need to respond to serious crimes, not petty traffic offenses. And the cops seem to all believe that is the truth. I cannot remember, and I have been watching for over a year, a single motorist pulled over for a ticket. The State Patrol seems to do a much better job.
The motorists have figured out that they don't need to worry about being pulled over for making an illegal left turn, speeding, etc....
That's my rant about traffic problems......thank you for your extremely comprehensive article......

I don't put holiday lights up for holidays.

I have plants that would freeze; I string holiday lights around their bases and in some of the branches, fling a layer of clear plastic over them and weight it down around the edges and plug the lights for overnight or all day if it's going to be below freezing.

Plants live.

LEDs ... They don't produce heat.

Why aren't we taking more about hybrids?

My sister's town just lost power for three days. Guess what people were using? Generators. What is you are driving your EV across the country and there were storms and communities didn't have power?

Sorry I can't quote it, but it made a strong case for making more hybrids than EVs. The argument basically stated that you could use the amount of lithium in one EV's battery to make enough smaller lithium batteries for three or four hybrids, and that those hybrids would collectively make more of a positive impact for the environment/climate change than the one larger EV would, at least for now.

As a hybrid driver, I'm inclined to agree.

My home is 100% LED, those curly bulbs went away years ago.

Utter bullshit. I work in this industry and you are as wrong as possible, and your paranoia and misinformation is bordering on QAnon levels of fantasy. Is the tech perfect? Of course not, nothing is. But that doesn’t excuse your baseless accusations.

my chance to run down to Home Depot and grab a supply. I like the LED lack of heat, but for actual light I still find incandescent to work better. LEDs look like light, but they don't actually...light very well.

LED's are efficient, but the electronics needed still wastes energy in the form of heat... also the quoted lifespan of the led bulbs is far from accurate.. with dozens of led's in my garage it still seems that i need to replace blinking or otherwise malfunctioning lamps regularly... bringing into question whether cheap led's are truly cost effective... also cheap led's lose output after a while, to test this compare an led night light that has been in service for a while with a new one and you will find a great difference in light output.... aside from that i tested an old incandescent bulb recently and really burned myself.... i forgot how hot the damned things really were back in the stone age... so.......

" also the quoted lifespan of the led bulbs is far from accurate.. with dozens of led's in my garage it still seems that i need to replace blinking or otherwise malfunctioning lamps regularly..."

Of course this is what happens when the information is put out by the "marketing department" and "sales department" of a CORPORATION about it's product............Not actual facts about the products or information by actual research and development, or independent testing groups.....ie UL......

And it is even more prevalent in the Pharmaceutical Industry as well as others.........

"Truth in Advertising"......"False or Misleading Advertising", etc, all were literally emasculated during the Reagan Administration by HWBush and other. The FTC, was made a joke, along with a large number of other Federal Regulating agencies....

WASF

made in China in our rush to the bottom when it comes to quality. Many stores sell three levels of quality - good, better, best - but people look at price and by the cheapest. Sure, the best ones are not cheap but not only do they really last but their power consumption makes them much less expensive over the life of the bulb.

Note that the claimed "lifetime" is based on 3 hours per day. Fine for those occasionally-used places but not for having them on all day but people still buy the cheapos so those outdoor lights last forever but the ones my wife leaves on all day, fail a lot faster.

I have LED fixtures that show the failure was in the connections between the LED sections. Poor soldering. Internal wiring is too thin and can't handle the current. As to bulbs, the quality control is atrocious. I date all my bulbs when they go into service so I know when they failed prematurely. Too many of them do.

50K hours? What a joke. Sure the LEDs will last "forever" but not when packaged so poorly. Manufacturers have to drop the 110V to the voltage of the bulbs. They can't take the heat (yes there is heat).

So many of the LED bulbs claim far more than they deliver. A 100W incandescent puts out 1600 lumens but I've seen "100W"-claimed bulbs that say only 1300 lumens and "60W" (800 lumens) say 600 lumens. At least those liars are better than the ones that falsely claim the higher number but don't put that much out.

Fluorescent bulbs suck. They slowly dim. They have lots of mercury. The individual lamp bulbs are also poorly made (vs the long ones).

The real problem with LEDs is that we're trying to use modern lights in old fashioned fixtures and lamps with too much voltage; they work much longer and much brighter when pulsed with voltage but need higher frequencies than 60Hz to avoid flicker; their are no standards that the Chinese manufacturers have to meet for quality control or honesty in labeling.

China lights the world. They have been onto LEDs for decades because they save energy and the Chinese love their building lighting tech.

There was this middle age guy, suit and tie, with a shopping cart absolutely filled with incandescent bulbs. He must have bought every last bulb in the store.

I think only CFL were available at the time, not LEDs. I like the LEDs. They last longer. And they are great in flash lights.

the transformer converting 110 to whatever voltage the LED wants will NOT. Then you have a functionable LED with nothing to "turn it on" and a trip to the store for an expense that wasn't as advertised.

Some LEDs may last years. Some that are turned on and off MANY times will have their transformers not last as long. But that's something the industry hasn't been preaching.

When string LEDS or reg LEDs start to dim or flicker, chances are the transformer is going. And rather than simply "burning out" they COULD overheat and cause a more serious problem.

But since it won't probably happen to (You -in general) that's someone else's problem, eh?

The MTBF of transformers is very high.

A tungsten filament is an inductive component too, but has a MUCH higher mean time between failure.

Anyone still using incandescent lights are idiots. Hot, dangerous, power wasting, expensive, and shitty lighting. The ban on selling them is mostly a formality at this point.

so as soon as the swirly bulbs came out, in they went. The early ones were kind of craptacular, with weird colored light, but later ones have corrected that. I also have LED bulbs where bright light is not needed.

I have a few incandescent bulbs left, maybe I can find some Republicans who will buy them for a stupidly high price.

LED lighting can provide bright light.

when the CEL bulbs gradually bite the dust. For now, I'm working on a Costco sized pack of LED lights which are better than night lights, but more like a very low wattage bulb.

I started buying CFLs in 1999 when they were on sale. Lasted way longer than incandescents. LEDs were insanely expensive for a long time, but now LEDs are usually cheaper than incandescents or CFLs.

LEDs are probably lasting about as long as CFLs, IME. Disposal is much easier with LEDs.

Except Christmas lights. We have incandescent Christmas lights in the bedroom, and when we tried to switch to LED... it was weird. Like very fast flickering (not intermittent, but more like a strobe) that just made it impossible to live.

I love mine. I use them all over the house.

Safer and planet friendly

The great dilemma is that alternating current is more efficient in transmitting power to our homes, but DC is needed for electronics and LEDs. The cheap strands just apply the 60Hz (cycles per second) to the line of LEDs. This divides the voltage among the LEDs to the lower voltage each LED needs. That's efficient and smart. However, the light is only emitted when the current flows in one direction as the alternating current reverses 60 times per second. (Actually it's 120 times per second, left/right/left/right...) That's efficient in that there's no wasted energy in converting to DC (direct current, always one direction), but extremely annoying to some people that notice the 60 Hz flicker. I can't stand the flickering, but the rest of my fam say I'm crazy.

in the last decade or more. I still have a halogen in a wall sconce that takes tubular bulbs where the led replacement is too large in diameter. When the existing halogen burns out, the sconce will be replaced.
I still have a fair number of the old,old style LED's in recessed and track lighting fixtures.

The only places where I still see incandescents is in appliances (fridges or ovens) and in garage door openers. Like 100% incandescent and never (so far LEDs or CFLs).

Do these bulbs work well in such appliances, with wide range of temperatures?

Sounds like I should have read more of the article.

involves ceilign fans.
For the incandescent lights mine were all rated at 60 watts. Heat build up in the globe is the probably reason.
I have always wanted to find a 100 watt bulb to fit but that never seemed to be available.
With the LED I can get a direct replacement, but only for the 60 watt bulb. There is no reason that I couldn't put in a 100 watt light out put equivalent in the fans. Heat build up will be less and I get more light. Can't find anything that fits..

I have put shiny alu tape above the bulbs to reflect more light down.

Since they are banned for sale starting Aug 1. Landfills?

Didn't realize the U.S. had a giant dome over it where nothing can be packed up and exported through it to other countries.

Seems like it would be expensive

or have global partners right?

Instead of "guessing" why not do some searching?

Did not know that.

I did search and found nothing other than store hours. They don't have a website. Many one location rural stores dont.

in your "mom and pop store"? And if you have, you do realize that these "mom and pop" stores don't actually manufacture those items themselves. They actually do something that seems to be incomprehensible to you... like "buying them from a distributor or wholesaler".

Stop digging because you are embarrassing yourself.

I couldn't find any information stating they are going to all be sent to other countries. Doesn't seem financially to make sense to ship a low cost item like that to another country vs. just throwing them out.

Got it. If the product isn't banned for import in that country, then it can be shipped there and businesses do things like "write-offs" on their taxes (something that DU complains about).

Was just looking at a NYT article about many actually ended up in Dollar Stores over the years.

Remember the ban is not for use, just for U.S. manufacture and sales and the law actually took effect in 2012 so the "inventory" of them over the past 10 years is not anywhere near what you are insisting it is.

Writing them off taxes makes it more likely they will just be thrown out, especially in the small quantities you allude to.You seem to be certain that will not happen and they will all be handled by brokers and sent to other countries


Given that I have seen no links proving that to be the case, I am skeptical that the inventory in the rural mom and pop hardware stores around me will all be sent overseas by brokers. Someone is still eating them at a loss.