AA Procell - Yellow vs Orange, Assembled in USA vs Made in China???

Hi All,

I saw this thread when I searched, but it's old and wasn't much help: http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?249940-Duracell-Procell

For alkaline needs, I usually buy Duracell Procells from Amazon, always Prime, through a third party seller. (Very rare to see Amazon as the seller, presumably due to the 'not for retail sale' box labeling?)

I had just gotten 2x 24 packs of AAs and opened them up to put a pair in a family member's Streamlight ProTac AA.

These batteries were yellow in color, instead of the orange I've been used to for years.

I pulled 2 previously purchased cells out of a light and got out their outer box as well for comparison.

Upon examination, the outer box was sized differently, the batteries were labeled differently ('Assembled in USA' vs 'Made in China'), and the wrapper on the yellow China ones were not serialized like my 'normal' USA orange ones, among other things.

Did Procell manufacturing/packaging/labeling change? Are these gray market/counterfeit/somehow a different Procell???

Pics comparing the two and their outer boxes are here: http://s350.photobucket.com/user/c123/library/Procell AA - USA orange vs China yellow

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

Bump (If that's not allowed, please feel free to delete.)

Anyone have any input on this???

Thanks in advance!

For fun I did a search - and found duracellpro.com

Under "products" there are some photos in color. Do yours look like those?

There is also a contact tab there - would be interesting if you contacted them and asked what they thought of the ones from amazon.

There are plenty of counterfeit products on ebay and amazon - I am sure that duracell would be very happy for your help in pointing it out.