I tried using those radio shack jobs to charge sets of 8 AA cells on my intelipeak, anything over an amp and they melt, lol.
I frequently use my battery adapters for flashlights for charging like this. (the ones I sell, see link in sig line), but this seems like kind of a waste if all you need it for is charging.
Personally. I think what we need is a spring loaded multi-bay dummy adapter with plugs to hook up to big multi-cell smart chargers. I was think of a spring loaded mechanism that, without a cell in it, would collapse a "switch" and short that bay, so that it automatically wires the cells installed in series (without the need for dummy cells), regardless of how many cells are inserted.