“Batteries not included” is a popular phrase on many toy boxes. American stand-up comedian Steven Wright said in his act in 1985:
“I also bought some batteries, but they weren’t included. So I had to buy them again.”
“I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included”—the shortened joke—has been printed on GIFs.
Wikiquote: Steven Wright
Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an Academy Award winning American comedian, writer and actor, known for his bizarre comic style and morose stage persona.
I Have A Pony (1985)
I recently went to the hardware store and I bought some used paint… it was in a shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren’t included. So I had to buy them again.
New York (NY) Times
CHASING THE GHOSTS OF IMAGINATION
By BILL ZAVATSKY; Bill Zavatsky, a New York writer, is working on a book about the making of the film ‘‘Rebel Without a Cause.’‘
Published: December 8, 1985
Clutching a microphone with both hands, Steven Wright walks on stage as if he were Hamlet pacing the parapets of Elsinore.
(...)
Breathlessly he launches poem-like mobiles of words that are mock-philosophical (as he walks alone through a forest a tree falls in front of him and he doesn’t hear it), art-historical (he visits a museum which contains all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums), aphoristical (’‘Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect”), the could-be everyday (’‘I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them again”) and the plain hysterical (’‘Today I was . . . no, that wasn’t me.”)
Google Books
The Fourth—and by Far the Most Recent—637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Compiled by Robert Byrne
New York, NY: Atheneum
1990
Pg. ?:
597
I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included.
Steven Wright
Twitter
Cybster DJ
@cybster
I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them
again.
8:44 PM - 6 Mar 2008
Twitter
regioblogs2
@regioblogs2
“I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included.”
8:31 PM - 5 Apr 2008
Twitter
Humourous QotD
@hqotd
Steven Wright: “I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included.”
3:36 AM - 10 Jun 2008
Google Books
Say What?
By Sandy Foster
Lulu Publishing (Lulu.com)
2011
Pg. 28:
“I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them again.”
Google Books
Words of Wisdom:
Steven Wright
By Students’ Academy
Lulu Publishing (Lulu.com)
2015
Pg. ?:
I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included.
Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.
Recent entries:
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•“I study old buildings because I would rather learn from those who built civilization than those who tore it down” (4/18)
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More new entries...
Above, Big Apple Corner at 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Google Maps. Stolen and missing, 2021-2024.
Above, John J. Fitz Gerald, from the Aug. 15, 1931, Binghamton (NY) Press, pg. 14.
Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce "The Big Apple," a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.
Also listen to a 1937 "The Big Apple" song by Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra. See a 1929 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald and a 1931 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald.
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