"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.