Customer Reviews

Energizer-Eveready 01852 - Black Swivel Head Hard Case Flashlight (Batteries Included) (TUF421PE)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The packaging is a pain to remove. It's hard to find the battery compartment (twist the bulky base and unscrew, counterclockwise). The light isn't especially bright, despite the touted Xenon bulb. It's not overly heavy, but it's needlessly bulky. While the swivel head might be useful, other flashlights do it better. The colors are ok, but others are more attractive - and appearance isn't the purpose of a flashlight. Even at $15, it's no bargain. There are lots better flashlights out there; keep looking.

I don't care to get into some Freudian thing here, and I'll thank you not to press me on the subject, but I have a thing for flashlights. We must have twelve, fifteen of them around the house (and at least three per car). My latest acquisition is the black and yellow Energizer TUF421. It's really tuff. It's a flashlight styled to make you think it was born after a secret tryst between Xena the Warrior Princess and a Hummer 3. The Tuf421 is packaged to withstand every ounce of shock and awe you can unleash on it.

I'm not saying the flashlight itself is indestructible per se (though it's probably as strong as you have any right to expect from twenty dollars' worth of Chinese plastic). It's just styled and packaged to look like it could make Chuck Norris weep. It asks, with whatever the opposite of daintiness is, "Are you man enough for the TUF421, punk?"

And frankly, I wasn't sure.

Examining it post-purchase, I find that two beefy, hard, plastic ties squeeze my new flashlight to an oversized retail tray. Not twisty ties (that would be too frou-frou), but the kind you have to cut with a utility knife. In an effort to really boost this light's macho-man credentials, the designers have made the ties so thick that not just ANY utility knife will do, either. My blade literally breaks. So I continue with the stubbiest blade in recorded history, and I git 'r done. Boo-ya!!

Flashlight liberated from its restraints, I now set to work on freeing the four enclosed AA batteries. They're encased in more rock-hard plastic, in two pairs of two, so that this Brinks-level protection must be breached twice. Fabulous: nothing like placing your arteries at risk in pursuit of some fifty-cent batteries. Because hey, what's a bucketful of blood if you have testosterone to spare?

After some examination, I find that the back of the compartment that holds the batteries features a slightly extruded picture of a pair of snipping pliers with a one-word instruction that reads, helpfully, 'cut' (black on black, almost illegible). Yes indeed, you need a special tool (and probably a gym membership) before you're allowed to begin using this terrific product you just paid for! Basta. I'm not sure I have the pliers that are apparently required, and I don't want to go rummaging through my freezing toolshed (points deducted for distinctly un-Bruce-Willis-like behavior), so I set to work with the utility knife again, trying to saw and cut a hole in the plastic perimeter. After 20 seconds: Pinngg! Another blade broken.

Still, after much trial and error and a new replacement blade, my efforts produce a second manly victory: I can just barely slide out the batteries. And my eyeballs and arteries are still intact. Whatever doesn't kill you, et cetera. Right men?

For my third test, I get to spend some quality time trying to figure out where the batteries go. There are no further arrows, instructions, or clues of any kind, neither on the packaging nor on the light itself. Do the AA's go in the grip part? Behind the bulb in the head somewhere? In the blobby bit that allows the light to stand upright? I peel off the rubber on said blob and reveal -- another piece of smooth, hermetic plastic.

Sweet mother. Like Nicholas Cage, I've seen eighteenth-century treasure maps that are less challenging. Ancient Egyptian ciphers, too.

Wait, I know: maybe I will align the Tuf421 between the sun and an Inca temple on solstice day at noon, Indiana Jones-style, upon which the Gods will somehow reveal the secret to the object's sweet dark mystery.

Then, finally, after more poking and pushing and thinking fondly of Inca sacrifices and how wonderful it would be if such treatment could be visited upon certain modern-day package designers, I twist the bottom of the flashlight with all my might ... and the forbidden chamber presents itself ... and I feverishly insert the batteries ... (I told you this would be getting Freudian if we weren't careful) ...

And there was light.

The guys at Energizer are to be commended for providing such an unexpected living-room adventure. They sure have finally separated the bunnies from the men.

I had to do a web search to find out how to open the battery compartment and the only information I could find was here in a previous review. I almost destroyed the flashlight trying to open it because they couldn't take the time to put a simple diagram or a single sentence on the package indicating that the base of the light unscrewed. Never another Energizer product. What a RIP OFF.

I don't know if it is just coincidence or bad luck but repeatedly I'm having problems with Energizer products - from batteries (disposable and especially rechargeable), to flashlights and others. For long now, I've quit buying any Energizer products.

This product(HardCase) was given to me as a X-mas gift.
What a junk? Awkard, bulky, unbalanced,...., and emits the WORST quality of light (light rays do not disperse evenly). Many yrs ago I bought a non-brand flashlight for ~$5 at HarborFreight (of course made in sub-China) and truly does a much-much better job than this crappy and expensive one.

Do yourself a favor (for your time, pain, and wallet) and avoid buying this inferior flashlight - you will sure regret it! If there is any good about it, it may be its semi-attractive look - other than that, just a bad product!

I was intending to use this flashlight for light, but now think, after struggling to get it out of its packaging (glad it wasn't an emergency) uncrewing many screws and then searching the Internet to see how the batteries go in, I might hide my jewelry in it. No one will ever be able to open it to find them.

I have had this flashlight for at least a month without using it because it's impossible to figure out how to put the friggin batteries in it and I, as others, nearly killed myself five times trying to get the thing out of packaging so I thought I would take a break for a few weeks before going on the freaking internet to find out how to put the freakin' batteries in, seeing as they couldn't put a simple sentence in the packaging about that....

I still have not used it but I'm giving it a rating of one star, no matter how good it is because it the annoyance factor as stated about and in other reviews.