@pselodux - good brands can have duds. The pivotal word above is “often”. I’m not losing sleep. 
CB
Thanks for posting, I have all of the PO’s and I was pulling one out when I noticed my Robot PO showed no display. I pulled out the batteries thinking I could re insert them and all would be fine. Well I had a very minor battery leak from one of the batteries. I was lucky, after cleaning up a minor leak, my PO did work again after cleaning. OMG for sure…take your batteries out when not using frequently! If this had ruined my Speak or Tonic, I would have so upset.
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I’d like to sadly announce my membership to the ‘PO damaged from leaky batteries’ club.
PO-12, PO-14 and PO-16.
Rhythm has no display nor sound; Sub has display, but no sound; Factory survived the best, and just has some LEDS that no longer work.
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Hi guys, here is the solution to all your battery problems, just found out this exists last week:
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The ReVolt kit from MyVolts looks like a nice solution. But FYI you can also use the Pocket Integrator to power your PO from a USB port, and never need batteries again.
FWIW I own 8 different Pocket Operators of various models, because I have to test them all with the Pocket Integrator. I leave them all sitting around with batteries installed, and I haven’t had a battery burst yet. I mostly use rechargeable NiMH batteries. YMMV, but that’s a data point.
Counterfeit major-brand batteries are definitely a thing.
I had a large pack of Duracell AAs and half of them went leaky this year, full one year ahead of expiration date. Same thing with Duracell AAA pack. Not sure how they could be counterfeit, since IIRC I bought them in a large chain store.
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Doesn’t matter where you buy them. Counterfeit products are entering the supply chain now, not just the end retailer. Same thing is happening with some bicycle parts. 
But yeah, then sometimes it’s just a quality failure at some factory on some day, because some robot dropped a screw or whatever.
I had a whole pack of Duracells leak on me in storage once as well. Duracell gave me a refund, but they wanted a bunch of serial numbers and other things off the batteries, so they at least sounded like they were trying to fix the problem. Whether those were real or counterfiet I dunno, but at least they gave me a replacement.
I guess you saw the post about teh MyVolts conectors by now - they seem to do the job. they are getting good reviews when used with POs so i have just bought some.