I bought some batteries, but they weren't included. -- Steven Wright
What does this quote mean?
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Sign up to join this communityIt's a joke. In the US, it used to be common to find products that require batteries but (to save costs) the companies didn't include the batteries in the box. Because of this, if you didn't see the note, you'd be ready to use the item (often a toy) but wouldn't be able to do so because there weren't any batteries with it and you may not have them at home.
I find this is significantly less common with modern items but, any item that doesn't have batteries included generally has a label on it somewhere that reads "batteries not included".
This tends to get joked about:
So, the joke here is the absurdity of a box of batteries not including batteries.