Several of the presents our children received this Christmas required batteries. Not just any batteries, though, but the petite triple-A (AAA) sort.

Those batteries are, if you didn't know, the most expensive and irritating of the battery genus, often costing $8 or more for a tiny pack of 2. To add to the insult, they also feature a relatively short lifespan (given that they have less chemicals that their bulkier siblings), so they tend to run out quickly in high-consumption devices, further exacerbating the cost issue.

I'd write it off as space efficiency, but for the fact that all of the toys that require these tiny batteries are themselves physical monsters - a huge garage where the batteries power the sound and lights, and a huge train set, where the monster, forearm-sized remote requires 3 of them.

These aren't cell-phone sized television remotes, but huge toys that have no such need for space efficiency.

Two toys alone required 9 triple-A batteries. I hit the battery reserves to find that we'd stockpiled several dozen double-As, Cs, Ds, and 9Vs, but not a single unused triple-A was in sight.

An expensive trip to the department store later, the toys were operational, but I'm prone to suspecting collusion between the battery industry and the toy industry.