I knew Duracell is known for leaking when left in equipment for too long (too numerous to count: I had it leaked in wireless mouse, remote control, clocks, etc), but I always thought it’s my fault for leaving them in my electronics for a long time.
Today I got my answer: it’s not my fault that the batteries leaked. I just opened a new box of 4 AAA Duracells, and one of the new unused battery (the marking says it expires in 2023. It’s 2019 at the time of writing). I bought them from Tigerdirect so it’s likely to be genuine (on 10/2015). Here’s the pictures:
Not only I am not going to get Duracell batteries even if they are free, I’m going to toss all Duracell I have. It’s nothing but a menace. It’s worse than white label brands as it’s known to leak. It has to be a design or chemical formula or manufacturing process problem they have. By no means it’s an isolated incident.