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My wife was in a convenience store in New York City, looking for light bulbs. She came across several packages of 40 watt GE bulbs. The packages were labeled in English, and said, in part, “Not For Sale in the United States”. Putting aside the fact that New York City is in the United States (although there were also packages of bulbs labeled in Spanish), why would light bulbs be labeled that way?

The only additional information she has is that they were manufactured in Hungary.

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  • United States(North America) uses 120 volts. A lot of the rest of the world uses 240 volts. They might also been made for free giveaways from companies(sometimes marked not for sale). Spanish might mean for Spain.
    – crip659
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 0:30
  • Can you get us any more details about said bulbs?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 0:42
  • @crip659 — it’s pretty common in New York City for local stores to have products labeled in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, etc. depending on the ethnicity of the neighborhood.
    – Pete Becker
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 0:45
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    Those bulbs may have been packaged before Trump in 2019 rolled back the 2007 regulation that made most incandescents illegal.
    – NoSparksPlease
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 1:05
  • Assuming they are 120V or thereabouts bulbs with bases generally used in the USA, could be goods sold wholesale to distributor outside USA at lower price than to distributor in USA, and marked that way to protect USA market (like pharma). Could be design or manufacturing defect not to USA standards sold in country where the standards are "different" or where manufacturer is more willing to risk law suits. Could be the bulb has some quirk that is trademark or patent protected in USA but not elsewhere.
    – jay613
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 1:05

1 Answer 1

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Chances are that those bulbs were produced during the U.S. incandescent ban (2007-2019). I'd look for LED bulbs instead, for both cost and environmental reasons.

In 2014, the Department of Energy issued regulations that would extend the efficiency standards of the 2007 EISA law to some specialty bulbs, effective January 2020.[91] The new standards would apply to Edison, globe, and candelabra bulbs among others. In February 2019, the Department of Energy announced a proposal to withdraw this change. In September 2019 the Trump administration rolled-back these energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs with the Energy Department's publication of regulations in the Federal Register.[92][93] The Energy Department announced the reversal of the 2014 regulation that would have taken effect on January 1, 2020 and implemented the last round of energy-saving light bulb regulations outlined by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.[94]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs#United_States

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  • IMHO, let capitalism do the job - which matches in this case with removal of the regulations. For 99% of people, saving (a) 90% of the energy cost over the lifetime of the bulb combined with (b) bulbs that (even the cheap junk LEDs) last many times as long as incandescent bulbs, means that even if the incandescent bulb costs 50 cents and the LED costs $5.00, the LED clearly wins on $. And $ is what most people care about. That leaves the incandescents for people who value the color/look/etc. so much or who have an old EZ-Bake oven to give to the grandchildren.
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:10
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    Nope. Impulse buyers don't factor in long-term cost. Most people don't think more than five minutes ahead (look at all the cheap, disposable bicycles we buy our kids for example). We'd be burning energy through tungsten filaments like mad for decades. We'd also be burning anything that makes our cars run cheap if not for regulation, no matter the pollution cost. Humans are not clever animals, on the whole.
    – isherwood
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:12
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    Energy Star doesn't work because it informs people. It works because it enforces certain standards. As much as I'd like to give people credit, hard evidence proves otherwise. At any rate, this isn't the place for a debate.
    – isherwood
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:16
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    Nah. If people could be trained to purchase wisely we'd have learned how a century ago. People buy cheap crap because it's cheap. End of story.
    – isherwood
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:17
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    I know. Just felt I had to put in my 0.02 until a moderator deletes. But it does get to the heart of the issue.
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented Mar 30, 2021 at 15:18

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