tshaddox 15 hours ago

Are you suggesting their lighters are bad? That’s certainly not my experience. I have a Bic mini that has been packed inside my camping stove kit (a small titanium pot containing an iso-propane canister, stove, and rag) for nearly 15 years. Since I use barely any of its fuel, it hasn’t run out yet, and I suspect it could continue to work as a striker whenever the fuel does run out.

  • TeMPOraL 11 hours ago

    I don't know; a) I haven't seen a good lighter in my life (other than on TV, i.e. whatever it was that Admiral Adama carried in BSG, because that was, by definition, a good lighter); and b) in context of the whole subthread, I assumed the parent was being sarcastic.

  • squigz 14 hours ago

    Yeah, I'm a bit confused if GP is saying their lighters are bad. Every single person I know who uses a lighter many times a day generally uses a Bic[0] - if they're not, it's one of these cheap plastic ones[1], very similar to the pens GP is referring to. A few of them have Zippos, but those are relatively rare among people I know, at least for everyday use.

    [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/BI...

    [1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61TNMUaoFrL.jpg

    • 0xffff2 13 hours ago

      Yeah, when I was a smoker (thankfully many years in the past now), I really only ever used bics. I went through phases with Zippos or butane lighters, but they were always maintenance heavy, unreliable and too expensive for something so comonly shared with others. On the flip side, no-name gas station lighters didn't last and were generally unreliable. Bics hit a huge sweet spot of being long lasting, reliable, _and_ cheap enough to be treated as disposable even though they weren't in practice.

    • tshaddox 12 hours ago

      Those cheap transparent ones in your second picture are infamously unreliable. I swear I’ve had ones that quit after a dozen strikes.

quickthrowman 11 hours ago

BIC lighters are extremely reliable, when I smoked I went thru hundreds and the fuel always ran out before the flint did.