You look to buy a Battery powered toy, the toy looks good / safe but no Batteries Included! WHY, I have often wondered why, to me you do not know that Toy is operational until YOU BUY THE BATTERIES, Why?
Batteries often leak etc, there's no telling how long they may have been in the toy plus wouldn't you rather buy new Duracell than accept some obscure battery put in from Hong Kong ;-)
You might already have batteries (I buy mine in bulk) or you may wish to use rechargables or etc etc. If they were supplied they wouldn't really be "free", they'd be included in the price.
I once knew someone who complained when he bought a watch that he already had a strap, so he wanted to buy one without strap.
The point of this is, why should YOU have to buy the batteries, to me, when you see the toy in the shop It's not working, do you follow, in other words would you buy a watch that has no Hand on the face?
I think more toys would be damaged by batteries sitting in them for a long time on the shop shelf, than you would find not to work once you got them home and put batteries in.
The first toy shop to offer free batteries at the till will be very popular, although they will have to soak up the cost somewhere, I'm sure it could be done even if just fo Christmas.
There is a little man in China, who's sole job is to put his AA into every toy that China makes, see if it works, and then take it out again, before wrapping them up and putting them on that 2 mile long container ship.