So Target recently started selling a store-brand 35mm film camera. Cheap as hell (I still haven't 100% fixed its light leak), but I've had a ton of fun playing with it.
Of course, a film camera consumes film—and with a maximum of maybe 38 exposures on a 36-exposure roll, it chews through it pretty fast, by modern “just hold down the button for a couple seconds and probably somewhere in that burst will be an exposure you like” standards.
The introduction was rather gradual. First the cameras themselves appeared on the shelf, on completely random pegs for other products in the same section that just happened to be the same price ($35). Then they started carrying Kodak 400-speed film, in a three-pack of 24-exposure rolls, and that peg was labeled but the cameras were still metaphorically couch-surfing. Then the cameras finally got their own pegs.
And while all that was happening in the stores, none of this was listed on the Target website. You could search for “film camera” or “35mm camera” or any variation thereof and you'd either get Polaroids and Instaxen or 35mm disposable cameras, the kind that often come waterproofed so you can take them whitewater rafting.
That, too, got fixed gradually. The cameras got added to the website, finally confirming that there were exactly two body colors and not a secret third color that I hadn't encountered, followed a couple weeks later by the Kodak film.
Since then, the Kodak film has gotten scarce. Every time I go into a Target now, I visit that section, and there are usually a few of the cameras available but just a dotted outline where the Kodak film should be. It's always sold out.
(Did I mention these things chew through film like printers through ink?)
Today I discovered that Target now also sells Fuji 200-speed film. (200 is a little slow for this camera. Fine in broad daylight, but anything less and you'll wish you had 400.) It's $17 for one roll, which is highway robbery, but potentially more convenient/accessible than going to your local camera store, if you have one. (I do, and the same film is $30 for three rolls there.)
I say “potentially” because the same scarcity might be happening with the Fuji film. It's hard to tell because I've never seen a peg for it; I only know Target has started selling it because I found the website listing for it. There is apparently at least one Target that has it in stock—nearly 50 miles away. I can't really say how many Targets would have it if they weren't sold out vs. how many don't sell it at all.
Neither the Kodak nor the Fuji film is available for shipping. In-store only.
The films are hard to find through the website (in fact, I can't find the Kodak film at all through Target's own search), so here's the link to the Kodak 400 listing and the Fuji 200 listing. If nothing else, for as long as those listings last, they're the evidence that I didn't just make all this up.
And if you're wondering what sort of photos a $35 35mm camera takes, I've been uploading them to my Flickr account.