Thread resurrection!
In case anyone was wondering, my ideas mostly came to fruition. What I had edited out above was "induction charging" (like a rechargeable electric toothbrush) to fit varied configurations and devices. You know, like a surface able to charge a naked Wii Remote, Wii Remote + jacket, Wii Remote + skin, Wii Remote + Motion Plus, Wii Remote + Motion Plus + Motion Plus Jacket, Gamecube Wireless Wavebird Controller, Gameboy Advance (the third device I hinted at above), etc.
Penguin United was the manufacturer of the cheap Monoprice.com charging dock discussed in this thread and
look what they have now. That's right... an inductance charger meant to work with naked, jacketed, skinned, and accessorized Wii Remotes. This arrived earlier this year. It's about time!
Not being a pad, it isn't
quite as flexible as what I had in mind, but it looks like Performance Designed Products/Peripherals has the right idea there (if their battery packs were properly designed...). Their website only shows an Energizer-branded "induction" charging
stand, but Wal-Mart now carries an inductance charging
pad of theirs (also Energizer-branded). It's classy-lookin' too... flat black surface with silver trim like an iPhone. I bought it and the battery packs are built into Wii Remote battery doors, limiting their usefulness and making them clash with the new black Wii Remote. I guess they weren't thinking about that now that those other devices are somewhat obsolete (the Wii's GC/Wavebird compatibility was still a big deal in 2007 and GBA wasn't nearly as dead). Even so, extra battery packs would still be useful for keeping a stable of charged Wii Remotes. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the battery packs available independently, so they stupidly ignore the fact that you don't need four spaces to maintain/charge more than two remotes (something I expressed to Penguin also; which they responded to with extra packs AND gang chargers). One of the advantages of inductance charging was that the replacement battery cap shouldn't even be necessary, eliminating the need to color match (as Penguin failed to dO), but at least it's a close style and color match with a bonus sync button pass-through. I guess it helps with the magnets that snap it into position on the charging pad and likely trigger a magnetic relay switch so that it isn't constantly wasting power (it should have a double one to cut power to the Wii Remote, but oh well). The manual stupidly tells you that you need to sync it with the Wii the first time you install them in a Wii Remote! :roll: Whatever. At least the pass-through sync button means that there is one less reason to take the skin/jacket off to access the battery compartment once you no longer need to go in there for battery replacement. FWIW, it's designed such that it can't be accidentally pressed.
As mentioned, the third product that the original Penguin battery packs would fit was the Game Boy Advance, which is actually the reason for the battery pack cross-compatibility in the first place. You see, there was an official GBA battery pack in Japan that the Wavebird and Wii Remotes were designed to accept, so the springs were designed as sloped spring-loaded contacts instead. These same spring-loaded contacts were used in the Wavebird and Wii Remote with the same bit of plastic that would block the original battery doors from closing on a generic battery pack that didn't conform to it. Penguin's original battery pack was designed such that it, too, could fit all these devices but would need a gang charger, much like Nintendo's original, to avoid having to install/remove them from charged Wii Remotes to be useful. Nintendo's required you to remove the pack and charge in the charger; it also provided storage for an extra, charged battery. It doesn't look like Penguin's inductance charger will fit these other devices and I have no idea if their new battery packs will. The reason most of the world is oblivious to the official charger and battery pack ("Pak" like everything else "Nintendo?") is that their GBA/Wavebird/Wii Remote manuals in all other regions explicitly say to use Alkaline batteries "ONLY," which doesn't leave much room for an official kit, does it?