Interesting...makes sense, break off the used blade, pop it in again. But then I think, why not just make a pack of short blades? (Dewalt fan btw)
I use Lennox.
Dewalt and Lennox are both now owned by Blak&Decker.
If the manufacturing facilities have not been combined yet, and are both under capacity, then they likely would be combined at some point, although I wouldn’t be surprised if B&D was having someone else make their blades to begin with.
As far as why a break off blade makes sense,
Reciprocating saws with adjustable shoes, but where you need to cut with a short blade.
You cut with the saw shoe extended fully, so you just use the front section of the blade.
When the front section gets dull, you snap blade off, and retract shoe as far in as possible.
You can use the blade like a shorter blade, where having extra blade length doesn’t work for clearance or safety reasons, but you get double the blade life essentially.
The alternative would be to use a grinder to cut down the blade to a shorter dimension, which is best done with a clamp or vise, and is a pain on a jobsite.
Also, in a pinch you can likely use the breakoff blades to cut thicker material, instead of having to keep both longer and shorter blades.
Another thing is blade cost, at least for the consumer, is usually per blade, and not per blade length.
Longer blades usually cost more, but usually not twice as much as a blade half the length.
I’ve actually considered just purchaseing bulk packs of reciprocating saw blades rather than smaller packs of shorter and longer blades, because the bulk pack price was less than the price of buying a smaller pack if short blades, by a decent amount.