The EC35 wears the yellow-and-black look of a drugstore disposable, but reloads: pop in a fresh roll of 35mm film instead of mailing the whole body off for processing. At $34.99, it costs about what three disposables would.

Reto builds the EC35 under license from Kodak, and it’s worth being plain about what that means. The Kodak logo and Ektar-style trade dress on the back are licensed, not manufactured by Kodak itself — the camera is Reto’s design, Reto’s tooling, Reto’s factory. That’s not a knock; Reto has built a small catalog of these licensed point-and-shoots (the Kodak M35, M38, and others), and the EC35 is a competent, honest entry in that line rather than a knockoff trading on a name it doesn’t own.

The mechanics are as simple as the shape suggests. A two-element acrylic lens fixed at 25mm and f/10, one shutter speed (1/100s), manual wind and rewind — there’s no focus ring, no light meter, no exposure choices to make. You point, you wind, you shoot, and the film and the lighting do the rest. That’s the same trade every disposable camera makes, just without throwing the body away afterward: a single AA battery runs the built-in flash, and a camera strap is included, but film has to be loaded and the battery bought separately.

The one real design touch is the slide cover over the lens. Instead of a lens cap to lose or a motorized barrel to break, a panel slides shut over the lens opening and doubles as a shutter lock — closed, the shutter won’t fire, so the camera can’t fire a blind shot from inside a bag. It’s a small mechanical idea, but it’s the kind of detail that makes a $35 plastic camera feel considered rather than disposable.

It comes in seven colors — Midnight Black through Avocado Green — and it’s in stock now, direct from Reto or through Amazon. Nothing about it pretends to be more than a fixed-focus toy for shooting film without commitment; the honesty of that pitch is most of the appeal.