You know, a lot of what I hear as problems with the film has to do with using 40+ year old cameras which have aged in various ways. At one point I had six original SX-70s and did some testing on this score: same lighting, same film batch, etc, and each camera produced a different result. The SX-70 that my uncle gave me produced consistent and correctly exposed results ... he had purchased the camera new in 1973, used it consistently over all the years, never mishandled it, and only stopped when his arthritis meant he could no longer hold a camera steadily.
I had one of the other cameras rebuilt by MiNT ... and now it too produced perfectly consistent, excellent results just like my Uncle's camera did. I became convinced that a lot of the film problems in the IP ramp years (not all, but the majority) were more a matter of old cameras that had fallen way out of spec than problems with the film itself.
This was one of the things that motivated me to buy the upgraded and fully refurbished Polaroid SLR670 cameras produced by MiNT. All three of these cameras produce superbly consistent and high quality results with the now much more consistent and high quality PO film.
So think carefully when you dis the film if you're using old cameras. It is perfectly true that the PO instant film has its issues, and that instant film in general is tricksy on exposure and contrast, etc, in ways that standard films are not. There's a learning curve to getting good results even with a perfect camera. But a lot of the inconsistencies have to do with ancient meters, ancient shutters, etc, that simply are no longer in spec and need to be overhauled to produce the results your after.
And IP/PO, by comparison to Fujifilm, is a shoe string operation financially that simply cannot afford 1/1000 the R&D expenditure that Fuji can do. The Instax film products are pretty darn solid ... My Lomo Instant Square, MiNT InstaKon RF70, and Instant Magny 35 produce very very nice results, albeit with many of the same exposure and contrast issues that are there in the Polaroid Originals film.
G
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BTW, just had to say: I use all the cameras I buy, as much as I have time for. I can't use cameras that are inconsistent and unreliable in any useful way. So every time I buy a nice old camera that I think I'll enjoy nowadays, I budget the price and time to buy it with a trip to a camera technician for a CLA and checkout. When I get the camera I do an exhaustive checkout of all of its features and accuracy and if it needs help, off it goes to the shop for a month.
