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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

It happens to a lot of brands. Private equity investors sniff out a name brand that has a lot of customer trust, but management that's probably weak after years of profit and not paying attention. They buy out the company and strip out all the costly materials, fire staff, sell off inventory.

The brand changes, but customers don't know it until your Breyer's ice cream has a label that says it's "frozen dairy dessert product", or your Twinkies are 10% smaller, or your Pyrex glass pans start shattering. Then you wonder what happened to your beloved childhood / family brand you trusted.

Capitalism is what happened. But things come and go, and hopefully newer, better things will take their place.

(By the way, the story of what happened to Twinkies is more interesting, and not just the negative story of a company cheapening out its product for profit's sake. There was a lot of dysfunction/waste in that product line.)

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It's actually a way to avoid the efficiency of the free market. Eventually in such a market you get to a point where prices are pretty much costs due to pressure from competitors. If you suddenly and secretly reduce the cost of manufacture you can make a large amount of money up to the point that the customers catch on. You can then use this money to do socially useful stuff like create new and better products (if you wan to keep the company brand), or simply keep the money and let the company run down. Really advanced companies use the money to entrench a monopoly using the standard anti-competitive techniques (another popular way of avoiding market efficiency).

This process is sometimes known as "harvesting the brand". It is a way of usefully exploiting your customer good will..

Bought Corelle dining set which had ‘Made in USA’ printed on the box. Opened the box and the white color of the mugs doesn’t match white color of the rest of the set because they were Made in China. One of the miniscule and still very irritating thing. World Kitchen is the owner of both Pyrex and Corelle.

In my sets, the mugs are just regular ceramic mugs, whereas the bowls and plates are vitrelle (thermally bonded layers of glass).

(This was clearly written on the product description, so I knew I was getting mugs I didn't want/need as part of the set.)

We're down to the last few mugs. They seem to break more easily than our other mugs.

Just went and checked the box out, there is absolutely nothing about ceramic mugs, and lots of yada yada about Vitrelle. Not a hint that mugs are ceramic either, though you are right they are in fact ceramic. The box also has United Steel Workers (USW) logo. Deceiving is all I can say.

I bought two sets of these from Walmart.com: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Corelle-Livingware-Winter-Frost-W...

I remember that the Walmart product description said the mugs were different, but this was a few years ago.

Looking at the Walmart.com description today, it mentions:

"11oz stoneware mugs"

"Mugs are made from a durable stoneware material"

"Mugs are not under warranty"

Of course, I have no recollection of whether this was indicated on the box.

This is a common complaint about the mugs that come in the sets. They should make it clear that the mugs are a completely different sort of product, made in China.

That said, in my humble opinion Corelle is the best dishware ever made. There's nothing else that even comes close. They are thin, light, and super tough. We've broken only one piece in decade at my house, and that was because I absent-mindedly cut fruit on a plate using a ceramic knife, which scored the plate and lead it to snap neatly in half.

Before the Corelle we used heavy, expensive, high-class Lenox stoneware, and I fucking hated it. Plus it turned out to be contaminated with lead, which is what caused me to toss it away and switch to Corelle. My life would be significantly worse if Corelle didn't exist.

Well the box probably was made in the USA.

Less pedantically, I believe the rules say over half the work should have been done in the US, or something like that, so they're probably legally correct.

How much did you win in your lawsuit? I hope it was lots screw then for that.

This is basically what happened to Tim Hortons in Canada. They used to actually bake things on site, now it's all reheated from frozen deliveries of sub-par donuts and baked products.

It's been riding on patriotism and brand loyalty for 15+ years now.

The donuts aren’t even edible anymore

At this point, though, I don't know many people who go there out of patriotism or brand loyalty.

They mostly go there because it's convenient and it's cheap enough, and quality is usually acceptable given the price. I sometimes get coffee there not because I'm expecting something great, but because I need a quick infusion of caffeine-containing liquid and Tim's is 10 meters from my front door while everything else is further.

In my mind, Tim Hortons is all about location. They're everywhere. And even if the quality is mediocre, at least it's consistently mediocre so I know what I'm getting. :)

We had a Tims counter at our high school and I fondly remember their muffins and coffee. If I'm on the road and try it again I'm quickly reminded how crap it's gotten.

Heh, interesting. I saw a few of them close down near where I lived and I was curious why (though I'm in the USA, so I assumed it was more of a cultural thing vs a quality thing).

RIP Walnut Crunch

Thanks for the tip on Twinkies. I've been trying to find a good article that summarizes things. Does this one leave much you're thinking of out?

https://www.manufacturing.net/blog/2013/07/long-live-twinkie...

There's also this article which details some of the changes including a 94% drop in employees, primarily through automation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/07/05/w...

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be!

Another aspect of this is the value of having trusted brand and products. It saves time to buy premium trusted brand, no research, low risk, no regrets. Until there is. Now there's a significant burden of research, and some addition risk.

This is why I stopped wearing jeans. You can either buy $150 Japanese jeans or end up with cheap, shitty jeans that blow out in the crotch within a couple months. I ended up switching to "tactical pants"--specialty cargo pants that are designed for first responders and law enforcement--and aside from having an awkwardly-sized pocket designed for carrying a spare pistol magazine, they're amazing.

My Wranglers bought at K-Mart have held up well.

K-Mart still exists???

I got a discounted pair of selvedge jeans from American Eagle for $30 (I think retail was $75). Amazon is also said to have good selvedge denim products. I don't understand how you're ripping your crotch after only a few months of usage: that's never happened to me.

Well, (a) I bought Levis (maybe that was the real mistake), and (b) I'm a fatass.

I think if manufacturing process changes significantly (lord help laywers define "significantly") it should be considered a fraud to not notify customers in clear and explicit manner.

the tolerance of the glass is on the box, right? so every customer should be able to compare it with other products before purchasing.

if it just says "shatterproof" or "break resistant", then that is rather vague of course, but that should be a warning in itself. (of course, brands are a thing, we are lazy after all, an re-evaluating products every time seems like a waste of time)

By tolerance, you mean heat rating? The truly telling parameter would be CoE, coefficient of thermal expansion, which would be 33 for borosilicate and about 90 for soda lime glass. That’s probably considered too technical be specified on a consumer kitchen box, though.

Not exactly. You say that tolerance was, let's say 20, and it was written on the box, but now it is 10, and it is written on the box too.

I say that it should be "10 (but was 20 a year ago)" and no fine print allowed for second part.

Would you like to borrow my grandfather's axe?

I use a spade my father purchased when he was a young man. It's end is rounded from use but it is still the strongest digging tool I have. He was born in 1930. The metal is corroded and the wooden handle is heavy but I just feels so good to work with. I've considered replacing it but everytime I pick a new one up in a store it just feels like a child's toy.

A few flavors of Breyer’s (vanilla, chocolate, mint chip) I believe are still labeled “ice cream” and have ingredient labels to back it up.

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