Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

People get so into this romantic fantasy of sturdy glass. Simultaneously completely blinded to the downsides and believing that we don't have, CAN'T POSSIBLY have, widely available modern equivalents, because "evil capitalism".

Y'all, it's called Corelle, and you can buy it literally everywhere. It's extremely available. Ubiquitous even. And it's just not worth it for the same reason given right there at the very end in the epilogue:

> While the Superfest glass is by far more durable than normal glass, when they shatter – they burst into a million fine pieces and are a total nightmare to clean up. I’m not sure if it’s because of their potassium chloride coating or because they are made to be super thin, my advice is to not drop them.

The reality is that the failure mode absolutely sucks. Dropping one and having it survive is a neat party trick, but all it takes is one break for the observer to completely swear off the experience forever.

Google "corelle exploded".

> The reality is that the failure mode absolutely sucks. Dropping one and having it survive is a neat party trick, but all it takes is one break for the observer to completely swear off the experience forever.

I'd much rather sweep up the equivalent of very coarse sand than deal with shards of glass. There's no need to keep the dog away, or wrap the stuff in a newspaper so you don't shred the bin bag etc. You just sweep it up and are done with it.

Google Corelle Brands bankruptcy.

That's Corelle Brands (previously Instant Brands) the holding company.

Corelle is also a product brand owned by said holding company and their still massively available primary products use their Vitrelle hardened glass material.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corelle

not

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corelle_Brands

GM's bankruptcy was very similar to Instant Brands', and they haven't gone anywhere.

Yeah, also came here to point out Corelle. For many years I had a set of Corelle plates and bowls and such that they sold at Target, cheap and aimed at college students.

Likely there's a very mundane reason it hasn't replaced all standard glassware, such as being slightly more expensive or having limited design shapes/forms (thinking of the plates). This doesn't exactly strike me as "evil capitalism," just "throwaway culture". The difference is the consumer makes that choice when both options are available, but one is cheaper.

IMO the reason it hasn't replaced all standard glassware is that the pro of surviving some drops is massively outweighed by the con of sometimes exploding. People just are not dropping their dishes all the time, and when they do they would rather not have to deal with a kinetic burst of razor shrapnel.

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