Once great brands ...... now junk.

Hande hoche!

Nekarsulm wrote: »

In hand tools, Teng make great sockets and wrenches.

Even the mighty Stihl have some of their saws built in China now. It was bad enough when they started making low end saws in Florida.
Their professional stuff is still mage in Germany though.

Fuji and Canon still make good compact cameras.

Power tools, the Blue range of Bosch are good, and most of the Hitachi stuff seems OK

Saws are an interesting one to look at. Most people I know these days have switched to Husqvarna. Didn't know that about their professional line with Stihl, makes sense.

liam7831

U2

NIMAN

Interesting reading..

Most of the posts have been about companies that are a household name which are no longer associated with the original company, but made cheaply and rebadged to fool the public.

I still hear people look at the likes of Argos or HotUKDeals and say "look, a 4k Hitachi/Sharp/JVC for £300, thats a good deal", when in fact they may as well go and buy the Cello, Technika or Alba model.

Nekarsulm

Hande hoche! wrote: »

Saws are an interesting one to look at. Most people I know these days have switched to Husqvarna. Didn't know that about their professional line with Stihl, makes sense.

All the Americian brands are gone to shyte. The McCulloghs, Partners, Homelite's, Pioneer, Dayton, Clinton, and a dozen others, all existing in name only and sold in Big Box stores.
The conglomeration that now owns Husqvarna/Electrolux owns most of them.
They are still keeping the Husqvarna line relatively "pure" but are now phasing out the famous Jonsereds brand (and even it has been badge engineered Husky's for years)
The Japanese bought the famous Dolmar/Sachs in Germany and now call them Ryobi.
SOLO still soldiers on, overshadowed by their Teutonic neighbours Stihl.
Italy makes surprisingly good chainsaws now, mostly under the name Oleomat, and it is the result of 30 years of buy outs and mergers of the dozens of small Italian engine/moped makers.

tedpan

Cantona's Collars wrote:

Mitsubishi Black Diamond,used to be great until they were sold off to some Turkish company (Vestel I think)

Mitsubishi black diamond were never good, in the same league as Alba or Bush. Mitsubishi TVs were pretty solid though. The black diamond's were never made by Mitsubishi.

sligojoek

AMKC wrote: »

Black and Decker.

Used to be great but where are they now?

Motorolo although I am not sure they were ever any good. Had one of the phones and it drove be nuts. The operating system onn it was terrible.

I bought a Black and Decker drill 13 years ago as a stopgap when my three yr old Bosch burnt out mixing a particularly stiff bucket of tiling adhesive. With the exception of a three year break it's been mixing buckets of adhesive up to ten times a day four to five days a week ever since. I'm sorry I didn't buy two. I doubt I'd get the same quality drill again today.

Atoms for Peace

AMKC wrote: »

Black and Decker.

Used to be great but where are they now?

Motorolo although I am not sure they were ever any good. Had one of the phones and it drove be nuts. The operating system onn it was terrible.

Motorola were pioneers in the mobile phone sector and produced the classic 80's brick phone, the first flip phone, razr and moto ranges. Their mobile division is now part of Lenovo though.

JohnBoy26

tedpan wrote: »

Mitsubishi black diamond were never good, in the same league as Alba or Bush. Mitsubishi TVs were pretty solid though. The black diamond's were never made by Mitsubishi.

Indeed vestel cr@p. I bought two tv's around the same time about 15 years ago. One was a black diamond and the other one was a philips. The philips is still going to this day, the black diamond expired 9 years ago.

Irish Guitarist

Levis jeans. After about ten washes they start to develop holes around the back pockets and the crotch. They try to get around this by writing on the label not to wash them too much so as not to damage the environment.

K.Flyer

Starbucks..
was it ever great?

JohnBoy26

Nakamichi car audio was one a premium car audio brand. Nowadays they seem to be rebadged chinese head units which are the same as the philips head units

jacksie66

This post has been deleted.

Tuco88

Big time Toyota... set the bar too high in the 90s. Infact alot of the jap car makers.

80% Of german tool brands, Made in spain or south africa or mexico. Dewalt, Gedore, Knipex still good but taking a quality hit.

Stanley made in england, used to be real quality tools.
All tools made in the England are trash now. Sheffield steel was pure quality once.

On the otherside.

Fiat are a very decent brand now. The French car brands are much better. Dell computers sorta got better sorta ��.

Briggs and Stratton still make great engines!

JohnBoy26

Tuco88 wrote: »

Big time Toyota... set the bar too high in the 90s. Infact alot of the jap car makers.

80% Of german tool brands, Made in spain or south africa or mexico. Dewalt, Gedore, Knipex still good but taking a quality hit.

Stanley made in england, used to be real quality tools.
All tools made in the England are trash now. Sheffield steel was pure quality once.

On the otherside.

Fiat are a very decent brand now. The French car brands are much better. Dell computers sorta got better sorta ��.

Briggs and Stratton still make great engines!

They are far, far from junk.

Nekarsulm

Bahco once made the finest saw blades and wrenches, top class Swedish steel. Now their stuff is made in Argentina and the quality is rubbish.

On the electronics front, are FujitsuTen still making anything? They had a good name in car stereo back in the mid 80's

JohnBoy26

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Bacho once made the finest saw blades and wrenches, top class Swedish steel. Now their stuff is made in Argentina and the quality is rubbish.

On the electronics front, are FujitsuTen still making anything? They had a good name in car stereo back in the mid 80's

Fujitsuten aren't in the car audio game anymore afaik but they were still doing car audio with their eclipse brand in the states until around 2010 and were very highly regarded afaik.

tedpan

Clark's Shoes. Used to survive anything when I was a kid, now they fall apart within a year and I barely move these days..

SuperS54

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Dell have pretty much diversified away from PC/laptop manufacture, and are now broken down across 7 different divisions. If anything it was good business sense for them to get out of PCs when they did.

Dell haven't gotten out of the PC business, they still market a wide range of PC's and laptops, primarily aimed at business customers in the west (using one right now) and they sell a lot of (pretty crap) consumer pc's and laptops in China.

MarcusP12

Karsini wrote: »

Bush and Alba, now cheap crap peddled by Argos
AEG used to be top notch but are now a brand of Electrolux and quality varies wildly
Technicolor, once a renowned film processing technique but now a manufacturer of rubbish broadband routers


Candy Lab in Dublin often stock it. Near the old Central Bank.

Were bush and alba ever really a "great" brand? Popular maybe but great? Not so sure....and did they ever produce anything other than cheap crap? Reason I say is that if I remember correctly, bush and alba were always considered budget brands compared to sony, sharp, Philips, etc back in the day. Not that any of them were that high end but when I was a kid, if you had sony or something like that, you were "posh"!

When I was getting into sound systems (as a kid), I was never interested in Alba as I considered them a bit cheap. It was all about Aiwa back then as a viable alternative to sony....I had a savage 3 CD with virtual surround sound and karaoke, optical input, etc....lovely bit of kit! They were also my Walkman of choice....Does anyone know if they even exist any more in any capacity?.....to me that would be a good example of a great brand (as opposed to Alba) that's producing crap if anything at all.....

5rtytry56

smilerf wrote: »

Toshiba used to make good laptops but my last one was terrible and I haven't really seen around in about 3 years

Newer Toshiba laptops run slow in all os's

Junkyard Tom

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Without derailing the thread, what general brands do people consider good quality/value?

Honda.

Third_Echelon

RDM_83 again wrote: »

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Soft drinks manufacturers have RUINED the taste and satisfaction associated with their products recently by cutting the amount of sugar and adding artificial sweeteners and stevia glycosides.

The whole point of lucozade for instance was that it provided a large dose of satisfaction from its extremely high sugar content but now this has been robbed from us.

I remember 15 years ago the standard for cordial (mi wadi etc.) was for it to contain added sugar (ie. be satisfying). With mi-wadi in particular, bottles of "full-sugar" used to have a green cap, no-added-sugar would have a blue cap. 10 years ago I noticed more and more flavours could only be found in no-added-sugar form (eg. lime). The other night I was in a supermarker and I don't think it was even POSSIBLE to buy cordial with added sugar. So from my perspective, it is no longer possible to buy satisfying cordial like was once the case.
Similarly go the soft drinks fridge in any garage or supermarket - drinks like Vit Hit, soft drinks with the word "zero", everything advertising that it has "zero" calories - if I was given one of these drinks when I was a child I wouldn't have drank it, and thats saying something.

The following drinks, if you look at the label, state that they contain sugar AND SWEETENERS where a few months ago it didn't.
- Club Rock Shandy (the most unfortunate of them all as it is a very popular drink - I could tell instantly it had been altered for the worse)
- Fanta (tastes watery and doesn't hit the spot in your brain anymore)
- Club lemon (not as satisfying)
- Seven UP (contains stevia)
For all these drinks (and more) you can see that the calorie content per 100 mls has decreased significantly. So while it represents a victory for the health lobbyists and scientists looking to have a purpose in life, it robs the general population of yet another source of pleasure for in their lives.

They are clearly doing a few things:
- 1. aiming to avoid the sugar tax and then trying to compensate by adding non-sugar sweeteners.
- 2. trying to adapt to a changing culture where people are obsessed with not putting on weight and so they try to position as the standard version of their beverages, the one with "no added sugar". I noticed reacently an ad for coca cola (a general ad for normal coke, diet coke and coke zero) which featured at the end of their ad a bottle of coke zero where previously it would have been the flagship product of normal coke. I just picture all the marketing people thinking they are geniuses coming up with the idea of aiming towards a healthier market and that people wont notice their drinks now taste way worse.

I notice though that the most popular flagship brands of Coca Cola, Pepsi and Club Orange have not yet been ruined because the manufacters aren't stupid enough to think people won't notice, like they did in 1985 when "new coke" was a massive flop. But even coca cola must be changed since 12 years ago when I remember it tasting wayyyy better, even more than can be accounted for than just the fact I was a teenager

My main drinks are water, tea and (maybe once or twice a month) beer but I do like an occasional full sugar fizzy drink for a TREAT. The era of satisfying soft drinks seems to be coming to an end though as the norm becomes for soft drinks to contain lower and lower amounts of energy and to not have any impact on insulin. It annoys me that "the government" decide to impose these sugar taxes and the drinks manufacturers (who owe us nothing at the end of the day) are basically cornered into ruining their products to pay for it.

So, chocolate is universally recognised to be EXTREMELY diminished in quality in recent years (less cocoa mass, more disgusting candle-wax resembling fat) and now soft drinks as we knew them are on the way out.

I don't know if you can get it on this side of the world but mexican coke cola is the product your looking for.
Places sell it in the US and Canada as a speciality product or in mexican restaurants, it comes in 400/500 mil ish size glass bottles and has a metric f-ckton of cane sugar in it so it's a way better drink.

Yeah Mexican Coke is so good. Real sugar cane as you say vs the corn syrup used in the US. The difference in taste is incredible. I’m currently living in the US. If I’m out somewhere and they are serving Mexican coke, I have to order it.

With regards to ‘New Coke’ that was brought out in the 80s. The US market didn’t like it, so they went back to the original receipe. The rest of the world stayed with the new coke formula right up to today.

I did a tour of the coke plant/HQ in Atlanta. I was working there for a few weeks providing a software service. Free coke drinks at every break area/coffee station. All the discontinued varieties. All the employees were hopped up on sugar though

Irish Guitarist

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Levis jeans. After about ten washes they start to develop holes around the back pockets and the crotch. They try to get around this by writing on the label not to wash them too much so as not to damage the environment.

You sure they're Levi's as in bought in a Levi's shop?

Never had that issue. But do know of popular clothes shops in city centres that have sold knock offs. Because of that I wouldn't buy Levi's from an independent clothes store.

long_b

Dr Martens boots

dodzy

JohnBoy26 wrote: »

Sony is a good brand and is far from junk but imo it's not the last word in quality as it once was. Anyone remember the trinitron flat screen tv's? They were pure quality.

32” Trinitron with the integrated unit underneath was a real monster & a quality bit of kit. Added bonus: if some scrote broke into your house while you slept, you could bet your ass that TV would still be there in the morning.

I remember I was chucking one out ma y moons ago and the old man said “I’ll have it”. Still in his bedroom, and working perfectly.

Remember the days when washing machines would last for in excess of 10yrs with constant use? Long gone are they.

Third_Echelon

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

AMKC wrote: »

Black and Decker.

Used to be great but where are they now?

Motorolo although I am not sure they were ever any good. Had one of the phones and it drove be nuts. The operating system onn it was terrible.

Motorola were pioneers in the mobile phone sector and produced the classic 80's brick phone, the first flip phone, razr and moto ranges. Their mobile division is now part of Lenovo though.

Yeah. Motorola mobility was also briefly owned by Google for intellectual property stripping mostly, then sold on and bought by Lenovo.

MarcusP12

MarcusP12 wrote: »

Were bush and alba ever really a "great" brand? Popular maybe but great? Not so sure....and did they ever produce anything other than cheap crap? Reason I say is that if I remember correctly, bush and alba were always considered budget brands compared to sony, sharp, Philips, etc back in the day. Not that any of them were that high end but when I was a kid, if you had sony or something like that, you were "posh"!

When I was getting into sound systems (as a kid), I was never interested in Alba as I considered them a bit cheap. It was all about Aiwa back then as a viable alternative to sony....I had a savage 3 CD with virtual surround sound and karaoke, optical input, etc....lovely bit of kit! They were also my Walkman of choice....Does anyone know if they even exist any more in any capacity?.....to me that would be a good example of a great brand (as opposed to Alba) that's producing crap if anything at all.....

Maybe not in more recent times but in the 70s they made some good stuff. We had a Bush TV for about 25 years.

RDM_83 again

long_b wrote: »

Dr Martens boots

I don't wear Dr martens myself but AFAIK the product line is now split, you have the made in asia lines and separate made England type, I don't mind the idea of this type of thing so much as the change of production isn't too hidden.

For shoes/boots I tend to go mid price point and pick up high end ones in thrift/charity shops but I do wonder about the buy it for life* thing people talk about, maybe for dress type shoes it applies but even ones that are seriously expensive new do wear (even if slower and much more repairable).

*If anybody is familiar with the Buy it for life sub-reddit I have suspicions it's used for marketing by certain brands.

NIMAN

NIMAN wrote: »

Interesting reading..

Most of the posts have been about companies that are a household name which are no longer associated with the original company, but made cheaply and rebadged to fool the public.

I still hear people look at the likes of Argos or HotUKDeals and say "look, a 4k Hitachi/Sharp/JVC for £300, thats a good deal", when in fact they may as well go and buy the Cello, Technika or Alba model.

Product Licensing. It can have many different meanings and be a very good thing, but in this case I think we are talking about a form of consumer-misleading product licensing here.

Licensing involves obtaining permission from a company (licensor) to manufacture and sell one or more of its products within a defined market area. The company that obtains these rights (the licensee) usually agrees to pay a royalty fee to the original owner.

That and Planned Obsolescence are a curse on consumers. Many of whom unfortunately aren't aware about either of those practices.

With product licensing in this sense, 'Company A' spends years making quality products and building up consumer trust in the product and brand. Eventually, Company A will allow an unknown (to the general consumer) 'Company B' to bid for the right to manufacture and sell Company A's products. Company A (with all that consumer trust built up over years of selling quality products) then licences their product, and in many cases the brand name too, to Company B.

Both Company A and B go on to reap the benefits and rewards - Company A are getting paid a royalty for licensing their product. Company B, with none of that proven reputation and consumer trust, are now making and selling products as if they were Company A. Now they have that reputation and consumer trust, overnight, despite not showing anything to the consumer to prove they are deserving of those things.

Meanwhile, we the general consumer are in the dark wondering why our new 'Phillips' TV isn't as good as the old Phillips, or why those 'Duracell' batteries in the remote control are dead after changing them only a few months ago.

It's a fúcked up practice which only serves to increase profits. I'm all for businesses and companies increasing profits, once it's a mutual agreement and they still hold up their end of the bargain with the consumer. Selling/renting their trusted brand name to inferior companies who will make inferior products but still charge the same price, that crosses the line out of that mutual agreement.

Between Planned Obsolescence and the above kind of product licensing, it's not wrong to say that they really don't make them like they used to.

CrankyHaus

I didn't know about Lonsdale being changed to junk by Sportsdirect until I read this thread...explains why a pair of boxing gloves I got from them only months ago have already had all the padding slide back from the knuckle (and not after heavy use either).

I got badly burned by Phillips products a couple of years ago before I learned they're licensed rubbish. Build quality was as bad as anything I've ever seen: headphones where the line-in simply detached within months and a sound system that turns on at ear-shattering volume randomly at all hours (shuts-off randomly too).

Stanley gear outside the blades is dire. Had a new measuring tool snap after 2 weeks this year.

Internet research is a great resource for avoiding this sort of thing, and finding some excellent brands that would be under the radar otherwise.