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

JohnBoy26 · 30-11-2017 10:47PM

Are Am Eye wrote: »

Cocoa has gone up in price in the last 30 years or something. It is
the main ingredient and main cost in making chocolate. There is also
a large element of keeping cost down, and glitzy packaging and
advertising up - and people will still buy it and not notice the taste.
Eventually a whole generation will never have tasted real chocolate so
won't miss it.

Im not saying you are wrong. There could well be a difference in taste but to me it tastes exactly the same as it ever did.

jippo nolan · 30-11-2017 10:47PM

Johnnycanyon wrote: »

I worked there in the 70s when I was young and energetic assembling the TV's.
Got in trouble with the union's for working too fast and ended up in packaging.
But was a good place to work.

Went into PYE in the seventies to carry out some repair work, was asked for union card before I got my toolbox opened!

James 007 · 30-11-2017 10:55PM

pawdee wrote: »

A washing machine repair man told me recently that the Indesit washer dryer I had just bought was a total heap of shyte. He was installing it for me (yes, I know what you're thinking but this was a non standard, awkward new installation and not a replacement and he did it for 60 euros). Anyhow he rattled off all of the brands that are rubbish and why. He summarised it as follows:

Really cheap brands (Beko etc)......shyte.
Middle of the road brands (he named so many I can't think, my head was melted)........shyte
Expensive brands (Miele etc) ....excellent quality, he said these are actually better than they used to be!

How true the above is I don't know. That's what the man said.

My brother in law's uncle's house was sold recently. There was a fridge in the house that was bought (second hand) in the early 1950s and it was still working. Now that's what you call quality! Don't know what brand it was...maybe Frigidaire or something like that.

Clever companies always produce products that will give you approx. 5 years of a life before a failure in some certain component in the products. Nothing these days is made to last, and if it is made to last longer you pay a premium for it, Miele is a good example of it. My mum had an american style top open drum washing machine. It lasted for donkeys years constantly been used for a family of 6. It is not that they have turned to shyte, its a continuous cycle of replacing these products.

It always annoys me when I buy a new product and it fails after a number of years. I always get this light bulb moment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-lasting_light_bulbs

jippo nolan · 30-11-2017 10:56PM

blade1 wrote: »

Hunky Dory.
Had a packet of the buffalo flavour the other night.
They tasted ok'ish but the quality of the crisp has gone down.

You’d need a good set of gnashers to eat the originals!

Nekarsulm · 30-11-2017 11:01PM

Great brands, That I'd still buy today.
In hand tools, I'd buy Teng, Facom, Dowidat, Gedore (only the German made ones) Hazat, Elora and if I find good second hand King Dick and Britool, I seldom pass them by.

Never owned any Halfords or Snap-On tools, but Snap-on own loads of lower quality brands so it's hard to know if they are cheapening their main brand, or improving the others.

jack of all · 30-11-2017 11:03PM

ongarite wrote: »

Lots of complaining in this thread but the problem is the consumer won't pay for quality (expensive) goods anymore.

That 19 year Zanussi washing machine probably cost a lot more as % of take home pay than it does now.

A very valid point, I remember exactly what that washing machine cost me at the time- it was £295 (€375) and it was a lot of money to us then!

jack of all · 30-11-2017 11:13PM

Ubbquittious wrote: »

I bought a Bahco 8072 not terribly long ago and it was made in Spain, have they moved again?

I have older (10 years maybe) Bahco files, made in Portugal I believe, and excellent quality. I have a number of their wide jaw adjustable wrenches (ideal for plumbing), made in Spain and can't fault them. Like a lot of brands some stuff is good, other stuff less so.

Kuva · 30-11-2017 11:24PM

DivingDuck wrote: »

My aged ass can definitely taste the difference, so if anyone could recommend a brand currently on sale via normal channels (i.e., not online or one-off specialist stores) that's "real" chocolate, I'd appreciate it.

My sweet tooth disagrees, what's real? Lindt?

Army_of_One · 30-11-2017 11:31PM

Johnnycanyon wrote: »

Got in trouble with the union's for working too fast and ended up in packaging.

Bad workmanship on your part ?

DivingDuck · 30-11-2017 11:32PM

Kuva wrote: »

My sweet tooth disagrees, what's real? Lindt?

Lindt is not bad, but I meant in the sense of what Cadbury used to taste like in the 90s before Kraft started messing about with it.

um7y1h83ge06nx · 30-11-2017 11:38PM

Not sure about Krups these days but the stuff that came out of Limerick was excellent.. My parents have food mixers, sandwich toasters, hairdryers that are over 40 years old and going strong.

Sennheiser seem to be a decent brand. Merkur is a good razor brand.

Roger Mellie Man on the Telly · 30-11-2017 11:39PM

The relation to income is important. It used to take a month's salary or more to buy a home appliance. Of course it still can - I recently bought a Liebherr integrated undercounter fridge for silly money. I hope it lasts!

tooManyChoices · 30-11-2017 11:41PM

JohnBoy26 wrote: »

In what way? The likes of the dairy milk to me tastes the same as it ever did although it probably is smaller than it used to be but that is pretty much the same across all brands.

DivingDuck wrote: »

Lindt is not bad, but I meant in the sense of what Cadbury used to taste like in the 90s before Kraft started messing about with it.

They only bought them in 2010.

IMO it's a mix of 2 things:
1. that we just didn't have good quality chocolate in Ireland until about 10 years ago - it was all cadbury/galaxy/mars stuff. Now you can but totally decent chocolate for half-nothing in Lidl and our tastebuds have adapted.

2. That a lot more of the Dairy Milk is the English stuff, which has always been a little different. Not as creamy/ generally easter-egg tasting stuff.

pawdee · 30-11-2017 11:43PM

Roger Mellie Man on the Telly wrote: »

The relation to income is important. It used to take a month's salary or more to buy a home appliance. Of course it still can - I recently bought a Liebherr integrated undercounter fridge for silly money. I hope it lasts!

I bought a beautiful, large, stainless steel Leibherr fridge about 10 years ago and it didn't last p***ing time. The minute the warranty was up it calved.

EPAndlee · 30-11-2017 11:52PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Looks like Kellogg’s Coco Pops and Rice Krispies are about be completely RUINED from January as the amount of sugar is cut by 40 and 20% respectively. They say it is for people’s health but it is to sell it to a more health conscious market, which is a very different thing. So that’s another former pleasure that was once available being removed from our lives. Soon you won’t be ALLOWED to eat anything that’s unhealthy anymore in this sterile world.

Kelloggs are about to ruin my breakfast just because little Jimmy got fat. **** you Kelloggs!

iLikeWaffles · 30-11-2017 11:58PM

Google Search results

DivingDuck · 01-12-2017 12:02AM

tooManyChoices wrote: »

They only bought them in 2010.

IMO it's a mix of 2 things:
1. that we just didn't have good quality chocolate in Ireland until about 10 years ago - it was all cadbury/galaxy/mars stuff. Now you can but totally decent chocolate for half-nothing in Lidl and our tastebuds have adapted.

2. That a lot more of the Dairy Milk is the English stuff, which has always been a little different. Not as creamy/ generally easter-egg tasting stuff.

What I was really hoping for was less "current standard of premium chocolate" and more "what basic chocolate used to be ten or twenty years ago". I don't mind the Lindt type stuff, but IMO it's nothing like old-school Dairy Milk, and neither is modern Dairy Milk, which is far worse than either.

I just want the old stuff back!

tooManyChoices · 01-12-2017 12:09AM

DivingDuck wrote: »

What I was really hoping for was less "current standard of premium chocolate" and more "what basic chocolate used to be ten or twenty years ago". I don't mind the Lindt type stuff, but IMO it's nothing like old-school Dairy Milk, and neither is modern Dairy Milk, which is far worse than either.

I just want the old stuff back!

Not talking about premium (though there's sure a lot more of that about), if I want plain chocolate I get it in lidl. It's much cheaper and better tasting than Cadburys ever was.

I accept too that cadburys has changed a bit...but since that's probably down to them firing most of the workers in their Irish factories and seemingly running the place into the ground, I think you're **** out of luck.

Hotblack Desiato · 01-12-2017 12:26AM

Sin City wrote: »

Casio

Used to be huge in the 80s/90s
not so much now

They still make good stuff, it's just that their appeal has become more selective. [/spinal_tap] G-Shock watches are actually collectible by watch collectors these days.

Heres Johnny wrote: »

The internet. Once a valuable resource for information dubbed the information superhighway. Now dumbed down in the mainstream by social media, bloggers and people saying Hi, I'm over here, pay attention to me!!

I had access to Usenet in the late 80s, yes it was part of the internet and it still exists although now largely forgotten. ALL of the current 'causes for concern' such as trolling, abuse, 'alternative facts', conspiracy theories, 'mean people on the internet made X commit suicide', etc. existed then, it's just the audience was smaller then.

Karsini wrote: »

That's exactly what happened with Fanta last summer.

Fanta has always tasted like crap

it was invented in Nazi Germany to overcome food shortages, after all

pawdee wrote: »

Middle of the road brands (he named so many I can't think, my head was melted)........shyte

Just search for 'Merloni'. They've taken over many previously good brands and dragged them into the dirt.
http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/ is a good source for what's what with domestic appliances and repair info - many can't be repaired any more!

My brother in law's uncle's house was sold recently. There was a fridge in the house that was bought (second hand) in the early 1950s and it was still working. Now that's what you call quality! Don't know what brand it was...maybe Frigidaire or something like that.

That's great and all, but it was probably costing him the price of a cheap fridge each year in wasted energy - not joking. Fridges are on 24/7, it's not the same as wasting some percentage of energy on running the washing machine or dishwasher which is only on a few hours a week.
Dishwashers - pah! It was far from dishwashers I was reared :pac:

01-12-2017 12:27AM

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Fanta has always tasted like crap

True, but it's actually worse now!

demanufactured · 01-12-2017 12:27AM

Gibson guitars.... By the looks of it soon to be no more.

liam7831 · 01-12-2017 12:28AM

Pet shop boys

Vladimir Poontang · 01-12-2017 12:44AM

Cadbury's have absolutely changed their chocolate. Not the same as what you'd get in the 90's and 80's and earlier.

Less cocoa, more sugar and now palm oil too.

They taste is a lot sweeter and less milky.

****in rank in short. Also smaller bars and tins of Roses have shrunk.

Hotblack Desiato · 01-12-2017 12:46AM

Apple Macs have gone to shite.

Someone had a go at Dell earlier, but that's totally unfair compared to Apple.

I bought a MacBook* in 2007 for not cheap, €1200. Now I did get ten years out of it but that was after a few hard drive and RAM upgrades. When I bought it, not too long after Apple moved to Intel chips, it actually compared very well in price/performance against the usual PC vendors, and it was open to the user to upgrade RAM and hard disk.

Build quality wasn't great though, all cheap thin plastic and the upper case was well known to crack, mine started the day after the 3 year warranty (which I paid yet more cash for) expired.

Since then Apple gear has suffered very badly in the price/performance ratio and what's worse is the impossibility of upgrading current Mac models - storage never mind RAM - makes them extremely bad value. You have to spec up at time of purchase based on your estimated requirements in 3 or 4 years time - by which time Apple will probably have dropped support and expect you to upgrade.

I bought a Dell laptop in January this year for €599 to replace the ten year old MacBook, the purchase price is half and it performs better. It's made out of metal and solid plastic. It's entirely open as regarding upgrades for RAM and storage, Dell even provide complete teardown instructions so you can replace any part yourself with only a couple of philips screwdrivers.

* I only ran OS X on the Mac for just long enough to download Linux, I never even booted Windows on the Dell just wiped the entire hard disk on first power on. The thought of paying a premium for Apple gear for their OS makes me :pac: :rolleyes: It didn't matter to me who made the hardware because I didn't want to run any proprietary software on it.

737max · 01-12-2017 12:54AM

What happens when a brand is worth nothing anymore:

https://www.ft.com/content/618ccc18-0ec6-11e3-bfc8-00144feabdc0

Hotblack Desiato · 01-12-2017 01:01AM

737max wrote: »

What happens when a brand is worth nothing anymore:

'Subscribe to the FT to read'

Is it the FT brand you're talking about, or the subject of the story we can't read?

Nekarsulm · 01-12-2017 01:14AM

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2013/08/27/news/billabong/index.html

01-12-2017 02:59AM

Karsini wrote: »

That's exactly what happened with Fanta last summer. They reduced the sugar content but replaced it with aspartame, so even the regular drink tastes like a diet drink. I've seen a couple of shops in Dublin stocking Danish Fanta, which still has the full sugar content.

Thanks for the tip, I’ll check different shops for foreign imports of fizzy drinks which remain full sugar. When I drink a fizzy drink on occasion I demand that I derive as much satisfaction from it as I previously could. Fizzy drinks aren’t *supposed* to be healthy, they never were - they are supposed to be a satisfying treat. Some of the few fizzy drinks that are still okay include Lucozade citrus clear, tanora, Fanta lemon (in Ireland, not uk) and irn bru (as far as I’m aware, although I’m not a huge fan of it or tanora). San Pellegrino is my gold standard for lemonade now, club orange for orange and Pepsi for cola (prefer it to coke).

01-12-2017 03:11AM

EPAndlee wrote: »

Kelloggs are about to ruin my breakfast just because little Jimmy got fat. **** you Kelloggs!

What’s more, they are not making ricicles anymore. I only got them once or twice a year because the were really sugary in fairness but i loved the taste of them more than any other cereal I’d say! I think it’s sad to see the world moving into a such an over-informed age and a much more self-restrained and cautious age - the reluctance of people to eat stuff like ricicles, indeed the gradual turning into unthinkable the thought of eating such food is another loss to people’s lives that they are not even aware is happening.

01-12-2017 03:15AM

Stephen15 wrote: »

Pringles used to quite nice espeically sour and onion, now they taste like cardboard and the sour cream onion flavouring leaves a revolting after taste. Salt and Vinegar is now their only flavour I can tolerate.

Ah yes, green Pringles- another classic example of a food that was mindblowingly good in the 90s/early 2000s but gradually became bland, devoid of impact. Previously you could see green dots of flavour on them.

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

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