A Graveyard of once Great Products that are now Crap.

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I'm starting a list of once great products that are now made like crap. Usually because the company wants more profit and/or they just don't care anymore.

1. Twinings Loose Tea in tins.
I always buy loose tea because it is better quality. I think bagged tea is the dust swept up from the floor of loose tea packaging centers. Up until about two years ago Twinings loose tea in canisters was a very good quality. It then changed and they started putting their dusty grade teabag tea into the canisters , but still sold it at large leaf prices. The tea is so fine it just floats out of the tea strainer and looks like scum on the top of the water. I wrote to the company twice, but no one ever wrote back - not even a coupon offer to entice me to buy more of their tea dust. The one exception seems to be their Gunmetal Green Tea, but I can't be bothered with any of it now and buy tea in bulk from my co-op.

2. Keds Champion Sneakers
Once the great buy of all athletic shoes. Well designed, good arch support, nice padding around the ankle all for about $25. Now they are the same little tiny canvas oxfords you can get at ChinaMart for $5 or less, except Keds still charges $25. I wrote the company and they claim they have gone back to their original style of their oxford shoe that was created in 1915. Are they kidding? No way were they making thin canvas, flat plastic bottom, no support shoes held together with bathroom caulking 100 years ago. I have purchased my last pair of Keds.

3. Huntress Boots of Scotland
A Wellington style boot for farm and garden work once made in Scotland, now made in China. Actually, they no longer make Huntress, just the male version called Hunter. The Huntress was the perfect Wellington for a woman as it was designed wide in the calf with a strap, tapered in at the ankle and the top always hit under your knee unless you're very petite. Now they sell the men's boot but label it with a woman's size. The boot is way too high unless you are over 5'8" and fits wide where it should be narrow and narrow where it should be wide. The construction seems the same, but I will never get over the lose of that label that said "Huntress: Made In Scotland".

So what products were you once loyal to that you've given up on due to loss of quality?

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@Green Witch,

i'm with you on the twinings tea, used to love the tins

have to think if i have anything to add

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Although I support the locovore movement when it comes to food that is grown locally and try to buy local goods (like a hand-dyed, handknit stocking cap of pure, locally grown wool that costs less than mass produced fleece or acrylic caps!), there are things that I love that are available from European countries . . . flannel sheets from Germany that are thicker, have real hems and little extra flaps on the pillow cases to keep pillows inside . . . or candies from France or Italy that taste of hundreds of years of tradition . . . or blockprinted scarves from southern France.

The global market should not mean cheap crap from China . . . it should mean exquisite silks from China, wonderful ceramics from everywhere in the world, beautiful jams from Austria . . . every nation makes matchless things.

Unfortunately, our corporate bottom liners trade only on name and not what the name stood for hundreds of years.

Look what American investors did to Waterford crystal. Dismantled the factory, sold the equipment and deprived skilled artisans of their livelihood.

These soulless creatures . . . they are not humans, not people . . . are the ruin of the world and all things beautiful.

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@Green Witch,

Twinings, major disappointment.

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@plainoldme,

Years ago and far away I was working on submitting a tv show idea to Turner re crafts from different areas around the world, craft in the way of great ceramics, weavings, glass work, wood carving, and much else. I didn't even get into food, as I had enough for 13 weeks or 39 with just ceramics. I could get specific with descriptions of the areas, visits to workshops, interviews - for example, propose talking with an expert at the International Ceramics Museum in Faenza.

Ah, well.

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Crackerjacks. There used to be a neat little prize in there, somewhere. What do you get now? A cruddy little piece of paper with a joke that wouldn't amuse a 4 year old.

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things I once loved but no longer can even tolerate because of quality decrease:

Bisguick
Mrs. Butterworths pancake syrup
most any tv dinner
Banquet pot pies
McDonald's fries
store brand soda
just about everything at Taco Bell
hot dogs (except for all beef)

Frozen pizza would be on the list but I fix them now, most are little more than crust and sauce.
Campbell's soup is almost on the list, quality has gone way down, price way up

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I'm taking a while thinking of things, as I usually cook fresh. It's hard to distinguish if it is me that has changed so much (I have) or the products. I can think of some that have gotten better, or more easily available, like bulk good(ish) olives. Good bread generally more available, however any of us differently define that.
To test this out, I need to go check out a Carl's Junior Fish Sandwich combo.

Other products - I work less with tools now, my heyday being in my remodelling era, which was c. 1980-1995. I will bet some are crappier, but I can't be specific.
But surveying stuff seems to have improved (but I don't know, I used the old transits).

On plants, native plants are more available in my changing locales, although not usually at big box stores.

One thing I know nothing much about is toys.. I bet there's a change there.

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Baby Ruth Bars - once made with cane sugar now made with high fructose corn syrup, probably like a lot of older candy bars.

Totally agree with Roger about those Cracker Jack prizes.

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@Green Witch,

Quote:

Totally agree with Roger about those Cracker Jack prizes.

ditto

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@hawkeye10,

Now I'm picturing the three of you buying cracker jacks together..

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

Now I'm picturing the three of you buying cracker jacks together..

I sure ate a lot of boxes as a kid....loved Barnum's animal crackers too.

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@hawkeye10,

I had close to no interest in cracker jacks, but did very much like Barnum's animal crackers. I probably still would like them.

Oh wait, I'll do my molasses pecan cookies (somewhat taken from an online recipe) in wee animal shapes and make millions, millions. But they wouldn't be the same, would have to have all the preservative crummola. Plus the boxes they came in and the graphics, at least in my youth, were part of the fun.

On the other hand, we have the new resurgence in homemade bread by the bread maven, Jim Lahey and many others in his wake - the whole n0-knead bread scenario. I've finally tried it and am a big fan.

Things don't always go downhill..

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Many candy bars now look as though they were made with chocolate, but they are using something else.

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@edgarblythe,

Yeh, they changed the chocolate rules a while ago. (sorry, no link)

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@edgarblythe,

Quote:

Many candy bars now look as though they were made with chocolate, but they are using something else.

I have not been able to figure out if they are worse than they used to be, or if rather I am spoiled. I got in the habit of eating the good stuff while I lived in europe, and now good chocolate is also American made.

more stuff that suck now:
Most tomatoes.
Most strawberries
store brand bricks of Ice cream
most store bought birthday cakes (only Costco is edible now)

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Some american associated chocolate is primo but much of the candy bar stuff is crap. There was a change, maybe two years ago, maybe earlier, who memorizes this stuff, about what could be called "chocolate".

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

Some American associated chocolate is primo but much of the candy bar stuff is crap. There was a change, maybe two years ago, about what could be called "chocolate".

I think I remember reading that. Even before though this crap stuff was around. I remember about 10 years ago trying what I thought was a chocolate easter bunny that I had bought for my kids, it tasted like badly imitation flavored wax. Then I looked at the box and it was a lot of palm oil and chocolate flavorings. Then I looked at the front and it said "chocolate" in big letters and some mombo jumbo in small print that indicated that something was not kosher.

I was not happy with the producer, the store that sold it, nor myself for not being more on guard for a swindle

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@hawkeye10,

It's interesting that we have very good chocolate available if you can afford serious candy bars and slime-o faux chocolate for the uninitiated. I'm in between, I can taste good or better chocolate but am no connoisseur. I'm not mocking the good chocolate folks, at least the starters of all that. I might get to mocking some hangers on. I see the slime-o's working from the old good candy bar connections to re-recipe them down, and some trying to ramp their products up.

I was in Perugia in 1993 with husband for a few days. I remember two wildly delicious chocolate things, one from the Sandia pasticceria and one from this little hole in the wall place. One was a baba au rhum covered with perugina chocolate, and another (I don't remember the name or even the description except that it was great). The question is, when did Nestle's buy Perugina relative to when I was there? Was the greatness in my mind?)

And even Nestles might have been better then.

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@Green Witch,

I'll make it easy on everyone and just add nearly every item in the produce aisle and on the shelves in the supermarkets.

Either the taste has been bred out of the items for the sake of shelf life or there is so much salt and sugar added to things that it is all you really taste.

I'll add on to your list of tea woes and nominate Good Earth teas, especially the original blend. It tastes (and often smells) like sawdust now.

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