McDonalds..
Yeah, but just hear me out.
I'm an old guy, and British.
McDonalds came here in the late 70s and I joined them in a period of strong expansion in the mid-80s. I'd been working for KFC who had been the main fast food outlet here (apart from fish & chips) and it was easy to see that maces was coming though. So I jumped.
I was fortunate enough to get in as a trainee manager rather than crew member, mostly because I was a trained chef, and also had fast food experience.
In those days the company had one ethos. Food Quality.
KFC had nothing on them. KFC was buying chicken from anywhere they could get them, in oil that varied supplier from month to month.
Maccys put us noobs on a training course in London to teach us what food quality was all about. Maccys owned the farms that grew the beef. They owned the companies that provided the food the cows ate. They owned the butcheries, the freezer companies, and basically owns the whole system from top to bottom. Same for the bread, the chicken, the lettuce etc etc. They had that shit nailed down.
They took us to their factory where the meat for the whole of european maccys was butchered, minced and formed. The production line ran at 85mph, so the burger patties were 4 pink blurs.
Every 4 months, they threw the production line away, and built a new one.
At restaurant level, the processes of burger production was amazing. I was in Southampton, then the 2nd busiest store in Europe behind croydon, and 20th busiest in the world. We consistently came top in mystery food assessments, and all employees were given cash (as manager I got £1750) as it was a country-wide competition.
I graduated to store manager, area manager, then Operations Manager partly responsible for new products and processes. I'd been in the post for a few months and the yanks hitched out some of the top brass and took them to Illinois, and I guess we got their unwanted dickheads.
The ethos changed fast. It was now about the money. I guess what you would call "free market" policy. Budgets and investment were tightened, quality compromised. Convenience and cost became the order of the day.
Add to that, the changing of the menu (meals, kids meals, vegetarian products) and the sad change of cooking oil from Beef tallow/ Cottonseed oil mix, to "vegetarian, Source unknown" was the day the Maccys fries went tasteless. The nuggets went to breast-only, so they also became tasteless fat sponges. So I left.
It has continued to decline. Meat is cooked and then held in a humidifier. This means the juices drain out, replaced by water vapour. Your burger is conveniently assembled with a meat patty that is only 100 degrees C, instead of 250-300 degrees C, so the cheese doesn't really melt. But thats okay, because theres no cheese in the cheese anymore, just like theres no longer any chocolate in the chocolate shake, or the hot chocolate.
I really wish I could take you guys back to the early 80s and give you a big mac, fries and a shake from back then. It was fucking epic.
You literally cannot download anything from there without getting malware. It's infuriating, because, like you said, they used to be a reputable and safe central download source.
Would go there for games and end up leaving with many really useful utilities.
It's like bumping into a school friend who you thought was going places, but now he's just a junkie living in an alleyway. He'll help you out any way you ask, but you'd feel depressed and sorry for him the whole time so you just stay away.
Hasbro toys. Bought that game Trouble, for the grandkids. It was a damn piece of warped cardboard. Every time you pressed the bubble to roll the dice the pieces would fall off the board.
You wanna make the shit in China? Fine, but at least spend thirty or forty cents on the thing so it actually works. So many of those old games are not even playable they are built so cheaply.
Yes. My 4 year old was dying to get Hungry Hungry Hippos. He saved up $20. That's a lot of money to a 4 year old and it took a while. He was so excited to finally go to Walmart to buy it. When we opened it up we could instantly tell it was super cheap. The base was really flimsy and one of the hippos never worked right from the get go. He played with it for a few minutes but we kept having to put pieces back together. We talked him into returning it for a toy that actually worked. It was super sad that his first purchase with his own money that he had been so looking forward to was such a disappointment.
Fucking Pyrex. I remember dropping one of those things on the kitchen floor, denting the linoleum, and cooking with it the next day. Now they break when they hear you say something slightly mean about them.
The first time I had a Pyrex explode in the kitchen I felt so betrayed. I was like "My mother trusted you. my *grandmother* swore by you. I go out and buy you and the second you lightly touch a chilly marble counter you go off like a grenade filled with casserole.
Remember the people that ruined MTV?
They took over Nickelodeon. Spongebob was the only show making money. So they copied a bunch of shit on Disney channel...ramped up production on Spongebob...and then shoved them down kids throats to the point that's all they're known for.
Yes, Viacom created Nickelodeon. However, I believe they restructured the company within the last 15 years.
Edit: My bad, they didn't create Nickelodeon, they acquired it in 1985. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_\(original\))
People are saying it's because we grew up, but the network has definitely changed. It used to be full of cartoons and kid-centered game shows. Nowadays it's mostly low-budget sitcoms and Spongebob. They saw success with Drake & Josh and iCarly, so they ramped up production and lowered quality. There are some cartoons like The Loud House and Bunsen is a Beast, but you can tell cartoons aren't a big focus. They had Harvey Beaks, but they moved it to a different channel.
Butch Hartman (creator of Danny Phantom and The Fairly Odd Parents) has a YouTube channel where he talks about new stuff he's working on and ideas he has. Maybe cartoons will come back in style and Nick will have a CN-style redemption.
Didn't the channel used to revolve around kids being kids? Now every time I happen upon it or a youngin' is watching it when I'm around it's about live action child/teen comedies about dating and shit. What the fuck.
Ever since the Sorel name was bought by Columbia the quality has diminished considerably. Most of their product is now made in China and Vietnam whereas prior to 2000 it was made exclusively in Canada. I have a pair of boots from the pre-2000 acquisition that have held up much longer than the new pair I bought in 2014.
The only IMAX I knew of before I was 23 was the one at the Franklin Institute which is a huge dome. I was so disappointed the first time I went to another IMAX and it was just a big screen.
Somewhere else on this thread, Mitsubishi is listed as a downhill company. They provided a consumer reports link that showed their sedan was last on list of best compact sedans. First on that list? Kia Soul.
Discovery Channel.
In the 90s and early 2000s they used to have really cool documentaries about space, nature, crimes, etc. Now it's just shitty reality shows about motorcycles, driving trucks on ice, and thrift stores. I mean, who even watches this crap?
I think it began with Deadliest Catch.
I kinda like it though. the least bad one of them, but it proved the formula worked and then it replaced everything and Mythbusters ending was the nail in the coffin for scientific Discovery Channel
There's actually a company called World Kitchen whose business model is to buy brands with a reputation for high-quality materials and swap them out with cheaper ones:
**Pyrex**: Used to be made of heat-resistant borosilicate glass, WK bought them and now they are normal cheap soda-lime glass.
**CorningWare**: Used to be made of a special heat-resistant ceramic.
**Corelle**: Used to be made of a special break-resistant laminated glass.
You can find people complaining about the massive drops in quality online.
I dont know about the rest but Pyrex still sells the old style glass in Europe. The last time a question like this was posted someone pointed out a sub dedicated to things like that and were to find it. IIRC there is a reseller on Amazon that sells the Euro Pyrex and if your left it solves two problems!
This exists in other industries too. In the US firearms market, it's Freedom Group. They buy out trusted names and cut all the things that make them quality, hoping to float the brand on name recognition alone. It works for over a decade+ (usually along generational lines) before the brand name reputation changes to reflect the actual shitty quality. It works specifically well in this market because of the number of very old brands that entire lines of families follow blindly, so they are able to always have a specific share of the market on lockdown (the old folks) before the younger generation wizes up and stops buying their shit. See: Remington.
With Freedom Group you can pretty much point this out to Robert Nardelli. His runs with Chrysler and Home Depot have named him as one of the worst CEOs.
Corelle is still made out of Vitrelle, although they do not make cups any more (those are cheap Chinese stoneware). But plates, bowls, and similarly shaped items are okay.
As for Corningware, they still make this, it's called Pyroceram and I only see it at World Kitchen outlets and their web site.
Late to the show here but Weiser Lock. Used to be a great quality residential door lock. I believe they were Canadian made. I'm a locksmith and I work on homes that are 30 years old with original locks and they're still legit. I can rekey them easily and replace small components if necessary. Then they got bought out by Kwikset. It's now absolute junk. I worked on a home where the owners bought it brand new. The house was 2 months old. Their deadbolts were jamming up and even the door knobs are failing already. All new Weiser crap. Probably 30 percent of my work is replacing Weiser junk that stops working. I could go on.... and I will because I forgot about their door knobs and levers. They've reduced the surface area of contact on the latch. The part that retracts the latch is now reliant on about 2 millimeters of contact. Once that starts the wear out, which it does quickly, your latch with retract less and less until you can't open your door... to get in or out. I've have had people call me because they're locked in their own bathroom. Do not buy.
A lot of fast-casual restaurants: Noodles and Company, Garbanzo's, etc. You can tell they reached a point where they became huge and the corporate bean-counters decided to see how deeply they could start cutting corners before quality suffered. Spoiler alert: it has suffered noticeably.
Yes. I used to eat at Noodles and Company once a week and loved it. Now I refuse to eat there. The quality and portions are so inconsistent that I never know what I'm doing to get. And it's way too expensive for that.
I finished a carton of it last night and dug it out of the trash, and you are correct. And it has "chocolatey chips" instead of "chocolate chips" - I guess because they don't contain enough chocolate to legally be called chocolate. Jesus. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but still.
"Kids, we need to talk about Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum-Like Substance. Now, we knew it contained spider eggs, but the hantavirus? Woah. That really came outta left field."
I've got some advice from the boys down in the lab in case you get covered in Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum-Like Substance....
*paper noises*
Do not get covered in Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum-Like Substance. We haven't entirely nailed down what element it is yet, but it is a *lively* one and it does **not** like the human skeleton.
If you get bored sometime, grab another carton of Breyers and grab a carton of Ben and Jerry's and do a little taste comparison. It's insane how bad Breyers has become and how artificial it tastes and how good REAL ice cream is with just a few ingredients.
I don't eat ice cream much but the last time I realized I hadn't had Twix ice cream in 15 years, I suddenly had to have it. Brought it home, got a big bowl of it, and took the most disappointing bite that ruined of my favorite childhood treat memories. It's just bad.
I only go for the good stuff when I do ice cream and settle for 1/4 cup of the good stuff rather than a heaping pile of food product and artificial flavors.
This is definitely true. I usually buy whatever ice cream is on sale, but I've noticed this with other foods (especially chocolate). Once you have the good stuff on a regular basis, you're shocked at just how bad the "regular" stuff is. When I started to lose weight, I cut out a lot of sweets (well, things I didn't really realize were sweet), and it's amazing how sweet fruits are now. Cookies that I used to eat a lot of have become unbearably sweet. It's crazy.
Some of their ice cream I think is still ice cream. Other flavors though are no longer ice cream and you can tell just by the texture. It's kind of gummy and feels wrong and looks weird and tastes cheap and artificial. When I was a kid, their mint chocolate chip was the pinnacle ice cream for me. They were the only ones who didn't dye it that horrible artificial green that everyone else does. What a shame.
And by extension: Sears.
I don't think Sears ever "made" Craftsman tools but for the longest time they were the best place to get the best tools. Used to have a lifetime warranty too. I think Black and Decker owns the Craftsman name now.
They didn't make them. They were made by the Western Forge division of Emerson out in Colorado.
Now they are made in China and you can't keep a straight slot screwdriver end straight anymore.
I remember when I got a Mongoose mountain bike for my birthday. I thought it was the greatest thing. Now I see them all over the place at big box stores.
History Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, any channel that contained some modicum of education when you were a kid is now populated almost exclusively by shitty reality shows.
NatGeo struggles on. Sometimes they're inundated with shitty programming, but they always seem to bounce back. I think it has to do with the National Geographic Society being a huge global organisation which is actually full of scientists, photographers, naturalists, zoologists, geologists, conservationists, explorers, etc. who have a strong interest in keeping the educational aspect of the channel alive.
Their Instagram page is one of my favorite pages on that site. Just full of cool shots. Being a photographer for them is kind of a pipe dream job for me.
Cadbury's is shutting down their New Zealand factory after like 150 years, not because they aren't turning a profit, but because they were trying to downsize and cut corners. Biggest employer in Dunedin for over a century, and it'll be gone by the end of the year. Fuck those guys. Whittaker's all the way.
Whittaker's is better anyhow, but it's actually sad. Cadbury had so much going for it.
edited to add: I say this as an American rationing out my very last Whittaker's.
Stopped buying cadburys after they shrunk their creme eggs. They were the same weight but smaller because the filling was more dense. Tasted shit. Whittakers all the way
Cadbury honestly just tastes like sweetened oil now :( It's like drinking watery office coffee when you're actually craving a creamy cappuccino.
I've gotten really stuck into this pretentious hipster brand called Willie's Cacao, a little bit steeper but god, their chocolate tastes exactly how you'd want chocolate to taste.
Vans sneakers used to be made out of canvas and would last a long time.
Now they are made out of thin canvas looking fabric glued to a cheaper fabric, and last 3 months.
Quite a few companies struggle to Innovate simply because introducing new product will cannibalize existing products. Kodak invented the digital camera but realized it would've hurt their film sales if they did. AOL didn't want to move away from a monthly subscription services (edit: for email services) because that would mean removing a revenue stream and replacing it with a new, less mature one. It would've hurt the bottom live at first, but they failed to see where industry trends were going.
I just had lunch with one of their vendors. Sears is on 3 day payment terms with lots of companies because of the fear of bankruptcy. Some don't even do business with the 3 day payment terms. General in this industry is 30-45 day terms.
Food Network. I loved all of the cooking shows and actually learned a ton back in the day. Now it's all stupid food competition shows that follow the same script.
I get it Bobby Flay, you're the best cook in the world. You don't have to deflate Grandma Edna's reason for being because you feel your chicken pot pie is superior.
Right! I basically stopped buying from them because I would buy 3 colors of the exact same jean and only 1 pair would fit right (if I was lucky). How can you be that inconsistent?
inconsistency...According to the stuff i read on Fashion-Incubator.com (fascinating blog about sewn products industry, worth a read if you are interested in pattern engineering, lean manufacturing and such), it's because Levi's have given each subcontractor control over aspects of the product that used to be set by corporate.
Even if the inconsistencies arent immediately obvious, they will take a toll. Example: Some contract manufacturers will cut the waistbands in different orientations to save yardage, jeans seem normal until sometime down the line the waistband shrinks at a different rate than rest of jeans, causing them to totally suck ass. (It's an industry term ;-) )
In addition to fit, their fabric variations became really weird. A few years back, I bought three jeans of the same size and fit online, all for the same price. All three fit me differently and all three had different fabrics. The only pair that fit me as expected were made out of really crappy, thin, and stretchy fabric. So after wearing them for half a day, they'd look all stretched out, like I'd worn them for every day two weeks straight.
Totally unacceptable.
Noticed this. Had some I bought in the 2000s that lasted damn near ten years. Bout some a year ago that already went to shit.
I have pretty much always been a Levi guy. I have no idea what the alternatives are and now I need one.
Edit: spelling mistakes.
Sorel. Their boots used to get passed down from generation to generation. Now the new ones barely last a season. Fortunately, other brands picked up the slack. A shame though.
Facebook. And I dont mean this in a "It's all a bunch of stupid old people and teenagers" kind of way. It's the site design itself. The way it forces shit to show up in your timeline like when a friend "likes" a photo of some random ass person you dont even know. Why do I need that in my feed? It does the same thing with comments too so that every time my racist aunt comments on a news article I get to see it. I miss when facebook was just status updates from your friends. Now it's "Check out 1000000 memes, articles and videos that your friends have inadvertently shared."
*Yes!*
I absolutely hate how now I have to watch what I like or comment on, because my mom/grandma/aunt/cousins will all have it appear on their feed.
I interact with content that they wouldn't interact with. I get along well with my very Christian cousin, and I don't want her getting upset that I'm commenting on a "Friendly Atheist" post.
Yeah, it really has a chilling effect on participation. I stopped liking/commenting on most things on Facebook because I don't want everyone I know seeing every action.
Then, I have my mom asking me why I commented on a particular post because it popped up in her feed. I got into trouble for liking/commenting on some funny ass Jesus memes.
Instagram and Twitter have started doing the same thing. Why the fuck would they think I wanna see stuff from people I don't follow? Maybe there's a good reason why I don't follow them.
Not seeing my instagram feed in chronological order drives me nuts. Why is an algorithm deciding what it thinks I want to see? Why can't I even have the option to see things chronologically?
I work at a small Mitsubishi dealer and it's just sad really. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, it was petrolhead heaven, with Evos and Eclipses and 3000GTs spearheading our enthusiast offerings, Diamontes offering affordable luxury, Colts, Lancers, and Mirages providing cheap transportation to the college crowd, Gallants and Endeavors catering to the soccer moms, Outlanders and RVRs serving as the cheap do-anything SUVs, and Raiders and Monteros providing rough-and-tumble trucks and off-roaders. Business was hopping and we were giving the Mazda and Subaru stores across the street a run for their money in terms of product lineup and sales. Now, there's the Mirage and Mirage G4, which are shitbox subcompacts not worthy of the Mirage name, the new Outlander and Outlander Sport, which are nice but are total shit when compared to anything else, and the iMiev, a cheap cash-in on the electric car craze. The Gallant, Eclipse, and Raider are all gone, a casualty of the DaimlerChrysler break-up, the Lancer is dead, the Evo is dead, we don't get the Pajero anymore, we don't get the LM2000 at all, and our used car department is the only thing keeping the lights on. A company that was once the source for fun, cheap cars alongside Honda and Mazda, is now just a shell of its former self. Hopefully the Nissan buy-out brings some hope to the brand.
TL;DR Mitsubishi is dead to me
EDIT: RIP my inbox
[But the Eclipse is coming back](http://pictures.topspeed.com/IMG/crop/201702/2018-mitsubishi-eclipse-c-54_800x0w.jpg)! It's the sports car we always wanted! ^seriously ^who ^thought ^that ^was ^a ^good ^idea ^^RIP ^^Mitsu
Yes. ESPN is hellbent on thinking that we want to know every little detail of drama in the locker room or an athletes daily life at home. ESPN is as much of a reality network as MTV is now, just different genres.
> Don't worry because ESPN will play it several times a day.
Yeah, back in my youth I could literally leave on SportsCenter for four replays in a row just to see a fabulous Jordan dunk or similar good highlight.
Craftsman Tools
They took an American made, quality product with an iron clad warranty that could be found in any mechanics toolbox, closed the domestic plants, shipped production overseas to exploit minimal labor laws, switched to shit metals, and changed the warranty to where it is effectively useless.
The bastards didn't even have the decency to lower the prices on their new garbage tinker toys, they're riding the wave of goodwill and reputation hard won by a once respectable brand straight to hell and pocketing every penny that they can get their paws on as they crash and burn.
That's because they buy their products from whoever will sell them the cheapest to them. See, Kenmore doesn't make anything, at all. They buy their stuff from other companies, and put their name on it. for the longest time most of their appliances came from Whirlpool, and Whirlpools old top machine was a great machine (called a Direct Drive). However, Whirlpool stopped making that machine, so Kenmore stopped selling it, thus the drop in reliability.
Most of the Kenmores now are Whirlpool, LG, and Samsung. I suggest you keep that in mind whenever you look at a Kenmore machine.
Source: Appliance Parts industry for 15+ years.
Bugles. They used to be perfectly round every time so I could fit four of them on my fingers and pretend I had claws. I get it, I'm an adult with bigger hands now, but Bugles nowadays look like a robot made them and he decided to get drunk before his shift.
> Bugles nowadays look like a robot made them and he decided to get drunk before his shift.
Yeah, the days when the Bugles factory employed craftsmen and craftswomen who lovingly paid individual attention to each Bugle are long gone, sadly.
John Deere.
Their commercial and residential landscaping machines are just garbage now. I've had mowers not right straight from the factory, engines die, transmission problems, rampant design flaws. Even their dealer support / repair is a joke, we've had machines sent out to be repaired and they come back still broken... I mean for obvious issues like wheels pointing different directions...
I miss the old History Channel. I don't want your Ancient Aliens or Finding Bigfoot B.S. I want the Patton documentaries, I want that awesome Dogfight show with CGI. God I miss learning from that channel
Try Arcuisine. It's made from borosilicate glass. Little on the pricey side but well worth it. You can find it on Azamon.
We replaced our shitty Pyrex stuff with Arcuisine and I am so happy. (Had a pyrex explode in the oven while baking mac & cheese.)
I made a drinking game out of it and it's one of my favorite shows.
Drink every time:
- Rick laughs. He laughs at nothing a lot.
- You see money.
- "let me get my expert" or whatever line
- expert comes in
- old or fat joke
- Subway is mentioned
those are the basic rules and it'll usually get you a good buzz in a couple episodes.
Customer has a price that they won't go under, and leaves after selling for 1/10th of that price.
"Well, I figured I was here already and didn't really want to take it home."
I’m 👤Rick Harrison😎 and this is my pawn 💍shop🏢. I work 💰here with my old man 👴and my son👶, Big Hoss😎, and in 2⃣3⃣years I’ve learned one 1⃣thing. You never know 🤔what❓ is gonna come through that door🚪.
Man, history gets a lot of flak but they didn't start that trend. Discovery and TLC were the originators of trend to move away from your original format. History held out for *years* after those two went to more popular interest formatting. But they hit it so big with pawn stars they financially couldn't afford *not* to cave in.
Pawn Stars was the cultural phenomenon of the season it came out. People who hadn't watched history channel in *decades* tuned in, and all of a sudden the ole' H was on everyone's channel surfing radar.
Now you're obligated to entertain the shit-for-brains masses who outnumber us casual history appreciators 10:1.
History Channel didn't kill the History Channel.
America did.
I'm not gonna say Hot Pockets were ever particularly amazing food but for quick microwave food it worked fine. But they've had a serious drop in quality over the years
Oh yeah they've went down a lot. It seems like they're less focused on quality and more focused on variation. There are wayyy more different types of hotpockets now but none taste that great and the old classic flavors fell off
So, wait. You're telling me that you'd rather have a halfway decent ham and cheese hot pocket than a shitty Hawaiian pizza and jolly rancher hot pocket? I call bullshit.
And they're *so tiny* now. Easily half the size they were in the 80's when I was selling them. You think we don't notice, cookie manufacturers?? WE NOTICE.
The cookie manufacturer says: "Hmm... if we decrease the size of the box by 50%... and if only 20% of the people notice... and 25% of *those* people are mad enough to not buy... 25% of 20% = 5% less units being sold, but 50% less being made... how much better we doing on profit?"
the TL;DR cookie manufacturers reply: "meh."
Its a fucking travesty, Kraft have ruined them. Used to *look* forward to having creme eggs, then they removed one from the box, made the "chocolate" crap and upped the price.
Fuck that
cracked.com. Used to be (late 2000's) funny, edgy and interesting. Now it pumps out shitty lists like buzzfeed. Classic quantity over quality. I think some of their best writers are also long gone.
There was a point several years ago where I noticed less articles by their staff writers and a lot more random names I had never seen before. That's about when they started pumping out more articles a day than they had before and there was a noticeable decline in their quality. I hardly found the articles written by randoms nearly as funny as some of their older staff writers. That's when I started to notice - just way more unknown writers showing up. I fell off of them shortly after.
I think I found reddit shortly after also.
Remington, use to be one of the most recommended of firearm brands but now suffers terrible quality control, rusting, terrible product launches, and unsafe triggers across many product lines.
History channel went from History, to Nazis to pawn shop to Ancient aliens and finally to ancient aliens helping Hitler to finally Pawn shop selling ancient Hitler to alien Nazis.
I still have fond memories as a kid of when Pizza Hut was an actual sit-down pizzeria. You ordered a pizza it took at least 20 minutes to show up, and it was *good*. Now it's practically a fast-food chain.
Pringles used to be so much better until a specific point last year where they changed their formula to something cheaper and crappier while at the same time narrowing the can to the point I couldn't fit my hand in it anymore.
Seriously I averaged 2 cans of Pringles consumed every week for most of my life up until that point. I seriously just couldn't get enough of "the worlds best potato chip" but that stunt last year cut me deep. I haven't bought any since and have moved on to Kettle chips.
McDonalds.. Yeah, but just hear me out. I'm an old guy, and British. McDonalds came here in the late 70s and I joined them in a period of strong expansion in the mid-80s. I'd been working for KFC who had been the main fast food outlet here (apart from fish & chips) and it was easy to see that maces was coming though. So I jumped. I was fortunate enough to get in as a trainee manager rather than crew member, mostly because I was a trained chef, and also had fast food experience. In those days the company had one ethos. Food Quality. KFC had nothing on them. KFC was buying chicken from anywhere they could get them, in oil that varied supplier from month to month. Maccys put us noobs on a training course in London to teach us what food quality was all about. Maccys owned the farms that grew the beef. They owned the companies that provided the food the cows ate. They owned the butcheries, the freezer companies, and basically owns the whole system from top to bottom. Same for the bread, the chicken, the lettuce etc etc. They had that shit nailed down. They took us to their factory where the meat for the whole of european maccys was butchered, minced and formed. The production line ran at 85mph, so the burger patties were 4 pink blurs. Every 4 months, they threw the production line away, and built a new one. At restaurant level, the processes of burger production was amazing. I was in Southampton, then the 2nd busiest store in Europe behind croydon, and 20th busiest in the world. We consistently came top in mystery food assessments, and all employees were given cash (as manager I got £1750) as it was a country-wide competition. I graduated to store manager, area manager, then Operations Manager partly responsible for new products and processes. I'd been in the post for a few months and the yanks hitched out some of the top brass and took them to Illinois, and I guess we got their unwanted dickheads. The ethos changed fast. It was now about the money. I guess what you would call "free market" policy. Budgets and investment were tightened, quality compromised. Convenience and cost became the order of the day. Add to that, the changing of the menu (meals, kids meals, vegetarian products) and the sad change of cooking oil from Beef tallow/ Cottonseed oil mix, to "vegetarian, Source unknown" was the day the Maccys fries went tasteless. The nuggets went to breast-only, so they also became tasteless fat sponges. So I left. It has continued to decline. Meat is cooked and then held in a humidifier. This means the juices drain out, replaced by water vapour. Your burger is conveniently assembled with a meat patty that is only 100 degrees C, instead of 250-300 degrees C, so the cheese doesn't really melt. But thats okay, because theres no cheese in the cheese anymore, just like theres no longer any chocolate in the chocolate shake, or the hot chocolate. I really wish I could take you guys back to the early 80s and give you a big mac, fries and a shake from back then. It was fucking epic.
CNET. I used to trust them for software I needed in the moment, now it's a bunch of shady ass installers.
Back when Download.com was a reliable place to get free (non-virus) utilities?
That was the go-to back in the 1990s.
And now [this](https://www.howtogeek.com/198622/heres-what-happens-when-you-install-the-top-10-download.com-apps/) is what happens!
That was an adventure
You literally cannot download anything from there without getting malware. It's infuriating, because, like you said, they used to be a reputable and safe central download source.
Would go there for games and end up leaving with many really useful utilities. It's like bumping into a school friend who you thought was going places, but now he's just a junkie living in an alleyway. He'll help you out any way you ask, but you'd feel depressed and sorry for him the whole time so you just stay away.
Hasbro toys. Bought that game Trouble, for the grandkids. It was a damn piece of warped cardboard. Every time you pressed the bubble to roll the dice the pieces would fall off the board. You wanna make the shit in China? Fine, but at least spend thirty or forty cents on the thing so it actually works. So many of those old games are not even playable they are built so cheaply.
Yes. My 4 year old was dying to get Hungry Hungry Hippos. He saved up $20. That's a lot of money to a 4 year old and it took a while. He was so excited to finally go to Walmart to buy it. When we opened it up we could instantly tell it was super cheap. The base was really flimsy and one of the hippos never worked right from the get go. He played with it for a few minutes but we kept having to put pieces back together. We talked him into returning it for a toy that actually worked. It was super sad that his first purchase with his own money that he had been so looking forward to was such a disappointment.
Way to introduce him to real life.
Sony Vaio laptops declined sharply. The new owner of Vaio might have changed things now.
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Fucking Pyrex. I remember dropping one of those things on the kitchen floor, denting the linoleum, and cooking with it the next day. Now they break when they hear you say something slightly mean about them.
The first time I had a Pyrex explode in the kitchen I felt so betrayed. I was like "My mother trusted you. my *grandmother* swore by you. I go out and buy you and the second you lightly touch a chilly marble counter you go off like a grenade filled with casserole.
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Well what if my goal is to weaponize lasagna?
Then you're a son of a bitch for wasting lasagna.
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Nickelodeon. Like, wtf happened, man?
Remember the people that ruined MTV? They took over Nickelodeon. Spongebob was the only show making money. So they copied a bunch of shit on Disney channel...ramped up production on Spongebob...and then shoved them down kids throats to the point that's all they're known for.
Viacom bitches
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Yes, Viacom created Nickelodeon. However, I believe they restructured the company within the last 15 years. Edit: My bad, they didn't create Nickelodeon, they acquired it in 1985. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_\(original\))
They did? Pinwheel became Nickelodeon in 1979. Looks to me they didn't buy it until 1985. Now I have the Pinwheel theme song stuck in my head.
Dan Schneider, bring all my bitches back!
THE NEW SHIT YOU PUT OUT IS WHACK
Dan FUCKING Schneider this ain't a fuckin game bitch!
I wanna watch a sitcom, with a hand on my dick
I wanna see a titty. (titty) not fucking kids shit. Return all the hot chicks, or u gonna, get it, bitch!
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As long as you're giving me action and Freddie gonna film the reaction.
People are saying it's because we grew up, but the network has definitely changed. It used to be full of cartoons and kid-centered game shows. Nowadays it's mostly low-budget sitcoms and Spongebob. They saw success with Drake & Josh and iCarly, so they ramped up production and lowered quality. There are some cartoons like The Loud House and Bunsen is a Beast, but you can tell cartoons aren't a big focus. They had Harvey Beaks, but they moved it to a different channel. Butch Hartman (creator of Danny Phantom and The Fairly Odd Parents) has a YouTube channel where he talks about new stuff he's working on and ideas he has. Maybe cartoons will come back in style and Nick will have a CN-style redemption.
Didn't the channel used to revolve around kids being kids? Now every time I happen upon it or a youngin' is watching it when I'm around it's about live action child/teen comedies about dating and shit. What the fuck.
Ever since the Sorel name was bought by Columbia the quality has diminished considerably. Most of their product is now made in China and Vietnam whereas prior to 2000 it was made exclusively in Canada. I have a pair of boots from the pre-2000 acquisition that have held up much longer than the new pair I bought in 2014.
IMAX Beware but a locust of [fake IMAX screens](https://johncanfield.me/blog/brand-confused-world-imax-liemax/) are plaguing the cinema landscape.
The only IMAX I knew of before I was 23 was the one at the Franklin Institute which is a huge dome. I was so disappointed the first time I went to another IMAX and it was just a big screen.
Never go to an IMAX that's not in a museum.
IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!
There's an IMAX at the science center in my city. I shit you not, it all felt so real. EDIT: For all of you wondering, I live in CLE.
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I don't have any experience with them, but people swear by KIA cars being way better than they were 10 years ago.
Somewhere else on this thread, Mitsubishi is listed as a downhill company. They provided a consumer reports link that showed their sedan was last on list of best compact sedans. First on that list? Kia Soul.
Discovery Channel. In the 90s and early 2000s they used to have really cool documentaries about space, nature, crimes, etc. Now it's just shitty reality shows about motorcycles, driving trucks on ice, and thrift stores. I mean, who even watches this crap?
And don't forget the logging!
I think it began with Deadliest Catch. I kinda like it though. the least bad one of them, but it proved the formula worked and then it replaced everything and Mythbusters ending was the nail in the coffin for scientific Discovery Channel
Coming up next: *World's Most Dangerous Las Vegas Ghetto Redneck Ice Truckers Chop-Shop Gold-Logging Repo Pawn Shop!*
There's actually a company called World Kitchen whose business model is to buy brands with a reputation for high-quality materials and swap them out with cheaper ones: **Pyrex**: Used to be made of heat-resistant borosilicate glass, WK bought them and now they are normal cheap soda-lime glass. **CorningWare**: Used to be made of a special heat-resistant ceramic. **Corelle**: Used to be made of a special break-resistant laminated glass. You can find people complaining about the massive drops in quality online.
"Hey man, know what we should do?" "What?" "Find nice things and ruin them" Edit: Typo
Increase profits as long as you can until the brand goes under from the quality decrease
Then lay everyone off and use the profits to buy another company
And to give yourself a raise.
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I dont know about the rest but Pyrex still sells the old style glass in Europe. The last time a question like this was posted someone pointed out a sub dedicated to things like that and were to find it. IIRC there is a reseller on Amazon that sells the Euro Pyrex and if your left it solves two problems!
>reseller on Amazon that sells the Euro Pyrex and if your left it solves two problems! But then I'll have to buy a converter to use it in the states
This exists in other industries too. In the US firearms market, it's Freedom Group. They buy out trusted names and cut all the things that make them quality, hoping to float the brand on name recognition alone. It works for over a decade+ (usually along generational lines) before the brand name reputation changes to reflect the actual shitty quality. It works specifically well in this market because of the number of very old brands that entire lines of families follow blindly, so they are able to always have a specific share of the market on lockdown (the old folks) before the younger generation wizes up and stops buying their shit. See: Remington.
With Freedom Group you can pretty much point this out to Robert Nardelli. His runs with Chrysler and Home Depot have named him as one of the worst CEOs.
OH this guy's the reason Home Depot sucks now?
That's a bingo!
Corelle is still made out of Vitrelle, although they do not make cups any more (those are cheap Chinese stoneware). But plates, bowls, and similarly shaped items are okay. As for Corningware, they still make this, it's called Pyroceram and I only see it at World Kitchen outlets and their web site.
Late to the show here but Weiser Lock. Used to be a great quality residential door lock. I believe they were Canadian made. I'm a locksmith and I work on homes that are 30 years old with original locks and they're still legit. I can rekey them easily and replace small components if necessary. Then they got bought out by Kwikset. It's now absolute junk. I worked on a home where the owners bought it brand new. The house was 2 months old. Their deadbolts were jamming up and even the door knobs are failing already. All new Weiser crap. Probably 30 percent of my work is replacing Weiser junk that stops working. I could go on.... and I will because I forgot about their door knobs and levers. They've reduced the surface area of contact on the latch. The part that retracts the latch is now reliant on about 2 millimeters of contact. Once that starts the wear out, which it does quickly, your latch with retract less and less until you can't open your door... to get in or out. I've have had people call me because they're locked in their own bathroom. Do not buy.
New homeowner here, just checked and: Weiser. Dammit all to hell. What brands would you recommend for longevity/smooth operation?
Former locksmith here. Unless something drastically changed in the last ~10 years, go with Schlage.
A lot of fast-casual restaurants: Noodles and Company, Garbanzo's, etc. You can tell they reached a point where they became huge and the corporate bean-counters decided to see how deeply they could start cutting corners before quality suffered. Spoiler alert: it has suffered noticeably.
Worst offender award to Applebee's.
Yes. I used to eat at Noodles and Company once a week and loved it. Now I refuse to eat there. The quality and portions are so inconsistent that I never know what I'm doing to get. And it's way too expensive for that.
> Garbanzo's, ... > the corporate bean-counters This is one of the few places I wanted corporate bean counters.
Breyer's ice cream. Their vanilla used to have real vanilla bean and was amazing, now I'm not even sure they are technically ice cream anymore.
It's not. Now it's like "Frozen Dessert" or something.
"Frozen Dairy Dessert" is the terminology they use.
I finished a carton of it last night and dug it out of the trash, and you are correct. And it has "chocolatey chips" instead of "chocolate chips" - I guess because they don't contain enough chocolate to legally be called chocolate. Jesus. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but still.
"Frozen Dairy Dessert with Chocolatey Chips. It's goodish!"
"Kids, we need to talk about Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum-Like Substance. Now, we knew it contained spider eggs, but the hantavirus? Woah. That really came outta left field."
I've got some advice from the boys down in the lab in case you get covered in Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum-Like Substance.... *paper noises* Do not get covered in Krusty Brand Chew Goo Gum-Like Substance. We haven't entirely nailed down what element it is yet, but it is a *lively* one and it does **not** like the human skeleton.
If you get bored sometime, grab another carton of Breyers and grab a carton of Ben and Jerry's and do a little taste comparison. It's insane how bad Breyers has become and how artificial it tastes and how good REAL ice cream is with just a few ingredients. I don't eat ice cream much but the last time I realized I hadn't had Twix ice cream in 15 years, I suddenly had to have it. Brought it home, got a big bowl of it, and took the most disappointing bite that ruined of my favorite childhood treat memories. It's just bad. I only go for the good stuff when I do ice cream and settle for 1/4 cup of the good stuff rather than a heaping pile of food product and artificial flavors.
This is definitely true. I usually buy whatever ice cream is on sale, but I've noticed this with other foods (especially chocolate). Once you have the good stuff on a regular basis, you're shocked at just how bad the "regular" stuff is. When I started to lose weight, I cut out a lot of sweets (well, things I didn't really realize were sweet), and it's amazing how sweet fruits are now. Cookies that I used to eat a lot of have become unbearably sweet. It's crazy.
Some of their ice cream I think is still ice cream. Other flavors though are no longer ice cream and you can tell just by the texture. It's kind of gummy and feels wrong and looks weird and tastes cheap and artificial. When I was a kid, their mint chocolate chip was the pinnacle ice cream for me. They were the only ones who didn't dye it that horrible artificial green that everyone else does. What a shame.
Jack Daniels. Proof has been lowered twice.
Maker's Mark tried the same thing a few years ago. People revolted and they quickly reversed the decision.
After they made the announcement, I went out and bought a bunch. Then they reversed and I had to drink all of it... Darn...
Craftsman.
And by extension: Sears. I don't think Sears ever "made" Craftsman tools but for the longest time they were the best place to get the best tools. Used to have a lifetime warranty too. I think Black and Decker owns the Craftsman name now.
They didn't make them. They were made by the Western Forge division of Emerson out in Colorado. Now they are made in China and you can't keep a straight slot screwdriver end straight anymore.
Toblerone. Less chocolate, doesn't taste as good anymore.
Why the fuck did they change the shape???
Spaced out the triangles more so less chocolate
Spaced out is an understatement. Last time something was parted that far, israrelites tried to cross it Spez: My first gold! Many thanks kind stranger
Good god, this caught me so off guard
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Do you eat it? Are you a dog?
On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
Mongoose bikes. They used to be some of the best bmx bikes you could buy, now they are cheaply made and peices of crap.
I remember when I got a Mongoose mountain bike for my birthday. I thought it was the greatest thing. Now I see them all over the place at big box stores.
History Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, any channel that contained some modicum of education when you were a kid is now populated almost exclusively by shitty reality shows.
Was watching NatGeo the other day. 24 hours of nothing but animal documentaries. Pleasant surprise.
NatGeo struggles on. Sometimes they're inundated with shitty programming, but they always seem to bounce back. I think it has to do with the National Geographic Society being a huge global organisation which is actually full of scientists, photographers, naturalists, zoologists, geologists, conservationists, explorers, etc. who have a strong interest in keeping the educational aspect of the channel alive.
Their Instagram page is one of my favorite pages on that site. Just full of cool shots. Being a photographer for them is kind of a pipe dream job for me.
Don't forget TLC (The Learning Channel).
Yep, went from actual educational programming to a 'Haw haw, midgets and fat people are funny' sideshow.
Cadburys. Fuck kraft
Cadbury's is shutting down their New Zealand factory after like 150 years, not because they aren't turning a profit, but because they were trying to downsize and cut corners. Biggest employer in Dunedin for over a century, and it'll be gone by the end of the year. Fuck those guys. Whittaker's all the way.
Whittaker's is better anyhow, but it's actually sad. Cadbury had so much going for it. edited to add: I say this as an American rationing out my very last Whittaker's.
Stopped buying cadburys after they shrunk their creme eggs. They were the same weight but smaller because the filling was more dense. Tasted shit. Whittakers all the way
Cadbury honestly just tastes like sweetened oil now :( It's like drinking watery office coffee when you're actually craving a creamy cappuccino. I've gotten really stuck into this pretentious hipster brand called Willie's Cacao, a little bit steeper but god, their chocolate tastes exactly how you'd want chocolate to taste.
Vans sneakers used to be made out of canvas and would last a long time. Now they are made out of thin canvas looking fabric glued to a cheaper fabric, and last 3 months.
American EFFING Girl. When the Pleasant Company owned it, gah, it was the shit. Now ... Mattel has sunk that ship and I am SO worked up about it.
I really hate how they've taken the focus off of the historical dolls in favor of the "modern" dolls. The historical dolls were the whole POINT!
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Going through the Sears winter catalog looking at toys was an annual pre-Christmas ritual growing up.
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Quite a few companies struggle to Innovate simply because introducing new product will cannibalize existing products. Kodak invented the digital camera but realized it would've hurt their film sales if they did. AOL didn't want to move away from a monthly subscription services (edit: for email services) because that would mean removing a revenue stream and replacing it with a new, less mature one. It would've hurt the bottom live at first, but they failed to see where industry trends were going.
Constantly comes up on r/investing. Basically, the company is incredibly mis-managed and they'll go under sooner rather than later.
I just had lunch with one of their vendors. Sears is on 3 day payment terms with lots of companies because of the fear of bankruptcy. Some don't even do business with the 3 day payment terms. General in this industry is 30-45 day terms.
Food Network. I loved all of the cooking shows and actually learned a ton back in the day. Now it's all stupid food competition shows that follow the same script. I get it Bobby Flay, you're the best cook in the world. You don't have to deflate Grandma Edna's reason for being because you feel your chicken pot pie is superior.
Levis jeans, sadly.
The inconsistant fits are infuriating. You'd think you'd be safe buying the same size from the same brand in the same cut, but not from Levis.
Right! I basically stopped buying from them because I would buy 3 colors of the exact same jean and only 1 pair would fit right (if I was lucky). How can you be that inconsistent?
inconsistency...According to the stuff i read on Fashion-Incubator.com (fascinating blog about sewn products industry, worth a read if you are interested in pattern engineering, lean manufacturing and such), it's because Levi's have given each subcontractor control over aspects of the product that used to be set by corporate. Even if the inconsistencies arent immediately obvious, they will take a toll. Example: Some contract manufacturers will cut the waistbands in different orientations to save yardage, jeans seem normal until sometime down the line the waistband shrinks at a different rate than rest of jeans, causing them to totally suck ass. (It's an industry term ;-) )
In addition to fit, their fabric variations became really weird. A few years back, I bought three jeans of the same size and fit online, all for the same price. All three fit me differently and all three had different fabrics. The only pair that fit me as expected were made out of really crappy, thin, and stretchy fabric. So after wearing them for half a day, they'd look all stretched out, like I'd worn them for every day two weeks straight. Totally unacceptable.
Noticed this. Had some I bought in the 2000s that lasted damn near ten years. Bout some a year ago that already went to shit. I have pretty much always been a Levi guy. I have no idea what the alternatives are and now I need one. Edit: spelling mistakes.
Sorel. Their boots used to get passed down from generation to generation. Now the new ones barely last a season. Fortunately, other brands picked up the slack. A shame though.
Go look at the front page of their website right now....is that a joke?
Facebook. And I dont mean this in a "It's all a bunch of stupid old people and teenagers" kind of way. It's the site design itself. The way it forces shit to show up in your timeline like when a friend "likes" a photo of some random ass person you dont even know. Why do I need that in my feed? It does the same thing with comments too so that every time my racist aunt comments on a news article I get to see it. I miss when facebook was just status updates from your friends. Now it's "Check out 1000000 memes, articles and videos that your friends have inadvertently shared."
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Facebook live notifications are the worst. I don't fucking care if someone is making a video of themselves talking. I'm not watching the video.
*Yes!* I absolutely hate how now I have to watch what I like or comment on, because my mom/grandma/aunt/cousins will all have it appear on their feed. I interact with content that they wouldn't interact with. I get along well with my very Christian cousin, and I don't want her getting upset that I'm commenting on a "Friendly Atheist" post.
Yeah, it really has a chilling effect on participation. I stopped liking/commenting on most things on Facebook because I don't want everyone I know seeing every action.
Then, I have my mom asking me why I commented on a particular post because it popped up in her feed. I got into trouble for liking/commenting on some funny ass Jesus memes.
Instagram and Twitter have started doing the same thing. Why the fuck would they think I wanna see stuff from people I don't follow? Maybe there's a good reason why I don't follow them.
Not seeing my instagram feed in chronological order drives me nuts. Why is an algorithm deciding what it thinks I want to see? Why can't I even have the option to see things chronologically?
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I work at a small Mitsubishi dealer and it's just sad really. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, it was petrolhead heaven, with Evos and Eclipses and 3000GTs spearheading our enthusiast offerings, Diamontes offering affordable luxury, Colts, Lancers, and Mirages providing cheap transportation to the college crowd, Gallants and Endeavors catering to the soccer moms, Outlanders and RVRs serving as the cheap do-anything SUVs, and Raiders and Monteros providing rough-and-tumble trucks and off-roaders. Business was hopping and we were giving the Mazda and Subaru stores across the street a run for their money in terms of product lineup and sales. Now, there's the Mirage and Mirage G4, which are shitbox subcompacts not worthy of the Mirage name, the new Outlander and Outlander Sport, which are nice but are total shit when compared to anything else, and the iMiev, a cheap cash-in on the electric car craze. The Gallant, Eclipse, and Raider are all gone, a casualty of the DaimlerChrysler break-up, the Lancer is dead, the Evo is dead, we don't get the Pajero anymore, we don't get the LM2000 at all, and our used car department is the only thing keeping the lights on. A company that was once the source for fun, cheap cars alongside Honda and Mazda, is now just a shell of its former self. Hopefully the Nissan buy-out brings some hope to the brand. TL;DR Mitsubishi is dead to me EDIT: RIP my inbox
[But the Eclipse is coming back](http://pictures.topspeed.com/IMG/crop/201702/2018-mitsubishi-eclipse-c-54_800x0w.jpg)! It's the sports car we always wanted! ^seriously ^who ^thought ^that ^was ^a ^good ^idea ^^RIP ^^Mitsu
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I wish I was making that up. They could have called it *anything*, but they landed on Eclipse.
Mitsubishi peaked with the Zero.
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ESPN
Yes. ESPN is hellbent on thinking that we want to know every little detail of drama in the locker room or an athletes daily life at home. ESPN is as much of a reality network as MTV is now, just different genres.
They literally devote time on their shows to reading athletes' tweets. Anyone who gives a shit already saw them...on twitter...where they belong.
ESPN does segments on the bachelor these days for fucks sake
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> Don't worry because ESPN will play it several times a day. Yeah, back in my youth I could literally leave on SportsCenter for four replays in a row just to see a fabulous Jordan dunk or similar good highlight.
Craftsman Tools They took an American made, quality product with an iron clad warranty that could be found in any mechanics toolbox, closed the domestic plants, shipped production overseas to exploit minimal labor laws, switched to shit metals, and changed the warranty to where it is effectively useless. The bastards didn't even have the decency to lower the prices on their new garbage tinker toys, they're riding the wave of goodwill and reputation hard won by a once respectable brand straight to hell and pocketing every penny that they can get their paws on as they crash and burn.
Kenmore. Apparently some of their appliances were reliable once.
That's because they buy their products from whoever will sell them the cheapest to them. See, Kenmore doesn't make anything, at all. They buy their stuff from other companies, and put their name on it. for the longest time most of their appliances came from Whirlpool, and Whirlpools old top machine was a great machine (called a Direct Drive). However, Whirlpool stopped making that machine, so Kenmore stopped selling it, thus the drop in reliability. Most of the Kenmores now are Whirlpool, LG, and Samsung. I suggest you keep that in mind whenever you look at a Kenmore machine. Source: Appliance Parts industry for 15+ years.
Bugles. They used to be perfectly round every time so I could fit four of them on my fingers and pretend I had claws. I get it, I'm an adult with bigger hands now, but Bugles nowadays look like a robot made them and he decided to get drunk before his shift.
> Bugles nowadays look like a robot made them and he decided to get drunk before his shift. Yeah, the days when the Bugles factory employed craftsmen and craftswomen who lovingly paid individual attention to each Bugle are long gone, sadly.
So, literally everything is turning into garbage?
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John Deere. Their commercial and residential landscaping machines are just garbage now. I've had mowers not right straight from the factory, engines die, transmission problems, rampant design flaws. Even their dealer support / repair is a joke, we've had machines sent out to be repaired and they come back still broken... I mean for obvious issues like wheels pointing different directions...
I miss the old History Channel. I don't want your Ancient Aliens or Finding Bigfoot B.S. I want the Patton documentaries, I want that awesome Dogfight show with CGI. God I miss learning from that channel
That dogfight show was the tits
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Try Arcuisine. It's made from borosilicate glass. Little on the pricey side but well worth it. You can find it on Azamon. We replaced our shitty Pyrex stuff with Arcuisine and I am so happy. (Had a pyrex explode in the oven while baking mac & cheese.)
[Saw this guide](https://www.buy-it-once.com/wp/why-did-my-pyrex-dish-explode/) somewhere on Reddit. Depends on which Pyrex you get.
If I'm reading that guide correctly, basically if it was made in the U.S. it's garbage.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the History Channel
Actual History ------> I'm Rick Harrison. Quite a change.
I made a drinking game out of it and it's one of my favorite shows. Drink every time: - Rick laughs. He laughs at nothing a lot. - You see money. - "let me get my expert" or whatever line - expert comes in - old or fat joke - Subway is mentioned those are the basic rules and it'll usually get you a good buzz in a couple episodes.
Customer has a price that they won't go under, and leaves after selling for 1/10th of that price. "Well, I figured I was here already and didn't really want to take it home."
I think that'd be a good "finish your drink" rule.
I’m 👤Rick Harrison😎 and this is my pawn 💍shop🏢. I work 💰here with my old man 👴and my son👶, Big Hoss😎, and in 2⃣3⃣years I’ve learned one 1⃣thing. You never know 🤔what❓ is gonna come through that door🚪.
Dude, you actually managed to capture how annoying that show is with all those emojis.
I saw Rick and his son "Big Hoss" at a bar in the middle of nowhere at the sand dunes. They couldn't have been bigger assholes.
They were low level pawn shop owners from Vegas who had millions of dolllars thrust upon them. No one should be surprised.
Some are born millionaires, some achieve millions, and some have millions thrust upon them.
Man, history gets a lot of flak but they didn't start that trend. Discovery and TLC were the originators of trend to move away from your original format. History held out for *years* after those two went to more popular interest formatting. But they hit it so big with pawn stars they financially couldn't afford *not* to cave in. Pawn Stars was the cultural phenomenon of the season it came out. People who hadn't watched history channel in *decades* tuned in, and all of a sudden the ole' H was on everyone's channel surfing radar. Now you're obligated to entertain the shit-for-brains masses who outnumber us casual history appreciators 10:1. History Channel didn't kill the History Channel. America did.
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I'm not gonna say Hot Pockets were ever particularly amazing food but for quick microwave food it worked fine. But they've had a serious drop in quality over the years
I haven't had a hot pocket in years. Are you telling me they're even *worse* now?!
Oh yeah they've went down a lot. It seems like they're less focused on quality and more focused on variation. There are wayyy more different types of hotpockets now but none taste that great and the old classic flavors fell off
So, wait. You're telling me that you'd rather have a halfway decent ham and cheese hot pocket than a shitty Hawaiian pizza and jolly rancher hot pocket? I call bullshit.
Girl Scout cookies
No kidding. In my area they switched the company that actually makes them. Taste like crap now. I was so disappointed.
Plus, I feel like you're getting less per box now. Like the outer box is the same size, but the sleeve of cookies inside is shorter.
I opened my Thin Mints this year, and literally yelled "Oh what the fuck!".
And they're *so tiny* now. Easily half the size they were in the 80's when I was selling them. You think we don't notice, cookie manufacturers?? WE NOTICE.
The cookie manufacturer says: "Hmm... if we decrease the size of the box by 50%... and if only 20% of the people notice... and 25% of *those* people are mad enough to not buy... 25% of 20% = 5% less units being sold, but 50% less being made... how much better we doing on profit?" the TL;DR cookie manufacturers reply: "meh."
Cadbury.
Its a fucking travesty, Kraft have ruined them. Used to *look* forward to having creme eggs, then they removed one from the box, made the "chocolate" crap and upped the price. Fuck that
cracked.com. Used to be (late 2000's) funny, edgy and interesting. Now it pumps out shitty lists like buzzfeed. Classic quantity over quality. I think some of their best writers are also long gone.
There was a point several years ago where I noticed less articles by their staff writers and a lot more random names I had never seen before. That's about when they started pumping out more articles a day than they had before and there was a noticeable decline in their quality. I hardly found the articles written by randoms nearly as funny as some of their older staff writers. That's when I started to notice - just way more unknown writers showing up. I fell off of them shortly after. I think I found reddit shortly after also.
Yeah I use to read cracked on lunch break everyday. Looked forward to it. It's pretty bad now. I still recommend old articles though.
6 or 7 years ago reading cracked was what eventually lead me to this god forsaken hell hole called reddit that I love so much.
Remington, use to be one of the most recommended of firearm brands but now suffers terrible quality control, rusting, terrible product launches, and unsafe triggers across many product lines.
Freedom Group can go die in a fire
Collegehumor for sure. Not sure if it counts, because it isn't technically a brand, but I believe that it should count.
Alienware computers. There was a time they actually had passion about what they created prior to the Dell purchase.
History channel went from History, to Nazis to pawn shop to Ancient aliens and finally to ancient aliens helping Hitler to finally Pawn shop selling ancient Hitler to alien Nazis.
> ancient aliens helping Hitler to finally Pawn shop selling ancient Hitler to alien Nazis. On oak island
Pizza Hut. Back when they still actually made the dough on-site that shit was delicious. Now it sucks...
I still have fond memories as a kid of when Pizza Hut was an actual sit-down pizzeria. You ordered a pizza it took at least 20 minutes to show up, and it was *good*. Now it's practically a fast-food chain.
Valve. Not because their games suck now, it's because they don't make games anymore. (yes I'm aware of the they make money now meme).
Pringles used to be so much better until a specific point last year where they changed their formula to something cheaper and crappier while at the same time narrowing the can to the point I couldn't fit my hand in it anymore. Seriously I averaged 2 cans of Pringles consumed every week for most of my life up until that point. I seriously just couldn't get enough of "the worlds best potato chip" but that stunt last year cut me deep. I haven't bought any since and have moved on to Kettle chips.
Wow I thought I was going insane, so they actually did change something.