Examples of "new and improved" products which are/were anything but...

[yorksrob]

I suggest checking your TV aerial cable connectors, they could be corroded from the weather.

That's a you thing. Worked fine for me when I still had a TV and gave me HD content which definitely was improved (if not necessarily new).

Strictly speaking it's a "my parents" thing. I've only streamed for a few years now.

I get the impression it's a bit of a postcode lottery i.e. if you're the wrong side of a hill etc.

 

[DelayRepay]

Lucozade (sp?) since they reduced the sugar. Mind you, I can still remember when it had a sort of medical value to build up strength and came in a cellophane wrapper. The doctor used to pour it down the sink saying ‘it only feeds the germs’.

Edit: in fact I’m sure its slogan was ‘Lucozade - Aids recovery’ so that shows how long ago that was.

When I was a kid, my mum used to use Lucozade as a medicine. It was only purchased if someone was ill and they were encouraged to drink it to build their strength up. As a result I always thought of it as a sort of medical product and when I got a bit older I was quite surprised to see small bottles being sold alongside other soft drinks in the supermarkets as part of their meal deals.

Another one for the list - most Heinz products. They've all reduced their sugar/salt content over the years. The new products may be healthier, but they don't taste the same.

 

[RuralRambler]

Caused in part by a global Cocoa shortage which has sent the price of the raw ingredients sky rocketing, and we still face the risk of future shortages of Cocoa. It was either reduce the content or increase the price, and large price increases don’t work well for ‘treat’ products and impulse purchases.

There's a lot of "padding" in prices of choc bars etc (and crisps & fizzy drinks). The RRP of a kit kat is something like 75p but they often have 4 packs for a pound. If prices rocket, they may struggle with the multipacks but really won't need to increase RRP of single items as it's mostly profit anyway. (And no, they don't make a loss on the multipacks - that's the "real" price point as it's where most quantity is sold - they make "super profit" on the relatively small proportion of items sold singly.)

 

[BrokenSam]

Lucozade (sp?) since they reduced the sugar. Mind you, I can still remember when it had a sort of medical value to build up strength and came in a cellophane wrapper. The doctor used to pour it down the sink saying ‘it only feeds the germs’.

Edit: in fact I’m sure its slogan was ‘Lucozade - Aids recovery’ so that shows how long ago that was.

This...everyday.

 

[yorksrob]

Another one for the list - most Heinz products. They've all reduced their sugar/salt content over the years. The new products may be healthier, but they don't taste the same.

This is so true - and entirely counter-productive !

 

[SargeNpton]

Edit: in fact I’m sure its slogan was ‘Lucozade - Aids recovery’ so that shows how long ago that was.

Allegedly, the "aids recovery" slogan was deleted when AIDS became a thing and some people thought that Lucozade was a treatment for it.

 

[Butts]

All Cigarette Brands have had their Tar and Nicotine levels reduced over the years which affects the flavour and strength.

 

[gingerheid]

Second (or third or fourth) Lucozade. The clue is in the name. If I drink it I'm wanting a sugar hit...

 

[Trackman]

All Cigarette Brands have had their Tar and Nicotine levels reduced over the years which affects the flavour and strength.

They done a similar thing with beer recently I've been reading. 'New and improved' Stella now 4.6% from 4.9% and to quote 'which the customers wanted', Becks (which I like) 4.5% from 5% and the relaunch of the new 'Grolsch Premium Pilsner' again from 5% to 4.5%.
I wouldn't mind, they are selling it at the same price and saving money on duty, especially in Wales and Scotland.

 

[SteveM70]

Excel

Seems to me the more recent upgrades are far more about how it looks and feels rather than adding additional functionality. Which of course means relearning where everything is and how to do stuff

 

[prod_pep]

Absolutely agree with Lucozade getting a mention, particularly original flavour. It was my favourite drink prior to the sugar tax-dodging reformulation (yes, I drank far too much of it) but now it is undrinkable, chemically sludge. Honourable mention to Ribena too for ruining theirs in a similar way.

 

[RHolmes]

Tizer is another soft drink that has massively changed in taste since the removal of sugar

I’d argue that the Mini clubman and Mini Countryman could also fall into this category as poor improvements on the modern (2000+) BMW Mini Cooper

 

[Bayum]

The ‘improved’ taste of Coke Zero has been widely condemned.

 

[najaB]

The ‘improved’ taste of Coke Zero has been widely condemned.

Yet I rather prefer it to Coke with sugar. I rarely drink the latter now, if there's a choice.

 

[Bayum]

Yet I rather prefer it to Coke with sugar. I rarely drink the latter now, if there's a choice.

I’m the same. I go out of my way to get the decaf version. Interestingly, I can taste the tones of cinnamon etc better with the Coke Zero Zero than ‘normal’ decaf coke.

 

[Geezertronic]

I’d argue that the Mini clubman and Mini Countryman could also fall into this category as poor improvements on the modern (2000+) BMW Mini Cooper

Don't start, you'll get the Classic Mini guys going

I say that as someone who has owned a couple of Austin Minis, a Rover (rustbox) Mini, and BMW MINIs of R53 Cooper S, and currently have an R55 & R56 JCWs

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Absolutely agree with Lucozade getting a mention, particularly original flavour. It was my favourite drink prior to the sugar tax-dodging reformulation (yes, I drank far too much of it) but now it is undrinkable, chemically sludge. Honourable mention to Ribena too for ruining theirs in a similar way.

Another vote for this one. The "sugar tax" might well have been brought in with good intentions but the decision making at some manufacturers in terms of their response has been utterly daft. Lucozade especially, as the sugar content was its main raison d'etre. I have no doubt that changing the recipe (as opposed to raising the price a tiny amount) will have cost them revenue.

Funny how in a few years we've gone from the ONLY sugar-free option being diet coke, to many places having no sugared options at all. As someone with type-1 diabetes, a happy medium would be preferred.

 

[trebor79]

Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate. As most milk chocolate is essentially a combination of fairly simple ingredients, it is widely thought that since the company's takeover in 2009, Cadbury's must have since gone for cheaper ingredients by lowering the amount of cocoa butter and increasing either the amount of sugar or maybe more vegetable fat instead of milk fat to compensate. The result being that it doesn't taste as good as it previously once did.

Simple ingredients, but chocolate is quite a technical product to make, and it's not just mass of ingredients that are important. For example, when I worked in the sugar industry chocolate manufacturers would complain if the particle size of the sugar was too small (something we usually charged more for!) because for reasons I don't fully understand that meant they had to use more cocoa butter in the mix, thereby making the chocolate more expensive to produce.

Galaxy seem to have gone the same way unfortunately with the taste

Galaxy was always rubbish IMV, I always preferred Dairy Milk. Galaxy always seemed to brittle and rather tasteless to me, though I haven't tried it for years.

 

[yorksrob]

Galaxy over Dairy milk for me I'm afraid.

 

[najaB]

Galaxy over Dairy milk for me I'm afraid.

Depends very much on mood. Galaxy is much smoother and creamier but Dairy Milk is more chocolatey.

 

[A0wen]

Strictly speaking it's a "my parents" thing. I've only streamed for a few years now.

I get the impression it's a bit of a postcode lottery i.e. if you're the wrong side of a hill etc.

It's most likely an old aerial where the connectors and cables have deteriorated. It just so happens that quite alot of the digital problems occurred because of poor aerials - with many people forgetting those aerials had been in situ when people switched to UHF TV transmissions from VHF ones - which was primarily between 1970 and 1980. Some of the installations even re-used the cabling which had been put in place for VHF aerials which had been installed in the 50s or 60s.

DTV signals now are usually as good as if not better than the analogue ones which preceded them - but aerials do need to be maintained, which everyone seems to forget. Sky dishes also fail after a time - usually water ingress into the LNB (the thing on the end of the dish) or the cable.

In term of poorer products - any of the gloss paints which are water based rather than spirit based - not only do they not give such a good finish, the white one tends to discolour to a cream / yellow, which the spirit based ones didn't.

I’d argue that the Mini clubman and Mini Countryman could also fall into this category as poor improvements on the modern (2000+) BMW Mini Cooper

That really wasn't a Mini - it was a Chrysler engined BMW - which was a good enough reason to never buy one. Two companies who's stewardship of parts of the British motor industry was nothing short of disastrous.

 

[najaB]

In term of poorer products - any of the gloss paints which are water based rather than spirit based - not only do they not give such a good finish, the white one tends to discolour to a cream / yellow, which the spirit based ones didn't.

I'm with you on the white not staying as brilliant for as long, but I've got just as good a finish as with spirit-based paint but had to adjust my technique and tools. In my experience they work better with an applicator than with a brush.

 

[Geezertronic]

Galaxy was always rubbish IMV, I always preferred Dairy Milk. Galaxy always seemed to brittle and rather tasteless to me, though I haven't tried it for years.

I used to work at Laburnum House office located effectively within the car park of Cadbury World so frequently had to get the train to Bournville, and on the walk round the Cadbury buildings to the office the smell of Dairy Milk did get a bit too much

 

[Strat-tastic]

I used to work at Laburnum House office located effectively within the car park of Cadbury World so frequently had to get the train to Bournville, and on the walk round the Cadbury buildings to the office the smell of Dairy Milk did get a bit too much

Through the bird cage....
#Nostalgia

 

[PeterY]

Some examples of products which have been "new, improved and/or reformulated" over the years, supposedly as an improvement, but which were anything but...
Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate. As most milk chocolate is essentially a combination of fairly simple ingredients, it is widely thought that since the company's takeover in 2009, Cadbury's must have since gone for cheaper ingredients by lowering the amount of cocoa butter and increasing either the amount of sugar or maybe more vegetable fat instead of milk fat to compensate. The result being that it doesn't taste as good as it previously once did.

Any other examples out there of improvements gone wrong...

I used to love Cadbury's chocolate but since the take-over, the recipe has certainly changed. If I eat it now, my poor ol' stomach starts making some weird noises . If I do eat chocolate now, it's usually Lindor.

 

[trebor79]

I used to love Cadbury's chocolate but since the take-over, the recipe has certainly changed. If I eat it now, my poor ol' stomach starts making some weird noises . If I do eat chocolate now, it's usually Lindor.

Lindor or Ritter Sport are Mt favourites at the moment. Or Willie's Cacao if I'm being very indulgent.

 

[GALLANTON]

Borrowed from one of the other General threads, when Kelloggs added little marshmallow pieces to Ricicles.

Ricicles with marshmallows were absolutely horrific.

 

[Bevan Price]

"Highway Improvement Schemes". These usually mean more traffic lights, more road humps, and other things that increase congestion, increase journey times, and sometimes make things less safe. (e.g. poorly phased lights where it becomes almost impossible to make legal right turns because there is too much bunching of traffic coming in the opposite direction)

 

[xotGD]

The Northern timetable, a couple of years ago. A real improvement!

 

[Butts]

Galaxy over Dairy milk for me I'm afraid.

Nestle Milky Bar or Dairy Crunch eclipse both