# Bad brands **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337 "2011-07-26T00:53:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/21 "2011-07-26T16:29:29Z")
[quote=“Brown\_Eyed\_Girl, post:15, topic:590337”] [li]_Chock Full O’ Nuts._ There is bad and then there is CFON. The worst.[/li][/QUOTE] Remember those godawful TV commercials where his wife sang the little jingle in costume? (Lightbulb) I’m off to youtube to look for it! Edit: well, that was easy. Enjoy. Or Cringe. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/W8ySFm18_dU/hqdefault.jpg "chock full o nuts classic tv commercial") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8ySFm18_dU) ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/22 "2011-07-26T16:33:31Z")
> [@Wheelz](#): > > Chevrolet. > > Cheap, flimsy cars. Every Chevy I’ve ever driven felt ready to fly apart at any moment. > A local dealer had some cars on display at a July 4th festival, and I went for a closer look at the new Camaro. IMO, they _look_ awesome, and I wondered if maybe, being a muscle car and all, they build them to a higher standard than their other models. I placed my hands on the door to lean forward and look inside, and felt the interior door panel wobbling loose under my fingertips. Pure crap. > ETA: I’m not a car snob. I drive a low-end Dodge, nothing fancy. But the door panels stay put and it’s a dependable, solidly built car. That’s all most people want and Chevy doesn’t deliver it. And they haven’t delivered it since the late 60’s, in my opinion. . ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/23 "2011-07-26T16:38:48Z")
**Bimbo White Bread.** [Yes, really](http://bimbobakeriesusa.com/). Their slogan is “Say Beem-bo,” and any brand that has to tell you how to pronounce its name is already in trouble. Their white bread makes Wonder Bread seem flavorful. They’re also the parent company for Thomas’ English Muffins, Entemann’s, Arnold, and Freihofer’s (still the makers of the best store chocolate chip cookies in the world), all far superior. I agree about Mt. Olive – nothing they make is worth bothering with. But Cain’s is even worse, actually I’ve never tasted anything by them that was worth putting into my mouth. Their pickles have no other flavor other than vinegar. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/24 "2011-07-26T16:40:53Z")
Mt Olive? That’s what Popeye does. The brand I won’t go near is [Hartz.](http://www.pets-haven.com/hartz_products.htm) ---
**Author:** ![I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Am_The_Lorax)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/25 "2011-07-26T16:55:04Z")
> [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](#): > > From my list of **Brands I Will Not Buy** : > [ul] > [li]_Chock Full O’ Nuts._ There is bad and then there is CFON. The worst.[/li] > [/ul] I guess my extreme loyalty cancels your extreme avoidance. I think it’s the best. Reasonably priced, too. If I’m going to spend two hours watching a movie, it’s not going to be Disney. I got stuck watching tween shows on the Disney Channel in a waiting room recently and there’s nothing to recommend there, either. I know, that stuff’s made for kids, not me, but even kids can find better things to watch. Mine do. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/26 "2011-07-26T17:08:40Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > **Bimbo White Bread.** [Yes, really](http://bimbobakeriesusa.com/). Their slogan is “Say Beem-bo,” and any brand that has to tell you how to pronounce its name is already in trouble. Their white bread makes Wonder Bread seem flavorful. They’re also the parent company for Thomas’ English Muffins, Entemann’s, Arnold, and Freihofer’s (still the makers of the best store chocolate chip cookies in the world), all far superior. Bimbo is a huge Mexican baked good conglomerate and is also the parent of Mrs. Baird’s bread, which is a staple in Texas, and is still about the same as it’s ever been, as far as I can tell. They must make cruddier bread under their own name and position the Mrs. Baird’s as the premium brand (which it’s been for decades). ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/27 "2011-07-26T17:38:48Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > Remember those godawful TV commercials where his wife sang the little jingle in costume? > > (Lightbulb) I’m off to youtube to look for it! > Edit: well, that was easy. Enjoy. Or Cringe. > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8ySFm18\_dU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8ySFm18_dU) I don’t remember those. Thankfully. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/28 "2011-07-26T17:45:25Z")
> [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](#): > > I guess my extreme loyalty cancels your extreme avoidance. I think it’s the best. Reasonably priced, too. The best of what? It’s obvious that the beans aren’t sorted for quality and aren’t roasted uniformly. Most of their product, including the Original CfoN which I’m familiar with, is comprised of the more bitter and less complex in flavor Robusta variety, which is one of the reasons the coffee is significantly cheaper. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/29 "2011-07-26T17:57:03Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Bimbo is a huge Mexican baked good conglomerate and is also the parent of Mrs. Baird’s bread, which is a staple in Texas, and is still about the same as it’s ever been, as far as I can tell. They must make cruddier bread under their own name and position the Mrs. Baird’s as the premium brand (which it’s been for decades). Well, Bimbo bought Mrs. Baird’s, which had been an independent company started by Mrs. Baird and her family. She baked and her kids (possibly only her sons) delivered the bread on their bikes. I seem to remember that she was a widow, and needed to earn money for her family, but it’s been quite some time since I took the tour of the factory. ---
**Author:** ![howye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9adbd/32.png) [@howye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/howye)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/30 "2011-07-26T18:17:32Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Well, Bimbo bought Mrs. Baird’s, which had been an independent company started by Mrs. Baird and her family. She baked and her kids (possibly only her sons) delivered the bread on their bikes. I seem to remember that she was a widow, and needed to earn money for her family, but it’s been quite some time since I took the tour of the factory. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. That factory tour was a staple of summer daycare. Every year. Then we went to the science museum! If I ever saw Texas Pete hot sauce on a table in a mexican restaurant, well I wouldn’t run away but I would have doubts about coming back. It doesn’t fit the flavor profile of the many readily available mexican or tex-mex sauces. Anyhoo, my personal brand distaste is for American Airlines and their willingness to go above and beyond to treat someone traveling on frequent flyer miles like crap. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/31 "2011-07-26T18:32:59Z")
I guess I’m a contrarian, too: My Chevy Astro has 280k miles and is still going strong, needing only a bit of minor maintenance: the passenger window has “jumped” off track, and I need to replace the shocks. Hubby’s truck has far fewer miles, but has been virtually trouble-free for almost 10 years, and is very solidly built. (I hit a deer last month. 45 mph, at least. Tiny little ding in the front bumper.) Chock Full of Nuts has been my go-to cheap coffee for years. I think it’s much more flavorful and less bitter than most major brands. And I like Mt. Olive hamburger dill chips. I should add, though, that there’s a certain “cheap pickle” quality that only goes well with burgers. For any other type of pickle, I like a local-ish brand called Roddenberry’s. (And not just for the geeky family association!) Brands I flatly won’t buy due to poor quality? Any iced tea bag except Luzianne. Jennie O. Boar’s Head deli meats and Starbucks coffee (vastly overrated, imho.) Dell computers. But that’s just based on my experiences. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/32 "2011-07-26T18:52:13Z")
Anything Black and Decker. Lousy tools, lousy appliances… Oddly, Black and Decker (the company) owns Delta, DeWalt, and Porter-Cable, which all make very good tools. But Black and Decker (the brand) is just a badge slapped onto cheap shit. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/33 "2011-07-26T19:04:05Z")
I’ve had spectacularly bad luck with iOmega, so much so that I finally swore off the company. First, it was _three_ ZipDrives dying with the “click of death.” Why did I keep buying ZipDrives? I have no fucking clue. There was no better solution for me at the time, or I didn’t consider better solutions. I’ve had so much data (well, a minuscule amount compared to today’s storage capacities) destroyed by those disks. On the other hand, it taught me the importance of backing everything up. So, many years later, I bought a 1 TB terraserver by iOmega, as that was the most cost-effective solution, and I though perhaps it was just the Zip Drives I had issues with. Of course, that went down within 6 months. I suspect my data was still fine on the drives, or possibly recoverable, but the terraserver itself just would no longer mount on my computer, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it. This time, though, even though I had it set up as a RAID5, I was smart enough not to treat the fact it was a RAID5 as a backup solution, so I had everything backed up on regular hard drives and didn’t lose any information. I’m also done with RAID5, as I don’t need to maintain constant server uptime, and the better solution for what I was trying to accomplish is simple mirroring. No more iOmega products for me. Now, it is completely possible I’m the victim of bad luck. But they got four strikes from me, and I think that’s more than enough. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/34 "2011-07-26T21:00:11Z")
Buddig sliced meat. It’s the el cheapo brand of “deli” meats. Had to eat it a lot when I was a kid, well, because of the cheapo thing. Tried it as an adult to verify it was still the same. So I avoid it like the plague. ---
**Author:** ![Bri2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/48db29/32.png) [@Bri2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bri2k)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/35 "2011-07-26T21:36:15Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Buddig sliced meat. It’s the el cheapo brand of “deli” meats. Had to eat it a lot when I was a kid, well, because of the cheapo thing. Tried it as an adult to verify it was still the same. So I avoid it like the plague. +100 I tried this stuff once when I was out of work. Roadkill would’ve been a better choice. Bri2k ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/36 "2011-07-26T21:49:41Z")
The Bimbo posts remind me similarly of the Mexican brand [_Fud_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD_(food)). They are all over the place around here, they are cheap as dirt, and they taste not much better. ---
**Author:** ![Suil\_Dubh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85f322/32.png) [@Suil\_Dubh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suil_Dubh)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/37 "2011-07-26T22:08:29Z")
**Sony** , specifically for the “Sony Timer” effect. This is when your stereo, PC, TV, whatever mysteriously breaks, stops working, or just otherwise give up the ghost one or two months after the warranty expires. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/38 "2011-07-26T23:03:31Z")
Nalley’s products: Mayo: thin, gluey goo Pickles: tasteless and tough Chili: dog food Potato Chips: too thin, rancid tasting ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2011, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/39 "2011-07-27T00:11:34Z")
Just happened to have a jar of Mt. Olive dill slices in the fridge; I tried one after reading this thread. Tastes like a pickle to me. Can’t think of too many brands I avoid. Maybe HP. Also Ragu spaghetti sauce. Oh yeah; Nestle’s chocolate is blech. And Kraft cheese is tasteless. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2011, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337/40 "2011-07-27T00:49:27Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Bimbo is a huge Mexican baked good conglomerate and is also the parent of Mrs. Baird’s bread, which is a staple in Texas, and is still about the same as it’s ever been, as far as I can tell. They must make cruddier bread under their own name and position the Mrs. Baird’s as the premium brand (which it’s been for decades). I believe Bimbo’s owns the Entemann’s OroWheat bakeries in the Bay Area also - at least the bakery thrift stores I used to go to carried Bimbos. The only think I bought of theirs was a wonderful powdered sugar covered little snack. I never bought CFoN, but when I worked in New York I was a regular customer of their lunch counters, which were great. As for airlines, it is more what few brands are good. Southwest. Maybe Jet Blue - my kids like it, but I’ve never flown on it. Virgin? The rest are crap, especially Northworst. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-brands/590337.md?page=3)