The Ford Mustang. What, in 1994 the average Mustang driver shrank by seven inches in height and amputated his left arm ? Maybe it’s his shrunkenness and lopsided dexterity that make him overlook the squinty taillights.
Opera 7. By far the best feature of Opera is the ability to open new screens within the application instead of as separate taskbar sessions. So in Opera 7, here’s a great new feature… by default the product no longer does so but instead works messily like IE6 !
Campbell’s chicken noodle soup: Used to have thick noodles and now they are thin and wimpy and very unsatisfying. It’s the only thing I’ve ever started a Pit thread about.
Replacing real paint with “latex” crap.
Barcodes instaed of labels - sorry, I don’t read blips - I want to know just what the hell it is I’m buying, if you don’t mind…
For you old folks - PhisoHex (sp) - best anti-bacterial scrub out there. Gone.
“Child-proof” anything - if you can’t keep the stuff out of reach, you deal with it - I really don’t need the hassle.
De-regulated airlines. (a whole friggin’ rant on that one alone!)
Plastic water pipe. ANY plastic water pipe - the crap’s not fit for sprinklers.
Alpo dog food - remember Lorne Greene telling us that it was “100% beef and beef by-products”? Now, it’s cereal.
APX photo format - yet another attempt to screw with emulsion area - just like 110, 126, 127, and my favorite idiot idea “disk”!
Vitasoy Soy Drink,
I used to just love the texture and flavor of this, especially the carbo flavor, until they changed the formula. Who in the world thought this new formula was a change for the better??? I sent them an email asking about it, and they informed me that “consumers” had requested a change, or something to that effect. I obviously wasn’t one of those consumers.
I don’t eat at Jack In The Box any more.
They have a bad habit of introducing terrific, scrumptious new tasty treats, right? Delicious food at a good price? And then when you decide you like it…
I remember when they introduced “Meals In A Box.” I liked them. You could get a tasty entree, a side dish, and a little salad, complete with a cherry tomato! And the price was right! And they came in several varieties!
I ate those at least once a week for quite some time. And then I went through a period of unemployment, and I did not eat out for a few months.
I came back one day, flush and respectable again, and I ordered a Chicken Strip Meal In A Box.
It came back shy two chicken strips, light on the steak fries, and with a rather pathetic looking salad. I complained. The manager explained to me that these meals were dictated by corporate policy… and that they had cut back on the contents of ALL of them a while back. Sorry.
Since then, I have seen Jack In The Box do this with nearly every new menu item they ever add. It’s big, it’s tasty, it’s cheap!
…and then, one day, you show up and you order one… and it’s smaller, and it’s not as good, and it’s the same price or more.
I don’t eat at Jack In The Box any more…
Why oh why must they continue to mess with Pop Tarts??
They are now half the size they used to be. Of course, they have tried to hide this fact by giving you 8 Tarts instead of 6.
Plus, there is definitely not as much filling in them, either!!
Aargh!!!
Nice keyboard, but we had to have them in our departmental computer room. Guaranteed “Help! Computer’s broken!” when somebody unknowingly hit the REMAP key.
My beef is with the “Scrubbing Bubbles” cleaner. I’ve noticed they’re not working as hard as they used to.
I love Club Cracker bars. I used to make them twice a month, easy. That was back when Club crackers came in graham-cracker-sized sheets. Now Club Cracker bars only come in little sleeves a la Ritz and it takes for freakin’ EVER to line those little bastards up on the jelly roll pan.
Yes, I’m bitter.
Recipe please, Chique?
Line a jelly roll pan with those stupid Club crackers.
Mix and boil over medium heat:
2 c coconut
2 c brown sugar
2 c (one package, IIRC) smashed graham crackers
1 c melted butter
1/2 c milk
Cook for about 8 minutes or until the mixture sort of starts pulling away from the pan (you’ll know it when you see it). Pour over the crackers, then arrange another layer of those stupid Club crackers on top. Frost with:
1 c powdered sugar
6 T milk
6 T butter
Boil for a minute, add 1/2 c chocolate chips, beat til spreadable.
Oh, I’m sorry - I forgot the ‘stir constantly’ bit.
STIR CONSTANTLY. Don’t leave the stove for a SECOND while it’s cooking.
Hasn’t Twix always had caramel? The commercials always showed the layering - the cookie, then the caramel, then the chocolate. 
Gotta disagree re: Airline issue, HappyHeathen. Even as flawed as it was (more on that in a moment), it did the greatest good for the greatest number: vastly expanded service at vastly cheaper prices. Sure, flying now is a little less romantic than taking Greyhound, but people can afford it as never before.
The three costs:
Small markets. I know this one first-hand. My grandmother lived in Fargo, North Dakota, where ticket prices remained largely unchanged while larger, more competitive markets saw them drop through the floor. Before deregulation, airlines basically charged by distance. Now they charge by what the market will bear, and they’ve noticed that smaller markets will bear more because they have fewer choices. Sucks, but that’s simple reality: flight from the countryside continues apace, leaving less and less for the people who remain. (BTW, really small markets actually get federal subsidies to keep air service. And Fargo’s growing, so it wasn’t as bad as many paces.)
Bad antitrust enforcement. This one I also know firsthand, because I attended college near Minneapolis. During the Reagan administration, doctrinaire antitrust types misunderstood how airline markets work. I’m pro-market myself, but I don’t think you advance market benefits by handing over local monopolies and effective duopolies, which is exactly what the Reagan transportation department did when it approved the Northwest/Republic (Minneapolis & Detroit), TWA/Ozark (St. Louis), and USAir/Piedmont (Charlotte, Pittsburgh) mergers. (I almost wrote murders, which is telling…) In each of these cases, fares from these airports went up substantially, and these airlines did everything they could to prevent startups from coming in. Bad, bad, bad. The only way an airline should end up controlling an airport is if it buys the whole goddamn thing, which is something several antitrust authorities only realized after the fact.
Complexity. I see this as mostly a good thing, although it does make pricing more difficult to understand. Essentially, the airlines discovered a way to measure each individual’s price point - business people, who needed flexibility, were willing pay through the nose, and leisure travelers were willing to make a few sacrifices in exchange for cheap tickets. Under a flat price system, people who don’t want something very badly end up subsidizing those who do - if I’m only willing to spend $12 for Madonna’s new CD (its price at Walmart), I effectively subsidize someone who’d be happy to pay $40. Airlines found a way to switch price tags as the person approaches the CD bin. Spiffy.
And of course it ended up falling apart when suddenly business travelers turned all stingy. So now everybody’s trying to resort the business model, which is the most difficult for those that have the worst labor relations. That means turmoil, but that’s all creative destruction, you know?
But on the whole, many millions of people are able to go to many more places, and that justifies the costs, IMHO.
Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup
It used to be thick and actually tasted like chocolate. It came in a can, and it was a pain in the ass keeping the outside of the can clean, plus it was so thick it took forever to pour out. But it was oh so YUMMY!
Now it’s in a squeeze bottle, and thin and runny for easier squeezability.
I agree with the Trix. And there used to be little Hershey’s chocolate milk in a box, like a juice box. I loved that stuff, I drank it all the time. And then they changed it to chocolate malt flavor, which totally ruined it.
When did they take the almonds off the top of the Fifth Avenue bar? When I was a kid not too many eons ago, it had two almonds on top, but when I picked one up the other day, they were gone.
Not their choice. The hexochlorphene in pHisoHex was nasty stuff.
It’s also carcinogenic.
pHisoHes can still be found, but not over the counter.
Dark Writer
I think it was Twix. IIRC, the original version was just a cookie covered in chocolate.
Yes, I know. Have you ever seen a skin that looked like a normal window? I want something similar to the old win98 CD-player window. Normal widgets, nothing fancy. I want it to take its properties (border width, title bar size, colours) from the OS settings. I’ve looked. I stopped looking many moons ago.
Don’t make me create my own skin to reproduce the look and feel of every other window on my desktop. That should be standard.
I would like to add: keyboards in general. Does anyone use those dumbass Windows keys? Do those keys do anything EXCEPT yank you out of your game when you accidentally hit them? I see no purpose for them except to advertise Windows. I don’t know anyone that uses the stupid things. I’m not one of these “Microsoft is of the Debbil” people, but the keyboards get o n my nerves and nobody sells a keyboard without them.
I use the Windows keys on my laptop when it freezes up or the screen blacks out and I need to shut down. Obviously I can’t see what the hell is going on with a black screen, so I just tap the windows button, the up arrow, enter, and enter.
Of course, if the only reason for those keys is that you use them when Windows severely f*cks up, well, that’s pretty pathetic. 