Sensodyne tooth gel in an aerosol can. The gel formed a “microfine” foam that was amazingly effective at getting into the tight spaces between teeth. I don’t know why this product disappeared, but I suspect it had something to do with the cans constantly oozing foam when not in use.
Pledge dusters. These were vastly superior to the Swiffer dusters. So, of course, S.C. Johnson discontinued them, thus forcing me to buy their competitor’s inferior product. Well played, S.C. Johnson!
Zicam zinc nasal swabs. I loved these; they’d knock out a cold within a couple of days. Unfortunately some users found that their sense of smell was permanently destroyed. Zicam still makes the swabs, but now they use some bullshit herbal concoction instead of zinc.
The Kindle Keyboard e-reader (with a physical keyboard). The one I have works fine, but I’m dreading the day I drop it or sit on it. Yeah, gadgets these days are supposed to be all sleek and minimalistic with few (if any) visible buttons; I get that. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. The old Kindles occasionally turn up on on woot.com and sell out within a few hours, so I know I’m not the only one.
Back in the day, when most HiFi speakers were designed by carpenters, I knew an academic who designed a “Home Brand” speaker system for a big music store. His friends went to try out the product, came back and told him that the speakers sounded like s-t. The big store had cut an extra hole in the cabinet, so that the cheap “Home Brand” speakers didn’t sound better than the expensive models…
I’ve got some LL-geen-pea mail-order Rugby Shirts WITH AN UNDERAM GUSSET that I’ve loved to pieces. LLB don’t have any rugby shirts for sale online right now, but that’s allright: I haven’t bought one for ages, because they GOT RID OF THE UNDERARM GUSSET.
The underam gusset is a seperate piece of cloth that is sewn in as part of the underarm. Makes the shirt more suitable for active wear when you are going to be lifting and using your arms. Yes, it also makes the shirt less suitable for sitting around with your hands in your lap, but … whatever.
Also, which affects me day-to-day, the supermarkets here, after years of squeezing out the small speciality shops by offering a range of everything you want right in one store, are now maximising profits by reducing stock. Including, of course, stuff I used to buy. Unsweetened peanut butter. Mini shreaded-wheat. Sweet cottage cheese. Small loaves of bread… oh well.
75-count one-gallon food storage bags with twist-ties, usually the store brand. Is it just me not finding these for some reason, or have they vanished from all the grocery stores? There are only ziplock type bags with far fewer in the box for the same money, and far less handy for picking up raw chicken pieces then flipping the bag inside-out so you can store it. In fact you can’t do that at all with zippered bags.
Dickies made a very comfortable, sturdy, slip-resistant work shoe that I found just perfect for working in commercial kitchens. I wore them for years, and went through several pairs. The place I bought them from suddenly stopped carrying Dickies shoes. I hunted around and found a different store that did carry Dickies, but, alas, they didn’t carry that model. I finally went right to the Dickies web site, where I discovered, alas, they didn’t appear to even be making that model any more.
On the bright side, that did force me to look for a replacement, and I found a wonderful kitchen shoe made by Dansko. Absolutely the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever worn. My feet didn’t hurt any more, even after 12-hour shifts. The downside is that they cost $150. Well worth it, but I haven’t had the spare cash for a new pair since the first pair finally wore out.
Aveeno made a fantastic anti-itch cream with menthol in it so it actually DID something. No more. Bastards.
I just bought that at Target last week. Also try Amazon. (Another lizard-skin person here. That reminds me, I need to get out my humidifier now that the heat has been turned on.)
Go onto eBay, Amazon, Craigslist or Ali Express, I pretty much bet you can find any discontinued product on one of them. Order whatever it is you’re craving, go wild and buy 10 of them so you’ve got a stockpile. Problem solved.
Yeah, I tried that with my favorite shoes and sneakers that were discontinued. I can find them, if I don’t mind stuffing my foot into a shoe that’s several sizes off.
What I wish they’d do - and I’m surprised nobody’s done it, seems like there’s money to be made - is come up with some sort of registry of about-to-be-discontinued products, where companies could say, “we’re discontinuing production on this product in 60 days, but if you order at least 21 days before that date, we’ll fill your order,” or some such.
It would be kinda the reverse of pent-up demand. Pent-up demand is when a product isn’t available for awhile, so when it becomes available again, a lot more people buy it right away than will buy it on a continuing basis. This would be the same thing, only with the chronology reversed: people would stock up on a product, knowing this was their last chance to get it before it ceased to be made.
If there were something like that, I’d check it every month, and I’d have a dozen boxes each of the Wayne line of Hush Puppies and Spira Valencia sneakers in my closet, plus a long list of other stuff that’s been discontinued.
Also, some stuff doesn’t even really have a name. Wal-Mart used to sell the best wire hangers in existence: they were heavy-duty enough that they wouldn’t bend if you hung a pair of blue jeans on them, and they sold at 3 for $1. Until WallyWorld didn’t sell them at all. (Couldn’t they have just raised them to 2/$1? Sheesh.) I’ve never seen a reasonably close equivalent anywhere else.
Sounds like an easy cheat: announce that you will no longer be making X, sell a shitload to the panicky fans of X, then announce that you’re changed your mind because obviously you underestimated the demand there was for X.
And you really can’t stockpile a lifetime supply of many things. After three years your unopened bottles of lotion will have separated into rancid oils and water. Those boxes of cereal will be stale. The elastic on those bras will be well on the way to dying. The rubber soles of those sneakers will be degrading. The all cotton Levis might be good (if you stored them properly) but will you still be wearing the same waist size?
Well depends if you’re willing to buy in bulk Ali Baba (rather than Ali Express) has 17,000 suppliers listed for coat hangers. You might have to buy 500 of them and sell the rest on eBay but where there is a will there is a way
It’s possible that some savvy readers have figured out that this kind of product disappearance is often a direct result of all that consumer tracking and data analysis dismissed in other threads as nothing but a boon ensuring “whatever I buy will be in stock.”
The goal of all that effort isn’t to ensure everyone is made happy. It’s to ensure that the shelves contain only what is maximally profitable for store, reseller and manufacturer. Which is only a boon and a blessing for the central core of consumers who buy only what is most popular. Stores stock items for fringe sales less and less, relying on all that data to point to the profitable core of their business, and no longer feel any pressure to appeal to a wider sales base for more nebulous reasons.
Blame amazon and eBay for this trend. Physical retailers who have to pay all the extra overheads of brick and mortar stores can never compete on the niche stuff against online retailers. THey have to only stock the most profitable fast moving products as its the only way to stay in business against online shopping.
It’s a factor, but not a universal one. People don’t tend to buy things like cereal and snack foods online, so “optimizing” those shelves to exclude all slower-sellers is purely a profit-driven motive.
Yup, yup, capitalism free market freedom flagwave rah rah. My only point was that if you’re going to bitch because your local stores stop carrying a niche product, you can’t dismiss the use and effects of consumer datamining as a contributing factor. Stores used to have some “sell what they want” in their policy; increasingly, it’s tilted towards the “stock what we can make them buy [at the highest profit].” And that’s what all that tracking is about, and for: finding the core of products that will maximize the bottom line, at the cost of all the other factors and old verities.
What nonsense. The amount of stuff sold hasn’t gone down; only the way it is sold has changed. The manufacturers don’t base their product choices on what is sold in bricks and mortar stores; they base their choices on what is sold and for how much, by any outlet. Anyway, the phenomenon of particularly good value items going out of production is not a recent (post internet) problem.
Ali Baba (rather than Ali Express) has 17,000 suppliers listed for coat hangers. You might have to buy 500 of them and sell the rest on eBay but where there is a will there is a way