Grim
I used to work for MAGNAVOX; we made 4 brands at the same TV factory:
-PHILIPS the premium brand
-MAGNAVOX-the mid-level brand
-PHILCO-the low-end brand
-Curtis-Mathis 9the TV brand you couln’t buy, only lease 9for people stuck with poor credit ratings)
All of them had the exact same chassis 9electronics0, and the same picture tubes. The PHILIPS brand had slighly better louspeakers.
The really funny thing: CONSUMER REPORTS would test all 4 , and find differences between them! (How they did that I never understood).
I live on Tesco brand food. For a while I bought Alpen muesli, but then I tried the Tesco brand, which I like better. Even Tesco ketchup isn’t bad.
However, Tesco vodka really is terrible terrible stuff.
Store brand Buffalo wings.Much cheaper than brand names, but I have a hard time overlooking the feathers.
I’ve never understood this. I’ve tried stuff from various price ranges, but generic is just fine. Of course, I live in the South, and we have… genuflects…Publix.
That, or I’ve got the bunghole of a peasant.
I’m told if you run it through a Brita filter a few times, you’ll fix that.
Okay, now this is interesting. I didn’t expect to see this… I didn’t even know all of those were made by the same company. ARE they, or is this a common thing with TV manufacturers - that a factory is shared and often the same components used for different brands?
I could easily say I’m loyal to JVC in regards to their televisions; it would be funny to find out that a brand I thought was less reliable was made up of basically the same parts.
I remember seeing a little black & white sign in a store that said, in plain block letters, “Beer. Ask for it by name.”
yes, TV manufacturers commonly share components, picture tubes, etc. SONY and PHILIPS used the same picture tubes for 27" and below models; most of the low-end brands are just labels, which are stuck on to a generic TV made in china. With the advent of flat screen TVs, there has been even greater consolidation, because all of the LCDs are made by either SAMSUNG or GOLDSTAR. It really is no different than cars-a Cadillac will share the same chassis as a Buick; or a LEXUS-is just a gussied-up TOYOTA. Which is why it pays to research wht you buy-many times, you can buy the same thing as a the luxury brand, for a lot less money!
It really is different with cars, though. Toyotas are made dirt cheap, as cheaply as they can be made and considered acceptable*. Lexuses will have additional body sealer, thicker glass, sound insulation, higher grade leather, different suspension tuning, different transmissions options (probably), different engine options (usually), are usually better equipped as base models, have little extra bells and whistles (one touch up for the windows), and usually have better options that aren’t even available on the Toyotas. There’s a lot of basic design similarity in modern, platform engineered cars, but this isn’t the old days where the only difference between a Buick and a Cadillac was just the label stuck to the deck lid.
*That’s not to say they’re low quality. “Acceptable” is always based on competing cars in that segment as driven by market forces.
Target’s Archer Farms has some really good foods and snacks. It seems that Archer Farms is their upscale store brand while their “Market Pantry” stuff is the cheaper stuff.
Are you sure the had the exact same chassis? Because if they all have the same chassis, and cost the same amount to make, it hardly seems sensible to sell some for less.
I know that Sears does not actually manufacturer any of their ‘Kenmore’ brand appliances – they are made for Sears by one of the other appliance manufacturers. But Sears writes the specifications for them. So, for example, I think Whirlpool makes the Sears Kenmore washers, in the same factory that Whirlpool washers are made. But they will often test differently, because of the different design.
I had a roommate who, at one point in time, got the idea to buy Publix brand toilet paper. The “environmentally friendly” kind was still reasonably cushy… cushier, in fact, than Scott brand tissue. I honestly don’t care what toilet paper I have as long as it’s not Communist grade; my butthole gets sore after too many trips with the super generic rough brand.
I used to have a Panasonic TV. At work, we had the exact same TV behind the bar, but it said “Philips” instead of “Panasonic” on the front. I was seriously tempted to bring my remote from home to see if it would work with the bar TV. If it did, I could have played some serious games with the bartender’s head 
Amen to that! We had to rename the “Scotch Buy” toilet paper to “Scratch Buy” toilet paper.
Want a real painful one, I can’t count the number of $2,000 “high end custom” computers I have opened up to find a motherboard, RAM, and PSU, with no identifiable branding on them. I just saw a server like that with 2 hard drives and a raid controller. unfortunately the cables were connecting one drive to a tape backup but no attempt was made to raid the drives :eek: :dubious:
Googling “White box computers” will be a real eye opener to many as well. Alot of the $399 specials you see are generic machines that a store applies its own logos to, they can often be purchased wholesale for $150-$250.
Plenty of places also use drop ship providers, once that I knew what to look for I have found several online PC parts places that are just using the XML plugins of one particular wholesaler.
Well, with Philips, I thought it was common knowledge that Philips owns the Magnavox name. They bought it in 1974 and use it on their lower-end electronics. The TV in my bedroom says PHILIPS MAGNAVOX right on the front of it.
And it’s not that surprising that Philco is related to Philips, is it?
As far as grocery store generics, most of them are as good or better than the national brands – in most cases, they are relabeled national brand products. Some of them are manufactured by the store in question (in my chain, our ice cream / frozen yogurt, our cultured dairy products, our prepared salads in the deli, and some other things), and some are manufactured by companies who specialize in store brands, like Perrigo.
One of the fascinating things I learnt when working in supermarkets was who made what Generic Brand Stuff.
An example I often used for customers: The Generic Brand White Sugar says “Made In Australia” on it. There are only two major sugar refinery companies in Australia: Bundaberg and CSR. It’s a fairly safe bet that the Generic Brand sugar is made by one of them.
IMHO, you’re completely mad if you buy Name Brand sugar, salt, pepper, clingwrap, baking paper, flour, milk, or ice cream topping.
The PHILCO brand is actually unrelated to philips-it was owned by FORD till about 1970 or so. “PHILCO” was originally a manufacturer of car radios. The brand name is used as a lower-end brand in the USA; in Brazil, it is considered an upscale brand-go figure!
Re: LEXUS vs TOYOTA: yes, a LEXUS generally has better interior quality than TOYOTA-but the chassis is the same. And you would not find too much difference between a high-end camry and a low end lexus… Of course, there are some low end brands which are very inferior-go to a dollar store and you will see them.
Not necessarily – what are you calling a chassis? What most of us think as a chassis is dated; the only place you’ll find them is on trucks and the Crown Vic/Town Car/Grand Marquis. All modern cars – the Toyota and Lexus included – use unit body construction (“unibody”) whereby the structural elements provided in the past by the frame of the chassis is integral to the body-in-white (or body-in-grey if you add doors and other closure panels). This is all just sheetmetal (maybe some cast parts) and nothing else. Most modern manufacturers also divide the body-in-white into a “platform” (underbody) and a “tophat,” because you can change just the body sides and closures to make it look like an entirely different vehicle without the great, great expense of reengineering the platform. The “chassis” is what’s often applied to the pre-assembled unit that’s put into the engine compartment, such as the engine, transmission, coil springs, shocks, control arms, wheels, and so on. Because they’re pre-assembled, the chassis will also carry along the other goodies that also go into the engine compartment. In this sense, it’s most probably likely that the “chassis” between a Toyota and a Lexus – even using the same platform – are one of the biggest things that distinguish them. Other things that distinguish them will be different but similar components that fit into the same platform, like rear suspension components (better stuff with different characteristics on the Lexus), as well as different but similar components that fit onto the body-in-white, like thicker glass, different/better weather stripping, different lenses, plus all of the different interior components that distinguish them to the common onlooker. Other things that are likely to vary are the sealing and paint processing (extra body sealer prior to paint, maybe additional top coats or layers of clear coat), and sometimes different strategies to fill the gap between the roof panel and the body side (ugly plastic strip versus some type of MIG-brazed filler).
The only thing they necessarily have in common is the underbody (and maybe the tophat), and all that is is sheetmetal. It’s everything else on top of that that truly distinguishes the differences between a Toyota and a Lexus, or a Ford and a Mercury and a Lincoln. They’re certainly not the same vehicle.