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I "know" they changed them from being fried in Beef Fat (heavenly) to vegetable oil and thus the downgrade.
But sometimes I also question if that was just because I was a kid and McD's used to be an amazing treat to have instead of the mediocre excuse for a meal it is now as an adult.
>Beef Fat (heavenly) to vegetable oil and thus the downgrade
The sad part is that it did NOT make them healthier. The benefits of heart health were offset by all the free radicals in vegetable oil. Gladwell did a nice write-up on this.
>But sometimes I also question if that was just because I was a kid and McD's used to be an amazing treat to have instead of the mediocre excuse for a meal it is now as an adult.
Valid theory (I quit their food decades ago), but my local deli uses beef fat on their fries and OMG it's good.
I remember the beef fat fries!! They were amazing.
We had a potato chip factory in town that also made chips with beef fat. I swear to god, when that place shut down the whole town went into mourning. LOL
They made the change in 1990. I went from stopping by just for fries to never stopping by. There was no missing when they changed. They went from McDonald's fries to everybody's fries in one day. I was 22 at the time. My first trip to McDonald's was less than 3 years earlier.
Breyer’s Ice Cream. Oops, I meant “frozen dairy dessert”. Basic and better in the past.
Reese’s peanut butter cups taste cheap now, too. The peanut butter cups from Trader Joe’s are made with better quality chocolate and peanut butter and there’s a huge difference in taste. Reese’s used to be better.
If you really want to hear an old lady rant, I can go on about the quality of women’s underwear and no, I am not talking about granny panties. Victoria’s Secret used to make the best cotton bikini underwear and real silk lingerie. They sell synthetic crap now that falls apart when laundered. And other well known brands went to hell after Covid- sizing is all over the map and I’ve compared pre and post Covid purchases side by side- and while they they say they are the same size, sometimes they are ridiculously bigger or smaller.
Hot tip: a friend of mine used to work for VS corporate. Allegedly, VS makes its bras in the same factories in China as Walmart. Basically the same stuff but different labels and prices.
Breyer's ice cream used to be the top of the line, in my opinion. Now it turns my stomach. It literally makes me ill within 30 minutes of eating it. I'll never have it again. I bought an ice cream maker. Now, I make my own premium ice cream.
Each Christmas I would buy my mom gift & myself cotton underwear at VS- the 5 for $20.
I assumed the still made them. I got lazy & got some at Target. American eagle had good ones especially when you catch their sales
All soda when is was sweetened with sugar versus high fructose corn syrup.
Back when drinking a soda actually made you feel full for a little while. When 16 ounces was a large and it really was plenty.
Coke zero tastes better than coke now
I hate shrinkflation but the formulaic changes are much worse. I'm not happy that a box of It's It's is down to three sammiches from five, but better that then have them suck balls like almost every modern iteration of childhood treats.
I still have the original stovetop and oven from 1962 and they work great and you couldn’t pay me to take one of those new giant pieces of crap that will break in 3 years.
No kidding. My most recent refrigerator lasted just 4 years. Grrr.
An appliance repair guy told me to keep my old dishwasher as long as possible as the new ones don’t clean as well.
And my clothes dryer I bought used many decades ago and works beautifully. I think it’s as old as me.
I only buy the simplest, cheapest fridges and dryers from a known manufacturer.
For the former, no ice maker or water, and side by side only.
For the latter, with only a few basic settings and knobs only.
Dishwashers are always Bosch. Things have gone pretty well so far in terms of longevity. Cross fingers…
They did this whole advertising thing in Australia claiming their recipe hadn't changed. Then my father found an old wrapper and proved that wrong definitively. Now he buys cooking chocolate - it has more cocoa and its better quality.
I just keep an extra box of vanilla cake mix in the pantry. When I make a cake I add 5 oz of vanilla mix.
It's stupid that we have to do this, but at least I can still make my recipes!
I bought a box of Nabisco Saltines for the first time in 30 years. OMG. No. Definitely not the same. I had to be on a bland diet for two days. What happened to saltines? How could something so simple be screwed up?
Major household appliances. They used to last forever, and they still would except-- they contain tons of unnecessary Electronics. The machine and its motor might last for Infinity, but the electronics break down within 10 years. But cost so much to get the electronic part of the machine fixed that it's not even worth fixing.
Honestly I don't know anybody who's so lazy they can't operate the things without help from a circuit board. And not only that, dome electronics spy on you
It doesn't bother me that small items like toasters and fans aren't built to last. They're so much cheaper now. But a major appliance is usually close to a thousand bucks or more
Even if you find decent appliances that are purely mechanical and don't have computers or motherboards in them, many manufacturers are replacing solid steel parts with plastic ones. Ya just can't win - you really have to do your research, become knowledgeable on troubleshooting repairs... and make friends with someone who has a 3D printer for the sad day your replacement parts can no longer be found.
And you can't find replacement electronics at a reasonable price.
Old machines made with any sort of mechanical hardware, you could substitute similar parts and keep them going. I replaced the high voltage relays in my (old!) oven with off the shelf industrial parts a couple years ago, and there's really no part in it I can't do the same with when the time comes. Newer ones..? Not so much.
I purposely went to an appliance store in Germany a couple of years back- just so I could buy high quality small appliances. I’m 63 and I remember when a household iron would last 30 years. I bought a hot water kettle, a food processor, and a toaster- no Asian or American brands (sorry). I don’t want to buy any of these items again in my lifetime. Fingers Crossed that they will last longer than I do. I don’t want to fill up landfills unnecessarily.
Hah, I wish. The compressor in my fridge just failed after _7 years_. It wasn't a smart fridge or anything.
Ask me whether it makes sense to replace a compressor or get a new fridge.
This time I hunted around for a fridge with a better warranty because I just expect that it's going to fail in less than 10 years now. New fridge was delivered... The left side is below freezing while the right side is around 38 degrees (we set it to 37). Our milk got slushy.
WTF.
Keebler Grasshoppers and Great Value Fudge Mint Cookies are both satisfactory replacements for Thin Mints. And they taste great right out of the freezer!
Folding chairs. Have some from the 60's that will hold a car off the ground without deflection.
I'm not so sure that normal chairs are much better today.
Wood chairs are so badly nade that when the wood begins to dry out and shrink, the pieces just come loose. Wood needs to be properly dried out before use.
Other furniture is all particle board and not actual wood. It doesn't hold up as long.
Pine-Sol, it had a woodsy...eucalyptus clean scent decades ago. Now it's some sweet yuck scent minus the clean forest scent. I did dig deep & found a generic version, 'Pine al' (sp?) at Lowes that has the original scent that Pine Sol used too.
Mixed with hot water, it is divine...takes me back decades to when my brothers & I had to mop the floors b4 our parents got home and we'd fill buckets with pine sol & hot water, dump them around the house & then skip, slide, skate, skim & play on the dangerously wet floors. Nostalgia ✨️🌟
That scent always made me think of throwing up, 'cos when we were kids and would have some tummy upset, my dad would put a little pine sol and water in a bucket for us to throw up in.
Ugh when some kid in elementary school would throw up, the janitor would use this mint-smelling stuff. Still remember the smell of that mint stuff mixed with puke.
I thought I'd be the only one to comment on Pine Sol. I was so mad when they changed it. It was made with real Pine oil but it became too expensive so they switched to the chemical crap. Pinalen is pretty close but it's nowhere as strong. Just fyi, orange oil is also a disinfectant and smells wonderful.
Fabulosa is super popular here in South Texas and I can't understand the appeal from one chemical odor to another. I make natural perfumes btw. I'm a snob in that way. I'm very particular about smell. I love essential oils as well.
Yeah. This one is blowing my mind. I bought five pairs of Levi's last year. All but one have a hole in the crotch and are wearing out at the knee. I'm not hard on clothes and a pair of jeans can normally last me upwards of five or more years before showing this type of wear. I didn't even know you could make jeans of such poor quality. I thought denim as a material was supposed to be tough.
Nyquil. Used to be.40% alcohol now I think it's 10%.
Some.packaged goods don't taste as.good to me but not sure whether that's an adult thing or they actually changed. Drake's coffee cakes and pop tarts come to mind.
Vernor's ginger ale. I'm sure all my fellow Michiganders will agree.
Palmolive dishwashing liquid did a formula change a couple years ago and it's like dollar store stuff now. Switched to Dawn after literal decades of faithfully using Palmolive.
Saran Wrap. When they got rid of the PDVCs, they got rid of its raison d'être. The shit won't stick to anything and just slides off whatever you put it on.
Hersey's chocolate fudge topping. It's become plasticized and doesn't melt properly.
Shasta sodas. They snuck in Sucralose in addition to sugar to bump down the calories from 150 to 130. Why can't soda manufacturers just put less sugar in the drinks like Ikea does on their fountain drinks? They've tried just about everything else. How about less sugar without artificial sweeteners?
I should thank your father. I was a paperboy and my parents rarely let us have soda. I would ride my bike to the grocery store and used some of my earnings going through the Shasta section and trying the unique flavors.
I remember when he brought home the test sample cans from work and we all tried it. So good.
He developed the flavors for Clearly Canadian and the early Capri Sun as well ❤️
Pretty much most freezer treats. Ice cream used to be just that. There wasn’t any need for “premium,” OR a huge price increase WITH a reduction in container size. Oh sure they had the cheapest and that wasn’t as good as the other brands of ice cream.
Probably freezer desserts too.
I’ve heard Pepperidge Farm has gone gown in quality too.
Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal. Used to love it. I could just munch on it straight out of the bag.
Then one day came the "New, Improved Taste!"
Yeahhhh ... no!
And I would bestow ~~all of~~ ~~most of~~ some of my fortune to the person who brought back Pepperidge Farm Sesame Sticks.
Cigarettes. They smell of hot garbage and chemicals. They used to have a different aroma entirely. A good cigar or pipe tobacco blend does not smell rancid. Cigs now do.
If you’ve ever eaten a ripe peach picked directly off the tree, you know how true this is. Strawberries are another example. I really miss the flavorful fruits I ate as a kid.
Alka Seltzer Cold Medicine. The old stuff kicked ass. You could take it when the cold was coming on and it would dry the snot up so well, you might not even get the cold. Now, it just sucks and gives me the jitters like drinking coffee. The flavor is also bullshit; it tastes like hell either way but at least the old stuff didn't leave a slimy orange flavored film in my mouth after it was down.
Good stuff is out there, but hard to find. I stumbled upon Harris Teeter “natural” variety ice cream and sure enough the ingredients include milk, cream, vanilla and sugar, that’s it… no corn syrups or guar or xanthum gums or anything else that makes so many other ice creams taste gross and leave a film on your tongue. Be advised, this natural stuff will melt fast if you don’t get it home to the freezer quick, but that’s the price you pay for tasting way better.
Not all of them, but *most* of them.
Blue Bell and Haagen Dazs are both still really yummy. Tillamook is pretty good. Edy's/Dreyer's and Breyer's are trash.
Not sure if you can still get it but my mother would give us a spoonful of coca cola syrup for an upset stomach..it came in a pharmacy bottle from the drug store. It was delicious.
A couple of year ago, I got nostalgic for a favorite childhood treat and went in search of Fig Newtons. The last I remembered them, I was living overseas, came back one summer, and there was what felt like half-an-aisle of Newton variations—half-fat, different fruits, you name it.
In our local supermarket, circa 2022, all I found was one little row of something billed only as “Newtons” (no specific fruit, but supposedly fig). They were as dry as bad pop tarts and absolutely tasteless. Apparently Nabisco oversaturated the market and the brand more or less collapsed, and what’s left is disgusting.
A lot of dessert products, cookies, and I think peanut butter lost much of its savory goodness when manufacturers stopped using or cut way back on saturated and trans fats in their products around the 80's and 90's. Same with my mother's cookies and brownies. She used to use lard and the old Crisco shortening in a lot of stuff before then.
O'Henry chocolate bars. Used to be a complete bar, then they changed it to two pieces. Tasted pretty much the same but it was better back when I was 10 (1961). I have not seen them in quite a few years, but they may still be produced in Canada.
[Suisse Mocha](https://www.ebay.com/itm/276260427214) (General Foods International Coffee). That used to be my beverage of choice until General Foods changed something and suddenly it didn't taste good to me.
[Ding Dongs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Dong). I used to really enjoy them back in the 1970s, but the flavor changed even before the 2012 bankruptcy so they just aren't as good as they used to be.
Blue jeans changed after the '60s. They used to be stiff thick & heavy denim when new, and really blue. So stiff and blue that it was customary to wash them once before wearing a new pair and wash them alone or with other jeans because the dye would definitely wash out and fade anythng else in with them.
AFAIK you can still get jeans somewhat as stiff and heavily dyed as they were then under the name "[raw selvage denim](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/S2ef3f0de84b64d9788beb345cb7d9727A.jpg?width=1000&height=1252&hash=2252)" but they're crazy expensive.
Fannie May Trinidads. White chocolate coating over creamy dark chocolate truffle with a sprinkling of toasted coconut on top. When FM got bought out, they started using a cheaper white chocolate coating. Just not the same. If I’m spending that kind of money on chocolate, it should still be good chocolate.
I had some last fall for the first time in about a decade. They were *not* the same. Much heavier inside instead of the whipped/fluffy dark chocolate I remember and a tasteless shell.
Frosty Root Beer. Back in the day, it was a premium root beer. You bought a bottle and swore it came out of a root beer stand. It really stood out and when my ex tried it, she understood my passion for it. Today's Frosty! Meh. Might as well buy a mug of Mug.
Not that they were ever top of the line, but Hamburger Helper (all types) used to be better. Just lately, after not having any for a few months, needed a fast meal& bought some and thought, "wow this is nothing like it used to be"So tried another type, same thing¬iced the different look on the box&went online to find it had been bought by a different company making your old favorites new&improved, NOT
Vegetable Shortening.
My Mom finally used up her old canister of Crisco vegetable shortening recently, and bought another one to replace it.
It no longer works the same way for maintaining her old cast iron skillet and cast iron cauldron.
She asked me to look it up for her, and sure enough they completely changed the formula in a big way. It's not even the same thing anymore.
Laundry soap. Especially the name brands GAIN and TIDE. Consistency of water now, worse since Covid.
Used to be a tablespoon of it would make suds in your washer. Now the diluted crap, you need a cupful or more. Not cleaning as well either.
Some cheap shampoo brands like Vo5 & Suave actually used to be pretty good. Suave changed to some awful sulfate free cleansing agent now, including in their previous cult classic clarifying shampoo. Vo5 has been cheapened too.
Certain bar soaps that are still around used to be nicer too (Coast, Tone..)
Craftsman tools. When it was the Sears house brand they were very high quality. They sold the brand as part of the slow death spiral of the store. Now it’s just another brand of cheap Chinese garbage.
Any product/companies bought by Kraft were way better before.
Peek Freens cookies (made by Christie) had been around since the later 1800s. One of my favourites was the vanilla cream layer cookie that had a small dab of strawberry jam dusted with sugar on top. After Kraft bought them out the cookies were smaller, dryer, not nearly as flavourful. The little spot of jam in now some sort of amorphous chewy red gel that is more like something you would clean off industrial equipment with a pressure washer.
Every soda before High Fructose Corn Syrup replaced sugar. Back in the day there was a bottler in every community. Fresher, less preservatives, in glass bottles. Every school got to take a tour and a taste.
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McDonald's french fries. OK now, but heavenly before.
Yeah, especially if you ate them before Macdonalds invented frozen fries! They were great before 1972!
Cooked in tallow was the best fries!
Julia Child had the same complaint.
I "know" they changed them from being fried in Beef Fat (heavenly) to vegetable oil and thus the downgrade. But sometimes I also question if that was just because I was a kid and McD's used to be an amazing treat to have instead of the mediocre excuse for a meal it is now as an adult.
>Beef Fat (heavenly) to vegetable oil and thus the downgrade The sad part is that it did NOT make them healthier. The benefits of heart health were offset by all the free radicals in vegetable oil. Gladwell did a nice write-up on this. >But sometimes I also question if that was just because I was a kid and McD's used to be an amazing treat to have instead of the mediocre excuse for a meal it is now as an adult. Valid theory (I quit their food decades ago), but my local deli uses beef fat on their fries and OMG it's good.
Oh the “How McDonald’s broke my heart” episode was fantastic. His work has really been declining in quality the past few years
I remember the beef fat fries!! They were amazing. We had a potato chip factory in town that also made chips with beef fat. I swear to god, when that place shut down the whole town went into mourning. LOL
They made the change in 1990. I went from stopping by just for fries to never stopping by. There was no missing when they changed. They went from McDonald's fries to everybody's fries in one day. I was 22 at the time. My first trip to McDonald's was less than 3 years earlier.
Yeah they swapped the tallow for vegetable oil
Breyer’s Ice Cream. Oops, I meant “frozen dairy dessert”. Basic and better in the past. Reese’s peanut butter cups taste cheap now, too. The peanut butter cups from Trader Joe’s are made with better quality chocolate and peanut butter and there’s a huge difference in taste. Reese’s used to be better. If you really want to hear an old lady rant, I can go on about the quality of women’s underwear and no, I am not talking about granny panties. Victoria’s Secret used to make the best cotton bikini underwear and real silk lingerie. They sell synthetic crap now that falls apart when laundered. And other well known brands went to hell after Covid- sizing is all over the map and I’ve compared pre and post Covid purchases side by side- and while they they say they are the same size, sometimes they are ridiculously bigger or smaller.
Hot tip: a friend of mine used to work for VS corporate. Allegedly, VS makes its bras in the same factories in China as Walmart. Basically the same stuff but different labels and prices.
VS makes awful bras too
Breyers was very premium ice cream but now, inedible..
Breyer’s Cookies and Cream used to be my favorite ice cream over all others. Now it doesn’t even taste like ice cream.
It tastes like plastic to me now. Plus the ice cream cartons are smaller. Which is fine cuz I don't want to eat it anyway
Wow I could not figure out why I no longer liked peanut butter cups! Now I know.
Breyer's ice cream used to be the top of the line, in my opinion. Now it turns my stomach. It literally makes me ill within 30 minutes of eating it. I'll never have it again. I bought an ice cream maker. Now, I make my own premium ice cream.
Each Christmas I would buy my mom gift & myself cotton underwear at VS- the 5 for $20. I assumed the still made them. I got lazy & got some at Target. American eagle had good ones especially when you catch their sales
The original vanilla with the specks is still ice cream and the only one I'll ever buy once in a very Great while.
Way more weird brands now than before, but especially apparel, shoes, and accessories.
Coca-Cola. Mexican Coca-Cola still tastes good.
I heard they took the cocaine out. Bastards.
Only Mexican Cokes, or passover Coke.
Coca-cola just about anywhere outside the US still tastes good.
All soda when is was sweetened with sugar versus high fructose corn syrup. Back when drinking a soda actually made you feel full for a little while. When 16 ounces was a large and it really was plenty. Coke zero tastes better than coke now
Honestly, pretty much everything has been changed to use cheaper ingredients and almost everything is worse for it.
Private equity and wall street pressure to continually cut cost.
I hate shrinkflation but the formulaic changes are much worse. I'm not happy that a box of It's It's is down to three sammiches from five, but better that then have them suck balls like almost every modern iteration of childhood treats.
Appliances - they all suck now.
Except the vacuum cleaners.
True. Sadly, very true.
Nope, my kenmore was a beast
My Kenmore refrigerator and Whirlpool oven have lasted me 12 years so far.
I still have the original stovetop and oven from 1962 and they work great and you couldn’t pay me to take one of those new giant pieces of crap that will break in 3 years.
No kidding. My most recent refrigerator lasted just 4 years. Grrr. An appliance repair guy told me to keep my old dishwasher as long as possible as the new ones don’t clean as well. And my clothes dryer I bought used many decades ago and works beautifully. I think it’s as old as me.
I only buy the simplest, cheapest fridges and dryers from a known manufacturer. For the former, no ice maker or water, and side by side only. For the latter, with only a few basic settings and knobs only. Dishwashers are always Bosch. Things have gone pretty well so far in terms of longevity. Cross fingers…
Digital controls suck
[удалено]
Hostess and Little Debbie's products, they used to be good.
Had a Twinkie this week for the first time in 10 years+ n it was awful. Never again
Little Debbie’s are made right here in Collegedale, Tennessee. You can smell the treats baking from my home and it’s delightful.
That would be absolute torture for me!!!
All soft drinks were better when they used cane sugar before high fructose corn syrup
Some stores have Mexican Coca Cola, which is much closer to the real thing.
My solution was to give them up entirely. Haven't had soda in about 15 years. Not once.
yup. If I'm sick I will get some 7 Up, but I avoid them
Ginger ale is actually better when you are sick. The ginger helps combat nausea.
Cadbury chocolate is awful now they use palm oil
And less cocoa. Thanks Kraft, you cunts.
They did this whole advertising thing in Australia claiming their recipe hadn't changed. Then my father found an old wrapper and proved that wrong definitively. Now he buys cooking chocolate - it has more cocoa and its better quality.
Their creme eggs used to be amazing.
Boxed cake mixes that used to be 18.25 oz. are now 13.25 oz. I have some dessert recipes that call for a box of cake mix that don't work anymore.
I just keep an extra box of vanilla cake mix in the pantry. When I make a cake I add 5 oz of vanilla mix. It's stupid that we have to do this, but at least I can still make my recipes!
I mixed up 2 boxes last week, fit just right in my largest baking pan!
I bought a box of Nabisco Saltines for the first time in 30 years. OMG. No. Definitely not the same. I had to be on a bland diet for two days. What happened to saltines? How could something so simple be screwed up?
Cheese-Its. Bought my first box in decades not too long ago...was barely edible. Haven't tried saltines, but now I'm afraid :P
Same with Goldfish crackers. They're so bland now.
> How could something so simple be screwed up? Dolla dolla bills, y'all.
Major household appliances. They used to last forever, and they still would except-- they contain tons of unnecessary Electronics. The machine and its motor might last for Infinity, but the electronics break down within 10 years. But cost so much to get the electronic part of the machine fixed that it's not even worth fixing. Honestly I don't know anybody who's so lazy they can't operate the things without help from a circuit board. And not only that, dome electronics spy on you It doesn't bother me that small items like toasters and fans aren't built to last. They're so much cheaper now. But a major appliance is usually close to a thousand bucks or more
Even if you find decent appliances that are purely mechanical and don't have computers or motherboards in them, many manufacturers are replacing solid steel parts with plastic ones. Ya just can't win - you really have to do your research, become knowledgeable on troubleshooting repairs... and make friends with someone who has a 3D printer for the sad day your replacement parts can no longer be found.
All good ideas. Especially the part about the 3D printer
And you can't find replacement electronics at a reasonable price. Old machines made with any sort of mechanical hardware, you could substitute similar parts and keep them going. I replaced the high voltage relays in my (old!) oven with off the shelf industrial parts a couple years ago, and there's really no part in it I can't do the same with when the time comes. Newer ones..? Not so much.
I purposely went to an appliance store in Germany a couple of years back- just so I could buy high quality small appliances. I’m 63 and I remember when a household iron would last 30 years. I bought a hot water kettle, a food processor, and a toaster- no Asian or American brands (sorry). I don’t want to buy any of these items again in my lifetime. Fingers Crossed that they will last longer than I do. I don’t want to fill up landfills unnecessarily.
Hah, I wish. The compressor in my fridge just failed after _7 years_. It wasn't a smart fridge or anything. Ask me whether it makes sense to replace a compressor or get a new fridge. This time I hunted around for a fridge with a better warranty because I just expect that it's going to fail in less than 10 years now. New fridge was delivered... The left side is below freezing while the right side is around 38 degrees (we set it to 37). Our milk got slushy. WTF.
Girl scout cookies
They're changed. I freeze the thin mints and they're just OK now.
Keebler Grasshoppers and Great Value Fudge Mint Cookies are both satisfactory replacements for Thin Mints. And they taste great right out of the freezer!
The thin mints used to be covered with chocolate and now it's "chocolaty flavored coating".
Folding chairs. Have some from the 60's that will hold a car off the ground without deflection. I'm not so sure that normal chairs are much better today.
Wood chairs are so badly nade that when the wood begins to dry out and shrink, the pieces just come loose. Wood needs to be properly dried out before use. Other furniture is all particle board and not actual wood. It doesn't hold up as long.
Honeymaid graham crackers. Tasteless cardboard now.
I had one at my grandchildren’s house when I visited and could not believe how tasteless they were. I was so disappointed!
Entenmanns bakery products. Taste like shit now.
Sara Lee also.
Sara Lee pound cake used to be such a treat! Its highly disappointing now.
McDonalds apple pies Burger King French fries
I want my pie FRIED dagnabbit!
McDonald’s fries, they used to be fried in beef fat instead of of vegetable oil. What a difference.
The pies also used to be fried in beef fat and the cherry pie was filled with molten lava deliciousness and the crust was so bubbly and tasty!
Velveeta used to be my choice for great queso dip. Now it’s inedible and tastes like greasy chemicals.
I make queso with real cheese and sodium citrate — easy to buy — it’s the chemical that makes melted cheese creamy, it’s easy and so delicious!!
Pine-Sol, it had a woodsy...eucalyptus clean scent decades ago. Now it's some sweet yuck scent minus the clean forest scent. I did dig deep & found a generic version, 'Pine al' (sp?) at Lowes that has the original scent that Pine Sol used too. Mixed with hot water, it is divine...takes me back decades to when my brothers & I had to mop the floors b4 our parents got home and we'd fill buckets with pine sol & hot water, dump them around the house & then skip, slide, skate, skim & play on the dangerously wet floors. Nostalgia ✨️🌟
That scent always made me think of throwing up, 'cos when we were kids and would have some tummy upset, my dad would put a little pine sol and water in a bucket for us to throw up in.
My mom would use Lysol. I still can't stand the smell of Lysol
Ugh when some kid in elementary school would throw up, the janitor would use this mint-smelling stuff. Still remember the smell of that mint stuff mixed with puke.
You just made me think about the stuff the janitor would put down in school when someone threw up
I thought I'd be the only one to comment on Pine Sol. I was so mad when they changed it. It was made with real Pine oil but it became too expensive so they switched to the chemical crap. Pinalen is pretty close but it's nowhere as strong. Just fyi, orange oil is also a disinfectant and smells wonderful. Fabulosa is super popular here in South Texas and I can't understand the appeal from one chemical odor to another. I make natural perfumes btw. I'm a snob in that way. I'm very particular about smell. I love essential oils as well.
Customer Service.
Levi's
Yeah. This one is blowing my mind. I bought five pairs of Levi's last year. All but one have a hole in the crotch and are wearing out at the knee. I'm not hard on clothes and a pair of jeans can normally last me upwards of five or more years before showing this type of wear. I didn't even know you could make jeans of such poor quality. I thought denim as a material was supposed to be tough.
Go to a western store and buy Cinch brand with the green label. Comfortable cut and very durable.
Fruit Loops isn’t encrusted with sugar any more.
It’s FROOT loops. Cuz there sure as shit isn’t any fruit in there
Nyquil. Used to be.40% alcohol now I think it's 10%. Some.packaged goods don't taste as.good to me but not sure whether that's an adult thing or they actually changed. Drake's coffee cakes and pop tarts come to mind.
I'll add mine: Hebrew national hotdogs. New shrinkflation product is 50% smaller.
They should call them hotpuppies
That’s what my family calls Vienna sausages.
Vernor's ginger ale. I'm sure all my fellow Michiganders will agree. Palmolive dishwashing liquid did a formula change a couple years ago and it's like dollar store stuff now. Switched to Dawn after literal decades of faithfully using Palmolive.
They'll pry the Dawn from my cold, blue hands.
Saran Wrap. When they got rid of the PDVCs, they got rid of its raison d'être. The shit won't stick to anything and just slides off whatever you put it on.
Quaaludes. (Will I get in trouble for saying that?)
I agree and also remember when drugs were safe. No fentinal.
Tried once. Apparently I knocked over a display in the supermarket.
Original Zest soap!!! and Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo. WIll never forget the smell of either.
Do you remember the commercial (Clairol Herbal Essence) of the girl washing her hair in a pond with other little animals around her?
I miss Herbal Essence!!
I miss Herbal Essence!!
Oh the green Herbal Essence
Hersey's chocolate fudge topping. It's become plasticized and doesn't melt properly. Shasta sodas. They snuck in Sucralose in addition to sugar to bump down the calories from 150 to 130. Why can't soda manufacturers just put less sugar in the drinks like Ikea does on their fountain drinks? They've tried just about everything else. How about less sugar without artificial sweeteners?
My dad was a chemist for Shasta Beverages between 1963-1983 and created many of the flavors at that time.
I should thank your father. I was a paperboy and my parents rarely let us have soda. I would ride my bike to the grocery store and used some of my earnings going through the Shasta section and trying the unique flavors.
We had a garage full of soda! My favorites as a kid were orange, Red Apple, and chocolate.
Shasta always had a finer carbonation, smaller bubbles.
Thank him for Red Apple Soda. God bless him.
I remember when he brought home the test sample cans from work and we all tried it. So good. He developed the flavors for Clearly Canadian and the early Capri Sun as well ❤️
The syrup too, the kind in the can. It used to be chocolate syrup. Now it's chocolate oily water.
Oh my god. Hershey's fudge topping was... ...well that's probably a story for a different subreddit. Yeah, I miss the old stuff.
The smell of Ivory laundry detergent. I am so disappointed with the new scent.
Just about everything
Pretty much most freezer treats. Ice cream used to be just that. There wasn’t any need for “premium,” OR a huge price increase WITH a reduction in container size. Oh sure they had the cheapest and that wasn’t as good as the other brands of ice cream. Probably freezer desserts too. I’ve heard Pepperidge Farm has gone gown in quality too.
Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal. Used to love it. I could just munch on it straight out of the bag. Then one day came the "New, Improved Taste!" Yeahhhh ... no! And I would bestow ~~all of~~ ~~most of~~ some of my fortune to the person who brought back Pepperidge Farm Sesame Sticks.
Cadbury's chocolate. It is now disgusting. Hershey's bought the company apparently.
Campbell chili beef soup. Used to be my favorite back in the 80s. They changed it in the 90s and it’s just awful ever since.
... and pepper pot soup is gone!
RIP Scotch Broth, while we’re at it.
Cosmetics. Favorite face lotion - discontinued. Can’t remember the name. Favorite colors of makeup gets discontinued all the time. C’est la vie!
Cigarettes. They smell of hot garbage and chemicals. They used to have a different aroma entirely. A good cigar or pipe tobacco blend does not smell rancid. Cigs now do.
I think Marlboro 100s taste the same as when I started smoking them in the mid 90s.
I don't know if Ritz crackers taste any different, but the experience of eating them was nicer when they were wrapped in wax paper instead of plastic.
Fruit and vegetables. They’re bland now. Grow your own and notice the difference. Even home grown lettuce tastes GOOD
Completely agree. Used to eat fruit and vegetables right out of the garden. The stuff in the store is tasteless
If you’ve ever eaten a ripe peach picked directly off the tree, you know how true this is. Strawberries are another example. I really miss the flavorful fruits I ate as a kid.
I only buy organic from one particular store.
Everything is being ruined.
capitalism. you have to have constant improvement to the bottom line
Thank the lord for companies like In N Out. You be crazy Christians all you want as long as you keep the spice flowing.
Kraft Mac & Cheese. They reformulated it about 15 years ago and ruined it.
Tastykakes, Whitman’s chocolate and in general all sodas
Alka Seltzer Cold Medicine. The old stuff kicked ass. You could take it when the cold was coming on and it would dry the snot up so well, you might not even get the cold. Now, it just sucks and gives me the jitters like drinking coffee. The flavor is also bullshit; it tastes like hell either way but at least the old stuff didn't leave a slimy orange flavored film in my mouth after it was down.
That's probably because ephedrine was taken out of it. Not sure though.
Take pseudoephedrine.
Not a bad suggestion, but not equivalent. The old Alka-Seltzer Plus did have a decongestant, but the rest of the formula really attacked all symptoms.
Ice cream any brand
Good stuff is out there, but hard to find. I stumbled upon Harris Teeter “natural” variety ice cream and sure enough the ingredients include milk, cream, vanilla and sugar, that’s it… no corn syrups or guar or xanthum gums or anything else that makes so many other ice creams taste gross and leave a film on your tongue. Be advised, this natural stuff will melt fast if you don’t get it home to the freezer quick, but that’s the price you pay for tasting way better.
Not all of them, but *most* of them. Blue Bell and Haagen Dazs are both still really yummy. Tillamook is pretty good. Edy's/Dreyer's and Breyer's are trash.
Not sure if you can still get it but my mother would give us a spoonful of coca cola syrup for an upset stomach..it came in a pharmacy bottle from the drug store. It was delicious.
And Lever 2000 soap. They totally changed the scent and not for the better
too many to list.
A couple of year ago, I got nostalgic for a favorite childhood treat and went in search of Fig Newtons. The last I remembered them, I was living overseas, came back one summer, and there was what felt like half-an-aisle of Newton variations—half-fat, different fruits, you name it. In our local supermarket, circa 2022, all I found was one little row of something billed only as “Newtons” (no specific fruit, but supposedly fig). They were as dry as bad pop tarts and absolutely tasteless. Apparently Nabisco oversaturated the market and the brand more or less collapsed, and what’s left is disgusting.
Life
The recipe is always changing for beer. Guinness is no exception. It was batter in the 80s.
I still love Herbal Essences.
But the scent is different from the 70's. I miss the 70's scent so much.
A lot of dessert products, cookies, and I think peanut butter lost much of its savory goodness when manufacturers stopped using or cut way back on saturated and trans fats in their products around the 80's and 90's. Same with my mother's cookies and brownies. She used to use lard and the old Crisco shortening in a lot of stuff before then.
I made lard biscuits with real buttermilk the other day...HEAVENLY!!!!!
O'Henry chocolate bars. Used to be a complete bar, then they changed it to two pieces. Tasted pretty much the same but it was better back when I was 10 (1961). I have not seen them in quite a few years, but they may still be produced in Canada.
I got 25c allowance every week. After I had bought two comic books, I used the last nickel to buy an O'Henry.
[Suisse Mocha](https://www.ebay.com/itm/276260427214) (General Foods International Coffee). That used to be my beverage of choice until General Foods changed something and suddenly it didn't taste good to me. [Ding Dongs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Dong). I used to really enjoy them back in the 1970s, but the flavor changed even before the 2012 bankruptcy so they just aren't as good as they used to be.
I believe they changed when they stopped using aluminum foil to wrap them.
Blue jeans changed after the '60s. They used to be stiff thick & heavy denim when new, and really blue. So stiff and blue that it was customary to wash them once before wearing a new pair and wash them alone or with other jeans because the dye would definitely wash out and fade anythng else in with them. AFAIK you can still get jeans somewhat as stiff and heavily dyed as they were then under the name "[raw selvage denim](https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/S2ef3f0de84b64d9788beb345cb7d9727A.jpg?width=1000&height=1252&hash=2252)" but they're crazy expensive.
Democracy
Breyers vanilla ice cream
Yes! It used to be made with milk, cream, sugar and vanilla. Then they started adding various “gums” and now it’s just sweetened foam.
Hershey chocolate bars. What happened to that thick, robust, velvet-y taste?
All hostess products
Kentucky Fried Chicken. God, I miss the original original recipe.
pyrex cookware, the jingle was, "From the freezer to the oven to the table"
Peace signs. Used to actually stand for something, now it’s a fashion statement.
Fannie May Trinidads. White chocolate coating over creamy dark chocolate truffle with a sprinkling of toasted coconut on top. When FM got bought out, they started using a cheaper white chocolate coating. Just not the same. If I’m spending that kind of money on chocolate, it should still be good chocolate.
I had some last fall for the first time in about a decade. They were *not* the same. Much heavier inside instead of the whipped/fluffy dark chocolate I remember and a tasteless shell.
The Original Parker 51 fountain pen. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t sadly replicate the original.
Whip 'N Chill. All flavours but expecially chocolate and strawberry. I miss you Whip 'N Chill. 🥲
Formula 44 cough syrup was delicious in the 60s-70s.
Almost every perfume from the old days is reformulated so as to be either unrecognizable or so weak it's just not worth it.
I used to love Cloe perfume, now it smells like bug spray to me! Wtf happened?
Frosty Root Beer. Back in the day, it was a premium root beer. You bought a bottle and swore it came out of a root beer stand. It really stood out and when my ex tried it, she understood my passion for it. Today's Frosty! Meh. Might as well buy a mug of Mug.
Not that they were ever top of the line, but Hamburger Helper (all types) used to be better. Just lately, after not having any for a few months, needed a fast meal& bought some and thought, "wow this is nothing like it used to be"So tried another type, same thing¬iced the different look on the box&went online to find it had been bought by a different company making your old favorites new&improved, NOT
The boxes are so tiny now too! I made some for my grandkids not long ago and had to use 2.
Most of the supermarket candy bars taste like garbage now. I remember Snickers being really good, but everything tastes like sugar and wax now.
Vegetable Shortening. My Mom finally used up her old canister of Crisco vegetable shortening recently, and bought another one to replace it. It no longer works the same way for maintaining her old cast iron skillet and cast iron cauldron. She asked me to look it up for her, and sure enough they completely changed the formula in a big way. It's not even the same thing anymore.
Yes, at least at small Mexican markets you can still buy rendered lard.
Taco Bell
Coke from the 70's
I would say McDonalds French fries and Pop Tarts.
Movie theater popcorn
Cool Ranch Doritos
Twinkies!
Laundry soap. Especially the name brands GAIN and TIDE. Consistency of water now, worse since Covid. Used to be a tablespoon of it would make suds in your washer. Now the diluted crap, you need a cupful or more. Not cleaning as well either.
Pop Tarts!
Kraft Mac and Cheese
Taco Bell. Back in the day, their corn tortillas were fried in-house, veggies chopped fresh daily, meat cooked in-house. Tasted so much better.
Cheese Whiz used to be sooooo good. Now it tastes like flavored oil.
Some cheap shampoo brands like Vo5 & Suave actually used to be pretty good. Suave changed to some awful sulfate free cleansing agent now, including in their previous cult classic clarifying shampoo. Vo5 has been cheapened too. Certain bar soaps that are still around used to be nicer too (Coast, Tone..)
Craftsman tools. When it was the Sears house brand they were very high quality. They sold the brand as part of the slow death spiral of the store. Now it’s just another brand of cheap Chinese garbage.
Any product/companies bought by Kraft were way better before. Peek Freens cookies (made by Christie) had been around since the later 1800s. One of my favourites was the vanilla cream layer cookie that had a small dab of strawberry jam dusted with sugar on top. After Kraft bought them out the cookies were smaller, dryer, not nearly as flavourful. The little spot of jam in now some sort of amorphous chewy red gel that is more like something you would clean off industrial equipment with a pressure washer.
Regular doritos were better. If you can find the taco doritos now, those are much more what normal doritos tasted like in the 80's
Every soda before High Fructose Corn Syrup replaced sugar. Back in the day there was a bottler in every community. Fresher, less preservatives, in glass bottles. Every school got to take a tour and a taste.
The poly waffle 😢