Once great brands ...... now junk.

NIMAN

Reading the Black Friday thread, and Polaroid was mentioned, got me thinking about some of the old names of my youth who were once innovative brands.

Back in the day, Blaupunkt was a brand you always fancied owning.
Or Alpine car stereos.

I know now that many famous brands have sold their rights to be used by other companies, so you buy a Hitachi, JVC, Sharp TV now at your peril.


Any others spring to mind?

Cantona's Collars

Mitsubishi Black Diamond,used to be great until they were sold off to some Turkish company (Vestel I think)

B.A._Baracus

Sanyo was once a good quality brand name. Not sure if I can even say their new products are bad as they have pretty much disappeared over here.

Fianna Fail

sabat

I remember back when the only Samsung you'd see was a microwave oven.

Liverpool Fc

NIMAN

glasso wrote: »

Fianna Fail

We have a winner.:D

Badly Drunk Boy

Back in the day, we had a Pye telly. And a Ferguson. (Not the tractor).

Kodak would probably be the sort of brand in this category.

NIMAN

If I was to buy a TV now, I wouldn't think about any manufacturer that isn't in this list:

Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG.

freshpopcorn

Lucozade!

Your Face

Russell and Joe.

Not sure if they were ever great though.

Tom Mann Centuria

Any brand that Sports Direct have got their paws on.

jrmb

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

Kodak would probably be the sort of brand in this category.

Polaroid, Kodak, Memorex, Praktica, Maxell

david75

The Catholic Church

ceadaoin.

Thought this said bands, not brands. I was slightly confused reading the replies for a few seconds.

Anyway, probably all of them. Things don't seem to last the way they used to

ambasite

Tommy Tiernan

SpatialPlanning

Tommy Hilfiger. Used to do really high quality, durable clothes. I had jumpers that lasted years. Now the stuff is pure crap.

SuperS54

Philips, used to be a good brand, moved pretty much everything to China and outsourcing and are peddling tat these days.

Greybottle

Nokia.

Still around, but still make excellent phones, but are nowhere near as prominent as a few years ago.

magentis

NIMAN wrote: »

If I was to buy a TV now, I wouldn't think about any manufacturer that isn't in this list:

Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, LG.

Even some of the lower end Panasonic's are made by vestel.

Optimalprimerib

Sketchers. Their shoes only last a few months

Archeron

Cadburys.

Wanderer78

Its called 'profit maximisation', get over it, it's good for us, apparently!

padd b1975

Mercedes Benz.

flaneur

Hoover

JohnBoy26

NIMAN wrote: »

Reading the Black Friday thread, and Polaroid was mentioned, got me thinking about some of the old names of my youth who were once innovative brands.

Back in the day, Blaupunkt was a brand you always fancied owning.
Or Alpine car stereos.

I know now that many famous brands have sold their rights to be used by other companies, so you buy a Hitachi, JVC, Sharp TV now at your peril.


Any others spring to mind?

Alpine are still a top brand in car audio and are not junk. Blaupunkt was always an overrated brand which had very poor quality head units, especially towards the end of the 90's, unreliable and terrible sound quality.

RobAMerc

Nordmende and Telefunken

nullzero

One that still successful but makes products that just don't last as well as their competitors is Gillette. In fact they probably dominate their market place but man those razors are bad.

JohnBoy26

As with the many other once great brands toshiba tvs are also now made by vestel. Before I think some of the higher end models were a toshiba design with the lower end stuff being made by vestel for years. I think all European toshibas are made by vestel nowadays.

md23040

The irony of the name - Quality Street.

Really cheap choclate that's excessively sweet. Pure muck.

md23040

The irony of the name - Quality Street.

Really cheap choclate that's excessively sweet. Pure muck.

Liam McPoyle

Panaphonics and Sorny, they've really dropped off the map.

James 007

Dell, Gateway 2000

Beta Ray Bill

Greybottle wrote: »

Nokia.

Still around, but still make excellent phones, but are nowhere near as prominent as a few years ago.

This...

What a fall from grace.

3210 and 3310 were amazing phones.

And not only did they have great phones, they had a patent on the "Nokia Charger" which basically charged conceivable device..... And then the went and changed it/made it obsolete! biggest mistake ever!

JohnBoy26

Sony is a good brand and is far from junk but imo it's not the last word in quality as it once was. Anyone remember the trinitron flat screen tv's? They were pure quality.

greenttc

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

Back in the day, we had a Pye telly. And a Ferguson. (Not the tractor).

Kodak would probably be the sort of brand in this category.

Your pye telly would have been made in dundrum where the shopping centre now stands!

Littlehorny

padd b1975 wrote: »

Mercedes Benz.

You can close the thread now, Merc's are gone to fook

Beta Ray Bill

Oracle Database.... 12.1.0.2 in particular....

Greatest heap of SH*TE!!!!!!!!!!

no.8

Optimalprimerib wrote:

Sketchers. Their shoes only last a few months

Have owned 2 different models (casual shoe and runners). I'm not one for selecting one brand over another but tbh I didn't have any problems with them. V comfortable. Not the hardest wearing but certainly well above average to me.

flaneur

In a lot of cases, certainly with the electrical and electronics brands, it's just some modern day cheapo company cashing in on some long-since-closed-down company's brand legacy.

For example, The Hoover Company hasn't existed since 1995. You're actually buying products from Candy in Europe or Techtronic (China) in the US.

A lot of the other whitegoods brands that are out there are made by a Turkish company called Arçelik (yes that's really its name). It's a division of Koç Holding (which is pronounced Coach...) and known usually as BEKO in Ireland, the UK and much of Europe .... for obvious reasons.

In case you think I'm making those names up:

https://www.arcelik.com.tr/default.aspx?lang=en-US https://www.koc.com.tr/en-us/

Some of them are just store brands / local relabelers who own an old legacy brand, sometimes they're owned outright by Arçelik.

Nekarsulm

As RobaMerc posted, Nordmende was once a top class brand. And you can add Ferguson and Bush to the list of once respected audio makers.

Ciaran_B

md23040 wrote: »

The irony of the name - Quality Street.

Really cheap choclate that's excessively sweet. Pure muck.

So much chocolate like this now. Most Cadbury is barely edible, Roses especially.

flaneur

The Nordmende brand is owned by KAL Kitchens in Ireland and sources appliances from various companies.

It's a weird one, as it's owned by Technicolor (Thomson SA) everywhere else, although I'm not aware of them still using it.

Also, Nordmende was a high end audio/visual/radio brand originally, it didn't make domestic appliances.

Bush is a trademark of Sainsbury's / Argos group now and used as an own brand.

Ferguson seems to be used by Thomson SA in some markets, but they've totally moved away from making appliances and are far more focused on their core businesses around IP and telecommunication stuff.

You need to be careful to check behind brands before you actually buy. In a lot of cases you've people buying products that are nothing to do with the original companies at all.

whisky_galore

Ciaran_B wrote: »

So much chocolate like this now. Most Cadbury is barely edible, Roses especially.

The incredibly shrinking box of Roses....

whisky_galore

Levi's jeans.

flaneur

whisky_galore wrote: »

Levi's jeans.

They're pretty much unchanged, they just went out of fashion.

It's amazing how Levi's went from being the essence of cool to something your granddad might wear in a very short space of time.

Nekarsulm

Do Mitsubishi even make TV's now? The Black Diamond was THE set to have 20 years ago.
And I remember when Texas Instruments on your calculator ment you had a prestigue brand.

flaneur

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Do Mitsubishi even make TV's now? The Black Diamond was THE set to have 20 years ago.
And I remember when Texas Instruments on your calculator ment you had a prestigue brand.

Mitsubishi moved away from that kind of stuff in this market anyway quite some time ago. They're a huge conglomerate though and very much still in existence. They've just changed focus.

Texas Instruments is still very much alive and well, they just no longer operate in the consumer space very much.

whisky_galore

flaneur wrote: »

They're pretty much unchanged, they just went out of fashion.

It's amazing how Levi's went from being the essence of cool to something your granddad might wear in a very short space of time.

No, the quality went to sh!te as well.

flaneur

whisky_galore wrote: »

No, the quality went to sh!te as well.

Could have been one of those cases of over-marketing too like CK underpants.

flaneur

The one that I really notice is Cadbury's. None of their products taste the same anymore and I just don't buy them, which is probably good for my health.

The old foil wrapped Dairy Milk bars and cream eggs and all of those things used to actually taste reasonable quality. Now they just taste like absolute junk.