Today I Learned

People in the UK are saying it about Cadbury too. :(

It's also because they're shit. I loved them once, too. They were shit then, too. I just didn't realize how shit this shit was because of the sugar high. Every few years you just cone more to your senses. Shitty chemical sugar foods are worse than any drug.

That explains a lot. I used to live the raspberry ones so much and couldn't wait to share them with my two girls.

All I got was, "Dad, these suck."

So I tried one and was just baffled. It did suck. I chalked it up to my taste buds changing, but this makes much more sense.

Chocolate has gotten worse and worse too.

Disgusting and artificial is American, both our people and foods.

It's a lot of childhood marketing associating things like cartoons and commercials for the product. Because they were expensive and sugary, parents would make them a special indigence.

As a child I used to love them when I could get them, then I had a real pastry with jam in the middle never went back. I was so upset about how much better a real part was and why we never have them, when they were basically the same price at the time. But we lived in the county, so an hour-long drive to get them every other day made no sense, either.

Maybe it's just me, but I ran through a lot of typical heavily marketed food items for kids when I was one, and always ended up hungry an hour later. Learned early on how much of that stuff was garbage.

I never tried them, but I once read their box in a US supermarket and I'm surprised that they could be made lower quality.

I have not but I might have made that mistake in the future. Thanks for the warning. It's so weird that off-brands for everything appeared as cheaper lower quality versions and then the world went to such shit they're now the higher quality version.

How are so many things now worse quality and higher priced than their own knock-offs? They should all be committing Sudoku in shame.

That's not exactly true.

Yes, most of it is manufactured by a co-packer. And these co-packers also make similar products for other brands. But each one (usually) has their own recipe. Sometimes the differences are very minor, others can be drastic. Sometimes they have specialty ingredients (e.g. Himalayan sea salt instead of regular salt, or a partner brand). Sometimes the co-packer offers a standard recipe as a starter for the smaller brands.

Historically, the brand-name used a higher-quality recipe, worthy of the higher sale price. Generics would use something cheaper, comfortably taking the lower end of the market. Costco's Kirkland brand is famous for going a step higher than the major brand, which is very unusual for a house brand.

Yeah, the weird part being that the off-brands are now better quality than the name brands. When they suddenly drop in quality to match everything will taste like sawdust and tears.

Pop tarts are infinitely shittier than they were even 5 years ago, it's not just you. I bought one pack last year and never will again. They are trash crackers that feel like some bean counter went "yep still frosted on top, filling in the middle, good to go". Now they are trying to sell "super stuffed" variants too that still don't meet the old standards. Fuck poptarts.

Late 40s here so same, it's definitely not nostalgia. I was a chonkey bastard so I'd get the s'mores ones once they came out and eat the crust ring on the outside then pull them open to gorge on the sweet s'mores innards.

There's so little filling now that both halves seem bare, and the things are so thin and brittle they crack into a dozen pieces in the attempt.

I once bought them in a "american sectuon" in a supermarket, because i kept seeing them on tv. I couldn't believe that people would actually eat sweet cardboard and like it.