Haven’t bought name brand Pop-Tarts in years, but have occasionally picked up Toaster 'Betes or whatever the off-brand versions are called.
Noticed a ‘sale’ on the name brand and got conned into buying them. They’re now smaller, have less frosting, and have way less filling. The damn things were so flimsy that two of them snapped trying to take them out of the toaster.
If you get a craving for some nice sugary betes for breakfast, stick to the off-brands. They’re now higher quality than the name brand.
The future is stupid.
If anyone’s interested, Bon Appétit had a “Gourmet Makes” or something where one of their chefs would recreate snacks like Oreos, Pop Tarts, and others. They look great. I tried a version of the oreos, mine were nowhere near as pretty, but the taste is so much better.
Product death by a thousand cuts. Cut here, cut there…
They were based on real tarts originally. They’ve gotten so crappy you might as well go back to baking them yourself.
I think baking tarts is a sex crime.
Every can of pringles I buy now is undercooked and the last can I bought they forgot to add salt to any of the chips. (No it wasn’t labeled as “reduced salt” or anything like that, I checked)
Ya. I really noticed the recent decline in pringles. As cheap and crappy as they were before, they are noticeably way worse now.
The “hot ones” are good, though. I still prefer the Pringles style Lays buffalo wing flavor, but those are damn hard to find.
As a US emigrant, every time I go back to the US the first thing I buy is Pop Tarts because it’s the hardest thing to get outside the US, and is the thing I miss the most. And it’s years between. And every time it’s significantly worse than the last time. It’s not just your imagination - the quality loss is not just noticeable but STAGGERING.
People in the UK are saying it about Cadbury too. :(
Kinder chocolate is still safe. Hershey’s been dead since 2006. Kitkats died (for me) when they removed the foil barrier, sad moment for chocolate lovers everywhere.
Fortunately and unexpected Milano Cookies are really good and have replaced Kinder Buenos because they’ve gotten too sweet.
I think I’ve hit my mid 30’s dark chocolate phase because dark chocolate is delicious.
They got bought by an American company, so naturally the suck followed. Sale should’ve been stopped.
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.
I’m fairly certain they stopped using actual ingredients and make all the flavors exclusively with artificial flavors now. Everything tastes like the same corn syrupy artificially flavored trash. The flavors used to actually be differentiated and taste like something besides sweetened chemical disaster.
I tried a twinkie for the first time in ages and maybe it is just a rose‑tinted memory but I swear they tasted better when I was a kid. It was really dry and the filling barely had any flavor. It was just greasy.
Cosmic brownies and oatmeal cream pies…
I believe I read recently that the price of cocoa beans has gotten much more expensive so chocolate producers have started using more sugar. Therefore the chocolate is lower quality.
It doesn’t even matter if cocoa was more expensive.
They will look for any way to make it cheaper, quality be damned. 2¢ saved per candy bar looks great on an excel spreadsheet, the only thing that matters to those fucking finance bro clowns.
I’d rather pay more and eat less of it for real chocolate.
Oh no, don’t come back again unless you’re very, very white and haven’t picked up any noticeable accent. These shitty Pop Tarts aren’t worth dying for.
You have your priorities, others have theirs…
The equity firms will enshittify everything
If it has “equity” or “capital” in its name you are fucked.
That’s too bad. Recently I’ve been thinking of picking some up again. They taste good burnt (to me). Or I should say they used to, I guess…
So it’s basically a cracker now?
It’s like a cracker sandwich with the same amount of filling you’d get by lightly buttering toast.
They are also ultra processed. They probably don’t really even have to wrap them in that fake foil wrap because they are gonna stay exactly the same without it.
Dude those things are more sugary than a handful of candy along with minimal nutritional value. They were good like 15+ years ago but the enshittification has fully run its course. I stopped buying them years ago…
Oh we know.
They are garbage.
I don’t know about knock off brands but there were such better options for toaster pastries since the 90’s. So much so one of my kids tried a pop tart at some point and thought there disgusting. Overly sweet on a cardboard cracker.
I think they have always been bad. All the brand bame stuff is usually bad. You just gotta look for the good stuff.
Now I usually either have a PBJ or bread rolls or even soda crackers and bananas for breakfast.
I’m a barbarian, I’ll just rip a chunk off of a loaf of bread and microwave it for a few seconds so it’s all warm and moist.
Oh, and I cook entire packs of bacon at once so sometimes I’ll cram some bacon in there, with some hash browns from the air fryer and microwaved eggs. Just like barbarians used to do.
Brand names mean nothing anymore. The 80’s are over. Everything comes from a supplier and companies stamp their brand on it. Buy the things that are quality and ignore the brand, unless the brand has a reputation for being horrible.
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.
Anecdotal, but it was true for the company I worked for. Used to make ten brands of sump hose - the only difference was the bag we put it in and which fittings were included. The material, molds, and specs never varied.
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.
And the frosting is embarrassing
I buy store brand everything now. It’s ridiculous. Have you had a brand name Fig Newton lately? It’s sawdust. Ridiculous.
psssst… Nature’s Bakery are dope.
Speaking of fig newtons. We started getting dried rosselino or Salem white figs in bulk and just having those instead. So much better than any fig newtons thing.
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.
I am convinced the terms “generic” and “off brand” are both psyops to get people more into big brands.
I mean, back in the day they were true. You could get the name brand stuff, or the off brand stuff that looked mostly the same but had a weird after taste or something. Now the name brand stuff has degraded completely but the off brands have barely changed. Hopefully it stays this way, because we’re like 2 steps of enshittification away from everything tasting like sawdust.
How are so many things now worse quality and higher priced than their own knock-offs?
They earned public trust and brand-recognition over many years. Then, once they became the de facto product, they started min-maxing their production. Smaller portions, cheaper ingredients, automating as much of the production line as possible to cut employees, reducing wages for “less work”, etc. They’re hoping no one would notice that the product you’re buying isn’t living up to the original standard.
If you’re willing to pay the same price for cheaper production, then the company can literally make money without having to sell more product. They can show in their shareholder meetings that sales are going way up, even though consumer purchases may not have changed much at all. Heck, even if sales are going down, profits could still show an increase!
Then of course, there’s “inflation,” which they use to justify raising prices over time. Even though the product is worse than the original, you’re now paying way more for it.
This is the endgame of capitalism. Maximize profits at the cost of consumers. When money is the primary focus of a business, quality of goods and services will always degrade over time.
committing Sudoku in shame
The Pillsbury Doughboy has a bit of a belly, it might be difficult to disembowel himself with a math puzzle.
I appreciate the typo, it’s funnier.
It’s not a typo, just a meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/commit-sudoku
Paper cuts are no joke when you’re only 2 inches tall.
appeared as cheaper lower quality versions
They really never were. This was a reputation, yes, but it was not warranted. It’s taken a hell of a long time for enough people to realize this.
Nothing significant has changed in the last couple of decades, at least. Maybe back into the 60s, 70s, 80s or so, I won’t debate. But since the turn fo the century at a minimum, store brands almost always use a producer that produces for name brands. It’s often literally the same product. At worst, it might be stuff that didn’t quite make the name brand standards, or it might hvae a little less quality or something, but almost all of the time, it’s the same thing.
There might be some exception - I certainly haven’t tried the myriad of store brands for stores I haven’t gone to, but i’ve been buying mostly store brands for quite a number of years now, and almost all the time, there’s no difference.
Like one I can think of: Store-brand “Doritos” might have a bit less “cheese” on them. Or might have the same, depends. Most of the time it’s the same thing, though.
Yeah… I’m talking about all those years you’re skipping. Off-brands didn’t used to be made on the same production lines. And since the off-brand pop tarts are much different and better, it seems they’re still not.
If you can get them, the Clover Valley ones ($1.85 @ Dollar General) are pretty good, although the fig filling is golden rather than brown.
Thank you. Will give em a try!
