New and Improved vs. Old and Lousy

I’m getting more than a bit annoyed that some of my favourite things keep getting “improved”. Sometimes it’s a mild change, like using HFCS instead of sugar in a soft drink. Other times, it’s more insidious.

Yesterday I bought a bag of Goodies. For those unfamiliar with this candy, here’s a picture and a link.

That was one of my favourite candies, until yesterday. Now it’s “goodier”, according to the bag. It’s not. It no longer has the nice, hard outer candy coating and the licorice inside is grainy, as if Hershey embedded small granules of sugar into the licorice. It’s ruined for me. I can’t eat it. Not altogether a bad thing as I can go without the calories, but why change something that’s been essentially the same for decades?

I foolishly thought that when Coca Cola fooled around with the formula for Coke and suffered the consequences of customer rage that every single manufacturer would never play around with successful formulas. Change the packaging but leave the contents alone. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Argh.