The Buckets by Greg Cravens for January 22, 2021

It means there’s less and it costs more. That way you get fewer consumer complaints by calling it new and improved.

It is never improved. They should keep their mouths shut – first thing I check is weight, then what ingredients changed.

And ruin the taste.

Sometimes the only change is the look of the packaging

Its all marketing , and it works

Ive seen product in a new and more attractive packaging nearly double in sales with no other difference I know of

My wife often buys things that say “new” on them.

I will freely admit that when I did yesterday’s cartoon, I didn’t realize that we’d fill the comment section underneath it so completely with what, essentially, is today’s cartoon’s point. It’s like you guys are psychic or something!

Thank you, thank you, very mucho lol

I can remember when companies made more profits by being better than all the others, not just cheaper. I’m always willing to pay for quality.

Improved is never about higher customer satisfaction but always about profit. If it means to be better than the competition to up the market share then the customers may benefit.

If it means better than their own product they replace then it is worse the less competition there is left. Until you have a monopoly. Then you get a mere shadow of the quality that enabled the maker to corner the market in the first place.

Sometimes “new and improved” means that they got a new advertising agency…

New Coke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83T34Za1ls0

I always figured if the product was so good before why did they need to improve it? Were they selling us inadequate products all this time?

A smaller box.. with less inside. Improved for the shareholders

It means the previous version was old and lousy (with a nod to Mike Stivic — aka Rob Reiner — of All in the Family).

Some observations:

(1) I can’t remember the last time I saw a product that was actually labeled, “New and Improved.”

(2) Usually that label carries a further claim of what they did to improve it. Whether the improvement is real is typically a matter of opinion.

(3) My favorite meaningless label claim is “3X MORE than our 2 oz size” (where the first past is very large, and the last part is very small). This is to be found on a 6 oz spice jar in my kitchen.

She broke the code!

They actually lose money when the product . When it builds up a following, the change to cheaper ingredients, and claim it’s new and improved. True Story.

On the other hand they just reduce the size of the container without any announcement, like many OJ containers are now less than 64oz. It allows them to appear cheaper than their competitors who havent (yet) reduces their sizes.

Actually, that’s pretty true.