Wednesday, September 5, 2012

New and Improved??

New and improved is such a everyday claim that no one really believes it anymore. I recently wrote a submission in our church newsletter about this phenomenon. I don’t care if it’s motor oil, laundry soap, yogurt, cereal or Ginsu knives they are all new and improved. I guess I understand some of these things as technology invents a new additive (Probably will be deemed carcinogenic in the future) that cleans better, lubricates more (OK Cuz get your mind out of the gutter) or tastes better but some things do mystify me a bit. How about these new lower cholesterol laden eggs? What’s that all about? I guess they feed the chickens less bacon and butter. Have you notice that ice cream gallons are in many cases no longer gallons for either the same or increased pricing? There’s progress and something new and improved. How about new and improved bottled water? Is it coming from a different part of the New Jersey River now? No actually it was the bottle they supposedly improved…what they did was make it thinner plastic…same tap…different bottle.

I wonder if we’ll ever come to a day when society just says that’s it. We can’t make a single thing any better now. Everything you have is as good as it gets. Now move on, nothing more to see here. I guess I doubt that as we will never be satisfied and man will always be trying to build a better mousetrap. By the way have you looked in Lowes at mousetraps? They are getting pretty fancy at killing those rodents. Now I don’t know about you but I somehow doubt a mouse will fall for the fake techno-cheese facsimile on some of these little traps and if they do well they really should be off to mouse heaven or wherever those little gnarly creatures go.

I love how a cereal maker improved their cereals. Replacing the second ingredient in many of the cereals, the first being sugar, is whole grain. So I guess everyone can now feel good about eating their frosted flakes because the grain is now whole. I can feel the pounds just falling off now.

Here’s another one I like; you really can’t improve much on bleach but they managed to do it. They made a spill proof bottle. (Or was that spill resistant?) Anyway I put it to the test…..=fail. I do have one question regarding yogurt. Yes yogurt. Where did this Greek style yogurt come from and why didn’t they just start with the Greek stuff. I actually can tolerate the Greek stuff.

Now to be fair there are products that definitely could be classified new and improved. They are mostly electronic in nature such as computers, TV’s, etc. TV’s have come a long way from the era where we put colored plastic covers over out black and white TVs and called them color TV’s and computers…well they have continually improved.

That’s it for today. Think about new and improved items that are or are not improvements and post them here and have a new and improved day!