h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This has been discussed before, but never mind.

Do you find that just as you discover a new product, or even an older one, and it's just what you've been looking for and why did no one think of it before and I'll get 24 next time I go shopping -

they take it off the market?

On the other hand, in the company where I work, (we make wardrobes) they are forever thinking up new designs, but no one ever bothers to find out what the customers are actually asking for.

Two examples from the household (apply to Germany - if you can get them in another country, please let me know!!!)

Woolite washing powder. You could always get the liquid version for hand washing, then they brought out a powder version which was much more practical for the washing machine. Can't get it any more.

Scotch used to make a scouring pad of recycled plastic. Not only was the idea of a recycled material a good idea, but the pads lasted longer than a steel wool one (Brillo) and didn't scratch so much, while still being just as effective in getting burnt-on bits off of saucepans and baking trays.

Gone. No longer available.

Why did you need a liquid washing agent more than the powdered one?

Hi
I have seen Woolite washing powder in England, but only in certain stores as they seem to buy in products from abroad, as for the second item yes we can get plastic scouring pads.

Now that's interesting, because when those plastic scourers were available I was buying them for my Mum in England and sending them to her.

Hi Trillian's Child, they may not be the brand name of Scotch, but they are plastic, and they always seem to be in yellow.

No, these were dark green.

Never mind, what I was hoping for was a thread full of disgruntled would-be consumers who are either

() missing things from the shelves in the shops which really ought to be there or

() wonder who certain products that actually are available were developed for. Or from what warped minds the ideas come for the stuff we actually could buy, if we were as perverse as the manufacturers who put them on the market.

And has anyone ever bought anything that they thought was a good idea at the time, but it turned out utterly useless really.

(My mother's favourite is the box with slits for collecting old newspapers neatly in. So you can tie them together with string... you know the ones I mean. Does anyone actually have one of these?)

Well, there was this new type of milk they introduced in my supermarket (in the Netherlands) wich had a longer expiration period. I thought it was rather handy, as I'm a student so I have to drink the whole carton by myself. Litteraly the next day (I go to the supermarket every day) they had replaced it with a brand that had the old expiration period. Go figure.

I find milk that keeps for ages when opened a bit suspicious. However, they could cater for you by producing smaller cartons, say, 1/4 litre.

I can remember a time when they stopped producing 'Chopp' brown source for a year, I never found out why?

I've experienced this phenomenon several times!

A lot of my favourites have disappeared from the shelves - and one of the most recent ones hadn't even been advertised! How would they expect people to know about it if they don't advertise, for heaven's sake?

I think the manufacturers make a serious mistake if they expect a product to become an immediate success - it will take a while

Well Chopp source has been around for a century, so it's not such an immediate success!!!

Try getting leaf tea in a British supermarket nowadays

When I go if they have any on the shelves I usually buy the lot

I know where you can get powdered tea!!!

Sweepings left over from teabags I suppose

Teabags

Might as well boil a page from the newspaper and a pair of well worn tights!

I went to a tea-packing factory once and I know as FACT that the contents of TEA-BAGS are all the seivings left on the floor after they seive the tea to put the nice big leaves in the leaf-tea cartons. Then they hoover up the floor and all that wooshes to the tea-bag-making machine. They swore they let no one walk on the tea-floor so it'd still be nice and clean, and hey, you make it with boiling water which will give it a good disinfect, but some how I've been a leaf-tea only girl ever since....

My favourite bath-product company has stopped making my favourite bath-bomb. I nearly burst into tears in the shop.

And they special little sponges with non-scratch pads that I used to get to stick on my dish-washing wand are getting really hard to find. You can only get the scratchy green ones. Grrr. And I can't find my favourite tissue-lined quarto-sized envelops and matching paper any more. And no one makes blue-black ink cartridges any more. And Whittard doesn't stock my favourite tea and I have to buy it on the internet and for some reason this is really getting on my nerves. And Revlon used to make a conditioner that smelt fantastic and the 'new improved' smells ick. And my Fiance wishes me to add that they've stopped making his favourite chutney AND his favourite organic cider and he's not pleased. And I haven't seen brown Kendall mint-cake for years and the white kind just won't do.

I think I had better stop this plain-chant whinge right now. For surely there must be some NEW things I like...

exactly
doesn't matter if you buy the cheapest or most expensive teabags, all taste exactly the same

No leaf tea in England? Preposterous! England has probably one of the highest demands for tea.


The only product I have found to have vanished is Sainsbury's 'organic' potato salad. I thought it was much tastier than their usual pre-processed blocky stuff, but I only managed to get hold of one pot before it disappeared...

Going back to the subject title - I deman more supply!