New Junk

Those new-fangled gizmos are meant to fool us, but do they really? We are constantly confronted with the “New and Improved” products that replace the products we once used and before we know it we can no longer find the old version that we really liked better.

I remember the first time I realized this trend of obsolesces. My brother and I were kids and we would go down to the variety store and get potato guns. These are guns that you stick the end into a potato and it extracts a cylindrical potato plug. Next, you pull the trigger and the potato plug flies through the air, not at a dangerous velocity. It was a toy and boys of that age thought it was pretty cool.

Somehow we lost out potato guns every winter, just like losing the previous year’s water pistols. It was just one of those things that got lost at the end of the season and we always looked forward to buying new ones. Oddly, one summer the metal version of the potato gun didn’t appear in any of the variety stores. They were replaced by a plastic version, which we welcomed because they were lighter and more colorful.

A problem with the plastic version quickly came to the surface. The problem was that they were easy to break. Stick it the potato at the wrong angle and the barrel would snap off.

Since that day I notice that more and more original formulas have been lost at every turn in life. When was the last time you had eye glasses that were actually made of glass?

We used to have a toaster oven that could turn out toast in two minutes. We replaced it with a toaster that had to be programmed and it takes close to ten minutes to toast an Eglish muffin.

Another recent disappointment was with cell phones. Fortunately I’m safe for now but who know for how long. My wife and I got matching cell phones several years ago. They were LG phones and what I liked about them is the display has an easy to read clock. I charge mine up every time I get in the truck, and the battery still holds a good charge. My wife lets her phones discharge totally before recharging, so her LG phone was totally dead within two years and of course the battery is now obsolete. She had to get a new phone but her new one had only a small viewing window, like a prison cell window. I had to put on my bifocals just to read the time on her phone. She wore that phone out and she now has a new one, and I’m not even sure her new one has a clock display.

Folks, I’m afraid things aren’t getting any better. Treasure what you have because the replacement isn't going to be better.