We have seen this quite often. We love a certain brand of chocolate dearly. Let’s call it Toffee X. Over the years, the taste of the Toffee X changes gradually until one day we feel that the chocolate is tasteless. We try to reason it as a natural change of taste associated with growing up. But no! Your friends say the same thing. Well, they have grown up too. But no! The kids in your block say that Toffee X isn’t a tasty chocolate at all. They wonder why their parents were hyping it so much!
After poking around, you find that the makers of Toffee X did indeed change the taste. To cut costs, they kept cutting back on certain ingredients. The amount of cardamom was halved, butter was replaced with margarine, the size went down by a third and they used refined sugar instead of honey. From being the market #1, they are now just also-rans. This is a typical example of a work of masterpiece degrading over time and dying a slow death due to short-sightedness and lack of commitment and cutting corners as a result. Continue reading From masterpiece to mediocrity