I really dislike seeing these words, "New and Improved" on any of my favourite products. I like to think it's the "kiss of death" when a company labels its popular products in these big glaring words, practically flashing in neon letters.

Some months back, I discovered a commercially baked apple-rhubarb pie and sour cherry pie as good as if I had baked them myself. I'm not bragging--but these pies were delicious, all natural ingredients and had that flaky golden home-made-like crust with the slightly lumpy surface because it was stuffed with great filling. The filling wasn't that thick icky-sweet commercial filling, but tasted as if you had peeled and sliced and sweeten with just enough taste and spices. My Hubby was impressed enough to eat some as normally, he wasn't keen on any commercially baked goodies. The pie was the dessert answer when I didn't have time to bake. Today, I saw the pies--new box, new label, new price and with those dreaded words, "New and Improved." I checked the ingredients and sure enough, enough chemicals to give that thick, icky sweet filling and phony pie crust. It was also a much smaller pie with a much bigger price. I understand adding chemicals to preserve the shelf life or to artifically flavour, but isn't the real McCoy much better? I decided to go home and bake my own from scratch.

We've been using this brand of toothpaste for as long as I can remember. Each time it "improves" by adding more protection to the teeth. It's all good but have you noticed that when  anything improves, the size decreases as the price goes the other direction? Household cleansers are another product that seems to be constantly improving. It's already environmentally 'green', contained in a biodegradable container amd still works great, so please stop improving on an already excellent product!

I think the final straw was the "new and improved" Belgian chocolate almond bar. Come on, how can anyone improve on chocolate?  I read the label and yep, it's not such a pure Belgian chocolate with almonds anymore. It has some alien ingredient to preserve the shelf life. I can understand this improvement if it had to be shipped to the astronauts on their space station, but we're talking chocolate here where there's no worries about sitting on the shelf too long!

Checking out the fine print on the label, I realized something--the chocolate company is now under a new "Mother Ship." Man-o-man, there is something worse than "New and Improved"--it's called "Under New Ownership."