Cutting the product

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And her insulin.

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It shows you the power of branding. I remember that there was a study where kids were given a regular hamburger in a McDonald's wrapper and the same hamburger by itself and kids overwhelming said McDonald's tasted better.

I think they even replicated the experiment where the McDonald's hamburger was unwrapped and kids still preferred the McDonald's wrapped burger.

BananaPeal

I usually buy the cheap Fruity Pebbles for my kids, but Walmart has out of them one day so I got the name brand as a treat. Their response? "Dad, please don't buy those again. Dyno Bites are better." I was flabbergasted.

Then again, they don't see cereal ads, don't know who the Flintstones are, but love dinosaurs.

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Those are the same product..

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The price difference was huge not long ago. Now it's much closer and everything is overpriced severely.

That's not a "back in my day" thing either, do the math on it and where it should be from inflation and where it's at from gouging are not even close.

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My mom used to cut our honey nut tasteeos with regular tasteeos.

Like a 3 parts regular to 1 party honey nut cut.

AFK BRB Chocolate

The box is a name brand cereal. The bag is a copycat store brand cereal that's cheaper.

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I think you imprint on things as a kid and don't like change. I definitely had my preferred after school snacks and even different brands just felt wrong.

giangi

Growing up I watched all the cereal ads and I still preferred the Dyno Bites. There's so much crap added to the "big brand" cereals. It's like eating sugar. It must be overwhelming for them trying those after being used to Dyno Bites.

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Strange, from memory it was the exact opposite. The brand names actually had decent flavor/texture, while the off-brands had humongous amounts of sugar, to the point where you actually taste the sugar rather than it just sweetening the overall flavor.

giangi

If true, that was 10 year old me arguing and I do not stand by anything he says

But really, that hasn't been my experience with some of them, but it would make sense if the off brands stay pretty close to the big brands in recipes or added more sugar to compete that way. I guess I'm trying to find logic in preference. I'm realizing how little I know about cereals.

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... Obviously you don't have kids

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Tootie fruities are just flat out better tha Froot Loops. Fight me.

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Or how people tend to prefer Pepsi in blind tests (I think it's sweeter or something, if i remember correctly) but overwhelmingly chose CocaCola if given the choice.

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It's definitely still true in Central Europe

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My guess is that the brand names got stuck from their own popularity. People knew what they tasted like and might have reacted badly if they tried to tweak the recipe, whereas the budget brands were easier to either change or even discontinue and replace with slightly different branding. People were buying them for the price, not the recipe.

And then, after enough experimentation, they were able to figure out something that matched or surpassed the brand names.

In Canada, there's the PC brand that I always considered a budget brand. Until I worked at an ice cream factory that had their own premium brand but also made some PC flavours. The PC ones looked better than the factory brand ones. The factory did things the old way (where ice cream flavours were still more about the ice cream than extras added) while PC focused more on the extras like cookie dough or chocolate caramel cups. I can only speak for myself, but I'm more into the extras than the ice cream itself, so it felt like PC was more in tune with what I wanted than the premium brand.

Additionally, the premium brand sticking with the less preferred recipe kinda feels pretentious at this point, like they are being ice cream purists or think they know better about what people want, given the higher price.

PC also had their versions of various pop flavours that have colouring on the boxes to make it clear what they were cloning and their Pepsi cola clone was just as good as the real thing but way cheaper.

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cereal is cereal, mostly

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For example, I loved the shitty school pizzas, even though they were a culinary abortion.

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culinary abortion

your loss is our sauce

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Yup, but they are made in the same factory