History Main / TheyDontMakeThemLikeTheyUsedTo

* One episode of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', "Wired for Battle" in the Johto series, starts with an [[OldMaster elderly fellow]] and his [[BigCreepyCrawlies Scizor]] [[CurbStompBattle easily defeating]] [[GoldfishPoopGang Team Rocket]] in battle.

[[folder: Anime]]

--> "They don't make Pokémon trainers like they used to."

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[[folder: Comic Strips ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* In film ''Film/{{Sleeper}}'': Interior cave - day: Luna—“What is it?” Miles—“It’s a 200-year-old Volkswagen.” (Turns key; car starts) “Ah. They really built these things, didn’t they?”

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[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

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[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

--> "Good forged steel! Not like those modern cast aluminum ones."

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[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* At the end of ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' episode "Only Human", one of the two [[VillainOfTheWeek villains of the week]], a man who has spent the whole episode being referred to as "Old Snake", laments how they don't make terrorists like they used to while inadvertantly revealing his true identity of [[WesternAnimation/GIJoeARealAmericanHero Cobra Commander]].
-->'''Old Snake:''' Poor Mr. Drath. Not quite smart enough, were you? They simply don't make terrorists like they used to! COOOOOBRA-ha-*hackcoughcoughcough*"\\

[[folder: Real-life examples]]

* Weaponized by the dwarf Longbeards in ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy'': None of them have less than five centuries of fighting goblins, orcs and horrible things from underground, and therefore can be forever heard to complain that the goblins used to be tougher, or beer used to taste better, or... Other dwarf units can reroll failed rolls just to avoid the pointed looks and sarcastic remarks on how they clearly don't make dwarfs like they used to either (case in point). Nearly every other dwarf subscribes to similar philosophies - a lot of the Empire's blackpowder knowledge comes from dwarves thrown bodily out of the Engineers' Guild for being too radical.

Older cars were made under the theory that, in a crash, the car should show as little damage as possible, and hence were made of thick steel; the body panels were often not load-bearing and could be easily removed. Newer cars (i.e. engineered in the last 30 years) are designed to simply fall apart in a crash, keeping the occupants safe by allowing the car's frame to absorb the energy involved in a crash by crumpling and going to pieces instead of transmitting the energy to the occupants. Of course, this does destroy the car. There are also maintenance issues. It used to be the "tree-shade mechanic" could fix an engine with basic tools, but newer cars require complicated and expensive tools. On the other hand, these efficiencies and cost reductions have allowed more people to afford a car; the U.S. population increased by 55% from 1960 to 2000, but the number of licensed drivers more than doubled over the same period.

* This trope also applied to low-end phonographs themselves in the 1980s as vinyl gave to way cassettes and [=CDs=], with the turntables in cheaper compact stereo systems having plastic plinths, plastic platters and plastic tone arms fitted with ceramic cartridges, and lack of anti-skating or adjustable tracking force, all from [[MadeInCountryX factories in China]]. The same basic design was later used for the cheap suitcase-style players that became popular starting with the above-mentioned vinyl revival in the 21st century.

* At the end of the first [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Cool Cat]] cartoon, the eponymous character sees that Col. Rimfire's elephant is motorized, he tells us"They just don't make elephants like they used to!"

'''Imp y Celyn:''' That's because we've learned from experience!

* In the former USSR, there's quite a lot of nostalgia about Soviet industrial goods which were renowned for their extreme durability and reliability. It wasn't uncommon for an off-the-shelf appliance to stay on duty for ''decades'' and be passed between generations. A large number of them are still in use today, 25 years after TheGreatPoliticalMessUp, and it's not a miracle (though still rare) to see, say, a fridge or a vacuum cleaner that's ''half a century'' old and has retained almost all the original parts. They do require occasional maintenance, yet since they've been built with simplicity and repairability in mind, the repair can be done with common tools and consumables. Spares ''are'' a problem, but custom parts are the minority and typically last the longest, and in the worst case, a broken piece can typically be reinforced with available materials or outright made from them anew without any industrial-grade equipment. The downside is their durability and repairability comes at the cost of performance. In comparison to modern equipment, Soviet goods are bulky, heavy, power-hungry, inefficient, technically obsolete and severely lacking in the aesthetic department (though [[{{Retraux}} this is a matter of taste]]) and ergonomics. These characteristics have given birth to many a joke (e.g.: "American scientists have 10 times as much equipment as ours, but each piece of our equipment is 10 times as much!"). Household appliances typically end up on UsefulNotes/{{dacha}}s where everyday efficiency and ergonomics are less of a requirement, and "good" stuff can quickly degrade from adverse conditions or be stolen by wintertime thieves which dachas are largely defenseless against. To summarize, many who had experience with Soviet equipment are nostalgic about it, but few would actually trade a modern piece for one of those.

* Cassettes, both audio and video, went through this over time. Those made in the 1980's were heavier, more durable, and had clearer picture/sound than the ones coming out in the late 90's and early 2000's, around the time DVD began to take over (whose advertising made it seem like VHS tapes were ''always'' cheaply made with bad sound/video quality). The problem with cassettes was always that the tape inside could snap regardless of how well you treated them. VHS tapes were more robust than audio tapes, but that didn't stop them getting caught in players.

->''"There is an old Jaffa saying, General Hammond: 'They are not constructed as they once were.'"''

* This also drove a lot of listeners away from vinyl records toward cassettes and [=CDs=] starting in the 1980s. Labels in the U.S. and the U.K. would use recycled vinyl and thinner vinyl, which resulted in a lot of surface noise. Listeners responded by adopting the other formats, which didn't have this problem. This, combined with the concurrent decline in the quality of low-end turntables mentioned below, caused listeners to abandon the format, so much so that [=LPs=] virtually disappeared from North American store shelves by the early 1990s, though the format held on for longer in Europe. Even with the "Vinyl Revival" starting in the 2000s, vinyl buyers still complain about excessive surface noise, warping, and other defects in new vinyl, even as record companies favor heavyweight pressings of "virgin" vinyl.

* This also drove a lot of listeners away from vinyl records toward cassettes and [=CDs=] starting in the 1980s. Labels in the U.S. and the U.K. would use recycled vinyl and thinner vinyl, which resulted in a lot of surface noise. Listeners responded by adopting the other formats, which didn't have this problem. This, combined with the concurrent decline in the quality of low-end turntables mentioned below, caused listeners to abandon the format, so much so that [=LPs=] virtually disappeared from North American store shelves by the early 1990s, though the format held on for longer in Europe. Even with the "Vinyl Revival" starting in the 2000s, vinyl buyers still complain about excessive surface noise, warping, and other defects in new vinyl.

* This also drove a lot of listeners away from vinyl records toward cassettes and [=CDs=] starting in the 1980s. Labels in the U.S. and the U.K. would use recycled vinyl and thinner vinyl, which resulted in a lot of surface noise. Listeners responded by adopting the other formats, which didn't have this problem. Even with the "Vinyl Revival" starting in the 2000s, vinyl buyers still complain about excessive surface noise, warping, and other defects in new vinyl.

* This trope also applied to phonographs themselves on the lower end in the 1980s as vinyl gave to way cassettes and [=CDs=], with the turntables in cheaper compact stereo systems having plastic plinths, plastic platters and plastic tone arms fitted with ceramic cartridges, and lack of anti-skating or adjustable tracking force, all from [[MadeInCountryX factories in China]]. The same basic design was later used for the cheap suitcase-style players that became popular starting with the above-mentioned vinyl revival in the 21st century.

* This trope also applied to phonographs themselves on the lower end in the 1980s as vinyl gave to way cassettes and [=CDs=], with the turntables in cheaper compact stereo systems having plastic plinths, plastic platters and plastic tone arms fitted with ceramic cartridges, and lack of anti-skating or adjustable tracking force, all from [[MadeInCountryX factories in China]]. The same basic design was later used for the cheap suitcase-style players that became popular starting with the same vinyl revival in the 21st century.

* This trope also applied to phonographs themselves on the lower end in the 1980s as vinyl gave to way cassettes and [=CDs=], with the turntables in cheaper compact stereo systems having plastic plinths, plastic platters and plastic tone arms fitted with ceramic cartridges, all from [[MadeInCountryX factories in China]]. The same basic design was later used for the cheap suitcase-style players that became popular starting with the same vinyl revival in the 21st century.