New and Improved

Now with 45 more degrees!

Drone: But your highness, she's a commoner! Her Slurm will taste foul!
Hive Queen: Yes! Which is why we'll market it as New Slurm! Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make BILLIONS!

— Futurama

Weasel Words which attempt to give the impression of radical improvement in the quality or performance of a product which might not actually be there. In fact, US government regulations require only that there be a small functional change in a product or its packaging to qualify it to use this description. Thus, changing the design for the spout on a box of detergent would allow the manufacturer to tout it as being "new and improved". Changing the quantity of the product can also be a "new and improved" change, even if the change isn't in the direction that would qualify as an "improvement" for anyone except the manufacturer's accountants. Your favorite cereal might become "new and improved" when they increase the size of the box but decrease the amount of cereal in the box. Your favorite shampoo might become "new and improved" when they add a strong fragrance that makes your hair smell awful — or, worse, makes you sneeze.

A favorite trick of manufacturers is to "improve" an item by adding "botanical" ingredients. This is generally done by putting a handful of herbs into a strainer, then dipping the strainer into a 500-gallon vat of hot water for a minute or two. Two drops of the water is then added to every bottle of the product, which is then priced fifty cents higher than it used to be.

Comedian George Carlin observed that the phrase is perfectly meaningless in the first place. Which is it, a new product, or an old one which has been improved? Logically it cannot be both "new" and "improved"...

If the ad is specific about what they improved, it's We Don't Suck Anymore. If the ad emphasizes that the product is still the same despite a change in its packaging, it's New Look, Same Great Taste!. May be related to Absolute Comparative if the ad isn't specific about what makes the new product better. See also The New Adventures for this trend in media.

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Examples:

Fictional examples and parodies

Advertising

• In one which is an inversion, Irn-Bru has had "Original and Best" on its cans for years, but the formula has never been substantially changed. The reason for this is that it was the first and most prominent iron brew to be produced.
  • Irn-Bru 1901, which reverses all the minor changes made over the years (the one everyone focuses on is the sugar content, but more surprisingly, it doesn't contain caffeine), is even more of an inversion, declaring itself to be "Old and Unimproved".
• Inverted by Monster Munch in the UK: on their packets they advertise " NewOld! Bigger like they used to be! (as in 1977)".
• Inverted by ads for Shredded Wheat. "Not new. Not improved. One honest ingredient since 1892."
• Parodied in the "Diamond Shreddies" advertising campaign. The new and improved Diamond Shreddies are exactly the same as the old, boring square Shreddies except rotated 45 degrees.
• Parodied in a Steak'n'Shake commercial claiming their steakburgers are "Old!" and "Unimproved!" The implication, of course, being that they need no improvement.

Comedy

• Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill show includes a bit where a finicky cat dubiously inspects his food and its "new and improved" sales pitch.

Comic Strips

• Garfield had a nice Deadpan Snarker moment after watching a TV ad with this phrase.
  "To think, all this time I've been eating old and inferior."

Literature

• Indexing: Referenced:
  we're supposed to get some time off after we stop a fairy tale from rewriting a major metropolitan area into an evil, R-rated version of Disney World. "New and improved! Now with extra incest and murder!"

Live-Action TV

• Mocked in Whose Line Is It Anyway?, already notable for its meaningless points:
  Drew Carey: You don't get points for this round. Instead, you get the new mega-points — they're 25% bigger and worth 50% less.

Video Games

• Fittingly for a manufacturer whose weapons have names that sound like TV advertising jargon, Borderlands 2's Tediore features the "New and Improved" title modifier for its line of shotguns. Aesthetically, it adds a tiny box to the side of the gun. Functionally, it provides modest but wholly positive bonuses to the gun's basic stats, making it a rare instance of where the 'improved' part of the trope title is actually an honest statement (even if the 'new' part is still a little bit shady).

Straight examples

• Gillette is an early example of this trope. When the patents for their original razor and blade design were expiring in 1921, they came up with a new razor and called it the New Improved. The old design was renamed, of course, the Old Type.
• The famous case of Tampax Tampons being "Improved" by putting fewer tampons in a box. This resulted in a drop in sales, and Tampax had another "New and Improved" going back to the old quantity. So for those of you keeping track at home, two improvements = no change.
• The automotive industry is the undisputed master of this trope (especially notorious among the American auto manufacturers), so much that the automotive publications industry (you know, as in Car & Driver and Motortrend?) is the undisputed master at countering the automotive industry's mastery. You see, cars (much like other things) are defined in "generations" with each "generation" being defined as having a significant improvement over the preceding one. The current model of Corvette, for example, is currently in its "Seventh generation." Because the gestation period of a new generation of a particular car model is so long (and expensive), most models go through a "mid-life update" (sometimes multiple updates) where minor and easy things are changed to at least make the car look more competitive against the truly latest generations of competing models. Of course, you would only really be aware of this from reading previously mentioned automotive publications and having them explain the deceptive terminology behind this, because, of course, the manufacturers will always pass off these "freshened" models as completely and totally 100% "redesigned" and "re-engineered" from the ground up, even when it's blatantly obvious that the most significant change to the model is minor exterior styling changes. Lately, however, the manufacturers have taken it up to the next level, blurring the lines between a truly new "generation" and "mid-life update" thanks to improved manufacturing and engineering processes which are able to make minor and cheap yet truly tangible and appreciative changes to a car model, at least from the buyer's perspective (for example, truly redesigned or enlarged interiors).
• In one that flew completely under the radar, Old El Paso, a brand primarily known for making salsa, began advertising their "New and improved zesty flavor". What they really did was doubled the salt and nothing else. Please note: "zesty" is completely meaningless.
• Legally, a product can be considered 'new and improved' if there is a 'substantial alteration in the product's performance or operation'. Usually, it's through the addition or alteration of the formula; since the formula (and thus, the product) is technically 'new' and the product itself is demonstrably 'improved', it's nearly bulletproof when it comes to advertising law.
• Walkers Crisps did this on several occasions. Nobody was able to tell the difference as most of the time, they were able to replace ingredients without the flavour significantly changing. However, there was at least one instance of them having to own up to it. They had to change the name of the flavour "Barbecue" to "Bbq Rib" because it tasted so different with the new ingredients. Many people who liked "Barbecue" also like "BBQ Rib" but think it should have been launched as a different flavour, rather than replace one of their favourites.
• Even television stations have done this. In 1995, Canadian TV station CKVR-3, serving the town of Barrie, Ontario (about 20 kilometers away from Toronto) defected from the CBC (being a privately-owned affiliate, specifically by CHUM Limited) and went independent; they also ditched the classic TV reruns that had occupied the majority of their non-CBC schedule up to that point. CHUM owned the original Citytv at the time, and their leader Moses Znaimer was brought in to oversee the retooling of the station (which included newer shows, Toronto Raptors basketball, and a vastly-expanded news operation); the result was known as The New VR. The station's new image and direction was successful (one of the reasons they had done this was because they had been losing money for years, the result of being rendered redundant for CBC programming when the CN Tower's construction in the 1970s enabled the CBC flagship station from Toronto, CBLT-5, to easily reach Barrie), so successful that when CHUM swapped stations with Baton Broadcasting in 1997 (CHUM gave their ATV system of CTV affiliates in the Maritimes to Baton, so Baton could continue their takeover of CTV; in return, they got several independent stations Baton didn't need anymore; these stations had been part of Baton's BBS system), they applied the format to these new stations (CHRO in Pembroke, near Ottawa, and a cluster of stations in Southwestern Ontario: CFPL in London, CHWI in Wheatley/Windsor, and CKNX in Wingham), and each became "The New (XX)" (the last bit being where the last two call letters went). They formed a loose system of stations dubbed the "NewNet". One more station was added in 2001, CIVI in Victoria, BC (a newly-launched station, the only TV station CHUM built and signed-on themselves). These stations then became known as "A-Channel" in 2005, simply "A" in 2008 (by which point CHUM had been gobbled up by CTVglobemedia, currently Bell Media), and most recently as CTV Two/2.
• The 1985 "New Coke" during the Cola wars between Coca-Cola and Pepsi during The '80s was an intent to change the old Coca-Cola's formula but it was a major failure and was "reversed" trying the old formula back as "Coca-Cola Classic" three months later. However, the New Coke wasn't retired after all, keeping until 1992 where it was renamed as "Coke II" and just being discontinued in 2002.
• The term "New Media" itself was first used in the late 1990s by media companies to describe their then-new divisions producing or repackaging content for the Internet. It's been 15-20 years since then, during which time the Internet has for some of them become the dominant or even only medium.

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