uConsumerist Friday Flickr Findsr

4 4 4 9

• Here are nine of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uThis Blu-Ray Player Was A Fine Holiday Gift In 2007r

4 4 4 9

• If you’re shopping for a new Blu-Ray player, you could walk into any big-box or electronics store and pick one up for under $100. For that price, you’ll get a high definition picture and the unit may even include streaming video apps. Or you could go to Walmart, where this 8-year-old player that originally cost $499 is marked all the way down to $200.

  

  

  

  Perhaps you don’t know much about audiovisual equipment, and don’t instantly recognize this as a grossly overpriced old model. Let’s go on a tour of contemporary review sites to see what people thought of this gadget during the holiday season of 2007.

  The good news, if there is any here, is that this was originally a $500 player when it first hit the market, which a High-Def Digest reviewer referred to as “affordable” back then. CNET cites the retail price as $899, but things were strange in the immediate aftermath of the high-definition DVD format wars of about a decade ago.

  That should make a $200 price tag a bargain, except for how it isn’t. That price tag was printed earlier this year, which rules out the possibility that the clearance sticker is old. Mark it down to at most twenty bucks and just let it go, Walmart. Users probably no longer have the patience to burn a disc to update the firmware of a Blu-Ray player that doesn’t connect to the Internet.

  Thanks to Craig of the Raiders of the Lost Walmart, who submitted this item with the caption, “Wow. Just wow.”

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uLumber Liquidators Pleads Guilty To Selling Hardwood From Endangered Big Cat Habitatsr

4 4 4 9

• 
  Lumber Liquidators has officially pleaded guilty to violations of the Lacey Act, a law that bans illegally-harvested animal and plant products, including trees, from sale in the United States. It turns out that the offending hardwoods were illegally harvested because they were in forests in eastern Russia that are home to two species of endangered wild cats: the Amur leopard and the Siberian tiger.

  The Lacey Act is a 115-year-old law that was originally meant to keep commercial hunters from moving illegally-hunted animals across state lines. This protected over-hunted game animals from being transported and sold by commercial hunters, and also helped keep people from transporting live animals to another area where they might lack natural predators and become an invasive species.

  Wood wasn’t part of the Lacey Act until a 2008 amendment, which was controversial even before the current accusations against Lumber Liquidators. The trees must be illegal to harvest in the country they were taken from, and not necessarily in the United States. Gibson Guitars was accused of importing illegally-harvested hardwoods beginning in 2009, ultimately pleading guilty and paying penalties in 2012.

  Part of the company’s punishment is that it will pay $880,825 and $350,000 respectively to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund, though the leopards seem to be left out of this transaction.

  The settlement of this case doesn’t mean that the investigation of other flooring products that allegedly give off excessive amounts of formaldehyde is over: that’s a separate issue.

  Lumber Liquidators pleads guilty to Lacey Act violations [MarketWatch]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uTaco Bell Folds Croissants In Half, Calls Them Tacosr

4 4 4 9

• 
  A croissant is a crescent-shaped, flaky pastry that consists of butter incidentally held together with some flour and egg. Taco Bell is a restaurant with a menu of inexpensive Tex-Mex food and a very loose definition of what a “taco” is. Put them together and you end up with… flat croissants folded in half to form breakfast tacos?

  The chain’s breakfast tacos so far have consisted of waffles and biscuits folded and half and filled with eggs and sausage. Yet Taco Bell remains unsatisfied, looking for more things to fold in half and call “tacos.” Since April, reports have been surfacing that they’re testing croissant tacos.

  

  Early versions were regular-shaped croissants cut most of the way down the center with food stuffed inside. The more advanced version in these promo photos looks like a round, flat bread made from croissant dough and then folded in half like the waffles and biscuits.

  What bread should Taco Bell taco-ify next? French toast or pancakes would be easy enough to try this with, but if they move on to other breakfast bread-like objects, I can’t wait to see them try to fold a bagel in half.

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSchwan Ditching Artificial Flavors, Ingredients By 2017r

4 4 4 9

• Frozen meals, desserts and other products offered by food delivery company Schwan will be missing a few things soon: artificial ingredients and high-fructose corn syrup. 

  Schwan Food Co. announced Wednesday that it would be the latest food company to jump on the current hot trend of eliminating additives and ingredients that the public has come to see as unhealthy or unnecessary, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

  The company, which is a major supplier for school cafeterias, says the $12 million endeavor aims to ditch artificial colors in its products by year’s end and eliminate artificial flavors by the end of 2017.

  Additionally, the company will drop its use of corn syrup by the end of 2016.

  “This is one of those core investments that we will make,” Stacey Fowler, Schwan’s senior vice president for product innovation, said.

  The company said on Wednesday that it would also continue to remove any remaining partially hydrogenated oils from its food by the end of 2015.

  A bulk of Schwan’s $12 million investment will be focused on finding suitable replacements for artificial flavors, colors and other ingredients that aren’t seen as desirable by customers.

  For example, the company says it has already been working on a substitute for green artificial dyes in its “Chips and Mint” ice cream after customers said they wouldn’t buy the dessert if it lost its iconic color.

  “Finding a color match is like finding a paint color in your home that you’ve lost the swatch to,” Fowler said.

  Schwan to eliminate artificial ingredients [The Minneapolis Star Tribune]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uNo One Was Willing To Pay $33,000 For An Adult-Sized Little Tikes Carr

4 4 4 9

• 
  A week ago, the Internet became enamored with an adult-sized Little Tikes Cozy Coupe for sale on eBay, but although the yellow-and-red coupe struck a chord with anyone who ever scooted around in a child-sized version, it seems no one was willing to fork over around $33,000 to buy it.

  The British brothers who created the car — which is actually a modified Daewoo — listed an asking price of £21,500 for the car on eBay, but the highest bid they received was £15,000.

  “We’ve taken it off the market for the time being,” one of the brothers told the BBC. “We’ve had a couple of people make sensible bids on it and we’re in conversation with them in regards to selling it.”

  It cost them £30,000 (about $50,800) to build the vehicle, which includes an airbag, headlights and mirrors, runs on gas and can reach speeds of up to 70 mph. The brothers thought once they had the car it would be an easy moneymaker, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

  “We were hoping it would be out on a regular basis, create some revenue and recoup the money used to build it,” one of the brothers told the BBC previously. “But in real life it ended up going out four or five times in two years. So we thought we might as well sell it and if anyone’s interested in buying it that will bring back some money for us.”

  Real life ‘Little Tike Cozy Coupe’ fails to sell [BBC]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uWest Coast Grocery Chain Fresh & Easy Closing All Storesr

4 4 4 9

• 
  After selling off 50 stores earlier this year and pledging to redesign the rest, West Coast grocery chain Fresh & Easy has decided to throw in the towel: after eight years in the supermarket scene, the company says it will close all 97 remaining stores, laying off all its 3,000 employees in the process.

  Fresh & Easy came on the scene in 2007 and tried to make its mark in the super competitive world of grocery stores, but alas, it appears to have failed. The chain will liquidate its inventories in those stores in California, Arizona and Nevada, reports the San Jose Mercury News [warning: link has video that autoplays], after already cutting in half the number of stores it had at its peak.

  Employees at the chain’s headquarters in Torrance, CA will be gradually let go over the next four weeks, an insider told the News. The first layoffs are expected to begin a week from Friday.

  Fresh & Easy previously closed its El Segundo headquarters earlier this year and moved all operations to Torrance to try to save money (it is unclear if anyone left their wallet in El Segundo).

  The chain started out fired up and ready to take on grocery rivals in 2007, but then lost million sof dollars when the recession hit soon after. Fresh & Easy filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013 and was bought by grocery billionaire Ron Burkle. Things didn’t quite work out the way the company wanted it to, however.

  “Over the last two years, we have been working hard to build a new Fresh & Easy,” Fresh & Easy said in a statement. “While we made progress on stemming our losses and moving the business closer to break even, unfortunately, we have been unable to obtain financing and the liquidity necessary to fund the business going forward.”

  Fresh & Easy to lay off all employees, close remaining Bay Area stores [San Jose Mercury News]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist