That's my assumption as well.
Practically no one bought the premium ratchets. They're done for. More Chinese tools for everybody.
I would have been a buyer at the height of my craftsman enthusiasm before they went Chinese but could never get myself to like the handle, mostly purely for aesthetic reasons - sounds shallow and maybe they feel great but I prefer a round contoured handle that isn't so ridiculous looking and fat or strange looking and square. I'd take the metal handle from Snap-On, Cornwell, SK - just about anyone over what the "premium" or "low profile" craftsman ratchets looked like. The first ratchets I bought I went with the standard size/handle 1/4 and 3/8 "full polish" craftsman ratchets in the early 2000's but the plastic selector lever always bugged me - and now they just feel terrible compared to the finer teeth and more robust action of my SK and Snappy ratchets. Heck even compared to my 65 year old coarse tooth Proto 5249!
I kind of feel like craftsman could have taken over the consumer world and made much more serious inroads into the professional stage had they simply produced a better ratchet. They could have spread the cost elsewhere too if that was going to be a barrier, which I don't think it was. The plastic reverser was a big nail in the coffin to their perceived quality, and then not keeping up with other designs/brands in a finer tooth count and better mechanism in a more conventional looking ratchet probably really blew it for them.
It would be interesting to see a hypothetical world where sears didn't have such a crappy ratchet history (at least last 30 years) and didn't merge with K-mart. Where would they be then???
