I spent $32k plus tax on a new Electra Glide Classic. The sales person, with joy in her voice, announced, "It comes with its own tool kit." The tool kit was made up of the worst looking tools I ever held. I put the tools back into the cheaply made plastic tool wrap and put them on a high shelf, in the shop. I told myself, "Those will go with the bike." Who ever made those ugly wrenches did not put their name on the tools. I should give some credit where it is due, the screwdriver, with exchangeable bit was just OK.
BMW motorcycles actually come with halfway decent tools. Not fantabulous, but serviceable, and light-years beyond the cheddar cheese (or nothing) found in almost all other bikes.
May catch some flack here, but Milwaukee power tools. People churched them up so much, I expected a borderline heavenly experience when I bought one. But, I still prefer my DeWalt stuff.
The only reason I can't stand them is because of how people rave about them, despite them being on par with other good products. Kinda like In-N-Out.
Uh-oh, you're in danger of touching off a Red vs. Yellow holy war, which always carries the risk of an incursion from the Blue-Green Faithful.
I'll just be over here with my vast array of fluorescent gorilla snot yellow stuff, quietly getting stuff done...
Stanley-branded tools that are typically sold in stores are typically bottom-of-the-barrel garbage. Their tape measures are good, but not the best.
That said, I love the old Stanley hammers and 100-Plus Screwdrivers.
Yeah, Stanley fell into disgrace a LONG time ago. I was super-disappointed when Meijer stores stopped carrying Tekton and replaced it with Stanley's bumblebee stuff. Oh well, it was cool while it lasted.
Back to the actual topic... I just remembered that a few years ago I got a little bored and finally culled out and threw away the last remnants of the K-Mart sockets and wrenches I bought in high school and college.
On one hand, I kept a lot of tired old hoopties running way too long with this stuff, when I couldn't afford anything decent from the Sears down the road.
On the other hand, just looking at that peeling 12mm wrench with the off-center broaching and spread-out open end caused a wave of anxiety. I also had quite a few random cracked and janky sockets, horrible bent ratchets, etc.
And then one day I finally had the epiphany I needed... "Oh, yeah, I can just toss this hateful, hated thing into the garbage, and no one will stop me. I'll never miss it. I have plenty of better wrenches now. It's not remotely collectible, or useful to anyone."
So, yeah. K-Mart tools. Awful. Good riddance.
It was rather shocking years later when the new Chinese "Craftsman" stuff appeared in K-Marts. And then K-Mart went toes-up... like Sears, there's still a twitching online carcass of the company, and they're somehow related now...
Also, Sears used to have a "secondary" brand, cheap terrible stuff they couldn't peddle as Craftsman. I don't remember what it was called exactly (maybe just "Sears"?), but it was dreadful. It was back when they were starting to circle the drain.
I still remember the shock of walking into the Sears tool department to buy a 10mm wrench, and the first time I found the Chinese lobster claw shite mingled with the US-made "good stuff". Seeing the writing on the wall, I rummaged until I found several of the remaining good metric wrenches and bought them for spares.
