I agree there's some nice stuff hidden beneath, but as a brand, they've failed as a whole. There's no brand identity, there's no brand message. Just the lowest bidder as of late.
The point of strong branding is to lure buyers to you, technical merits aside. It's why a Honda is a Honda, or a BMW is a BMW. Their product reflects their corporate branding and message (conservative, reliable, somewhat appliance-like, or cutting edge, not as reliable, but engaging to drive...respectively), there's a reason for people to seek out their products. Either company could put out the most uncomfortable, most ridiculously unreliable garbage, and they'd still have some buyers (at least shoppers) because of strong branding.
When your product message has become "well it's cheap and it's available in stores", then there's no reason to seek it out, especially for self proclaimed nerds like members of this forum.
Also, I purchased a set of those NOS Kobalt impact sockets myself, but because they're Williams sockets, not Kobalt. They could be garbage for all I know because I haven't used them yet, but that's what strong branding achieves. If it was Kobalt stuff today, sourced from China, I wouldn't have even considered it.
