"Tamblyne" > wrote:
> So I call Wal-Mart to ask them to look at the package to tell me who
> really makes this thermometer -- she tells me they don't have any.

Welcome to the age of globalization. First of all, with most mass market
retailers these days, they will buy a large batch of some item to sell, and
may never, ever carry it again. In fact, it might not even be manufactured
again as that make and model number. Some of these product runs are done on
contract for a specific retailer, and when the contract run is over, so is
the manufacturing of the product.

Second, brand names don't mean anything most of the time. Hence your
runaround with Pyrex, Robinson, World Market, and Walmart themselves. Today
brand names are licensed out with relatively little monitoring by the
original brand name company (if they even still exist!). At least on a lot
of the products if you look at the fine print on the packaging, you will see
a phrase such as "licensed by". Whenever you see that phrase "licenced by",
you can rest assured that the original company holding the brand trademark
will take zero responsibility for the product. Forget about any good
reputations of companies standing behind their product at this point. I've
bought several products in recent years that were "made by" respected,
decades old companies... NOT! The product actually had nothing to do with
the brand name. In fact, it gets worse many times. Often a product that was
"licensed by" the original company holding the brand trademark is only
"distributed by" the company granted the license. They in turn contract out
with a manufacturer (usually in the Far East) so it is "made by" yet a third
company.

All of this reminds me of the commercial that used to run on the radio years
ago where the very important chief executive who ran the megacorporation had
no idea what his company made... sounds like your situation where the
various companies you called really don't know what they make.

The products I've bought using licensed brand names include a water heater
by Maytag, a tube pan by Farberware, and a compact stereo by Memorex. None
of the actual manufacturers had anything to do with the original companies.

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