Today: We revisited two brands our writers once loved. Plus …
I still remember the first time I spent more than $4 on a single stick of butter. I was in college, making very little money from odd jobs and internships, and I’d recently taught myself how to cook. Kerrygold was my butter of choice. (It was validating to later learn that it’s our kitchen experts’ favorite, too.) Upgrading from the generic, parchment-wrapped off-white sticks to a single hunk of pale yellow glory made me feel like a grown-up. Sometimes purchasing a specific product from a specific brand has that power. It can come to signify a particular phase of life — or transition you to a new one. When deputy editor Annemarie Conte was in her 30s, Talenti was that brand. The clear plastic packaging looked fancy, and the fact that it was gelato — instead of traditional hard-pack ice cream — felt sophisticated. “I used to be a Talenti evangelist,” Annemarie says. And she wasn’t the only one. Talenti made $160 million in sales in 2014. Beauty writer Neha Tandon had a similar affinity for Marc Jacobs Beauty. The brand, which was known for its sleek packaging and high-quality formulas, debuted in 2013. “I was a student at the time,” Neha says, “and I would save up my money to buy Marc Jacobs Beauty’s luxe coconut-water primers, liquid highlighters, and acclaimed powder bronzer.” It relaunched earlier this summer, after being abruptly discontinued in 2021, and it was totally unrecognizable — with mylar balloon-shaped packaging and brightly colored bottles. “Where Marc Jacobs Beauty was once a miraculous find,” writes Neha, “it’s now lost in its aesthetics.” READ NEHA’S REVIEW We waited 5 long years for Marc Jacobs Beauty’s comeback. It’s totally unrecognizable.→ Annemarie’s story goes a similar way. Talenti hasn’t gone anywhere since it first launched in the early aughts, but her love of the brand has faded. After the gelato company was sold to Unilever in 2014, ingredients and packages changed — and not necessarily for the better. To determine how the new stuff compared, Annemarie, along with members of Wirecutter’s kitchen team, taste-tested a slew of Talenti’s current offerings, including her once-beloved Mediterranean Mint. To her dismay, that pint ended up in the trash. READ ANNEMARIE’S DEEP DIVE Talenti’s journey from a small, independent brand to a piece of a corporate conglomerate→ As for my Kerrygold butter: I’m happy to say it remains a staple of my weekly grocery runs. Its formula is just as creamy and its gold aluminum wrapper just as shiny as the first day I spotted it in the store. I hope that never changes. We independently review everything we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more ›
I gave my bathroom a tiny, whimsical, joy-inducing makeover last week with this little glow-in-the-dark figurine. We technically recommend him as a desk accessory, but I have him propping up a framed print on a ledge right above the toilet. Speaking of bathroom makeovers, at least one of us on the newsletters team ordered a new toilet seat this week, thanks to Ivy Elrod’s excellent advice: Change your toilet seat, change your life. — Brittney Ho, newsletters editor
Many of you took to the comments of Annemarie’s piece to tell us all the methods you’ve used to get inside those notoriously difficult-to-open pints.
Thanks for reading. You can reach the Wirecutter Newsletters team at newsletters@wirecutter.com. We can’t always respond, but we do love to hear from you.
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