Re: THE continuing "Big Lie"
"keep the great unwashed (us) off-balance, and, of course, digging deeper into our wallets"
You seem to be implying (or maybe you aren't) that it's some sort of organised conspiracy by "big industry". The reality IMHO is simply MBA-types and Marketroids trying to come up with the "next big thing" to demonstrate how their identical product is "better" than the competitors identical product.
The canonical example being soap powder that "washes whiter then white", or "blue white", or "whitest ever" while the product itself barely changes.