5 Kitchen Brands That Got Bought Out: Here's What CHANGED

Five kitchen brands sitting in homes across the country got bought out over the past few decades, and every one of them changed on the inside while the box on the shelf stayed the same. This video walks through what actually happened to Cuisinart, Calphalon, Pyrex and CorningWare, Viking, and Instant Pot: who bought each one, what changed after the sale, and what the public record actually says about it. Cuisinart built its reputation in the 1970s on a food processor motor tough enough for restaurant kitchens. Conair bought the company in 1989. In December 2016, Cuisinart recalled eight million food processors after riveted blades cracked apart during normal use, sending metal fragments into food and causing dozens of reported injuries. A free replacement program is still running for anyone with an older riveted-blade unit. Calphalon's hard-anodized aluminum cookware is still made the way it always was. Newell Brands, which also owns Rubbermaid and Sharpie, bought Calphalon in 1998. In 2017, Calphalon recalled more than two million knives sold with its cookware sets after the blades separated from the handles during ordinary use. The pans themselves were never part of that recall. Pyrex and CorningWare share an ownership history that runs through four different companies in twenty-five years: Corning, World Kitchen, a private equity firm called Cornell Capital, and finally Centre Lane Partners, which folded the brand into Anchor Hocking in 2024. Along the way, in 2001, the original heat-resistant material was swapped for a cheaper glass that cannot handle the same freezer-to-stovetop temperature shock the older dishes were known for. Viking spent decades selling professional-grade ranges as a status purchase for serious home cooks. Middleby Corporation bought Viking in 2012 for three hundred and eighty million dollars. Public settlement records from the Consumer Product Safety Commission show that between 2008 and 2014, Viking received one hundred and seventy reports of ranges igniting on their own. In 2015, fifty-two thousand ranges were recalled, and in April 2017, Viking and Middleby paid a four million, six hundred fifty thousand dollar civil penalty, specifically for failing to report the pattern to federal regulators in time, not for the defect itself. Instant Pot carries the biggest story in this list. Cornell Capital, the same firm that had owned Pyrex's parent company, bought Instant Brands in 2019. In 2021, the company took out a loan to fund a dividend of roughly three hundred forty-five million dollars, with close to two hundred million of that going back to Cornell Capital. Instant Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2023. A bankruptcy trustee lawsuit filed in late 2024 alleges lenders were never told the full picture, including a government safety investigation into the pressure cookers themselves. Cornell Capital has called the allegations baseless, and the lawsuit is still working through the courts. None of this means the appliance sitting in your kitchen right now is unsafe. It means the ownership history and the recall record behind a brand name are worth checking before you buy a replacement, not after something breaks. The federal government keeps a public recall database searchable by brand name, and every recall covered in this video is in it right now. I read what real kitchens like yours actually need, not what a marketing department wants printed on a box, and I check that against the public record before recommending anything. If you own one of these five brands, let me know in the comments which one it is and whether yours still works the way it did when you bought it. That is exactly how the next brand on this channel gets picked. If this was useful, consider subscribing so you catch it happening to the next brand before you are standing in a store with it in your cart. Sources for every figure in this video are public CPSC settlement records, court filings, and company ownership records, and are noted where each claim appears above.