Must be because everything is 'Extreme'

If that is true, they made a fairly poor business decision to market his stuff through Walmart, and have Walmart as a main sponsor of his current TV show. You may not have Walmart stores in the UK, but here in the US they do not have a reputation for selling quality stuff. Yes, you can occasionally find a decent product there, and if you do, it will sell for a price lower than probably anywhere else.

But there is a lot of complete junk in Walmarts. They are well known for striking deals with manufacturers, getting the manufacturers highly dependent on Walmart sales (they are a very big distributer), then turning around and telling those manufactures to make things cheaper and cheaper to hit a Walmart price-point. They've kind of got the manufacturers in their grasp, because those manufacturers have gotten so dependent on sales through Walmart that they don't want to, or can't, give up that revenue stream. You find some manufacturers that have two lines of seemingly identical merchandise, the regular stuff, and the Walmart stuff. The Walmart stuff is much worse quality.

Google "Walmart vs. Vlassic", or "Walmart vs. Snapper" if you want to read up on it. The two links below are samples of the kind of stuff you will find:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bac_1342681195

http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart

Selling through Walmart, let alone having them be your primary sponser, may be the death knell for your company, or the cause behind your products going from a quality reputation to a trash reputation. Walmart is huge, and very popular for two main demographics: Lower income shoppers, and shoppers in search of a "bargain". That is not necessarily bad, but that is their targeted audience. You don't find folks looking for higher end stuff in a Walmart. No offense intended towards Walmart - I go there occasionally. For example, I like their "bargains" on the K-cups for my Keurig coffee maker. Those things are so horrendously overpriced at normal retail that I'm not overly concerned about Walmart putting those manufacturers in their place, price-wise.

I've watched a few episodes of Bear's latest show. The one where he takes celebrities out on a weekend adventure. While the show is fairly stupid and contrived (that pretty much goes for ALL shows on TV nowadays), Bear does appear to be a very friendly and likable guy. The show is entertaining. But it's not a vehicle for learning survival skills, much of what goes on there is more likely to get you killed than rescued. But it's still entertaining to a degree, and Bear does appear to be a nice guy.

I would like to see a "the making of..." episode of one of his shows, an episode that shows the cameramen and other support that is around when he is filming. They did a show like that with Dual Survival, and while I knew there were other people around during the episodes, I guess I never realized just how many folks were right there with them during filming. The chances of getting yourself into a bad situation with no hope for assistance were about zero, despite the shows attempts to portray exactly that.