A while back I bought some strike-on-box kitchen matches (the 2" long wooden ones). It was a five-pack of boxes, each box containing 250 matches. These were intended for emergency kit use, even though they were only strike-on-box, which is all I could find. They are "Kroger" brand - our local grocery store. These are worthless. When you strike them, something happens because you see smoke. But they never burst into flame and are totally dead after the phosphorus (or whatever is on match heads these days) finishes smoldering. You couldn't light a fire with these worthless sticks if you had too.

Are the newer strike-anywhere matches even worse than these? Are these new, devolved, matches a result of some lawyer/lawsuit thing, or just poor quality control and corporate desire for profits by making things as cheap as possible?