But now McDonald's has discovered its vintage funk – something the fancier upstarts lack – and invited us to join in.
China's swelling middle classes, many of whom live in shoddy 1980s housing, are also eagerly moving to fancier flats or McMansions.
Ford finds itself doing the equivalent of trying to drive up a down escalator: its new vehicles tend to be fancier and so more expensive, but car buyers expect and get lower prices.Ford is hoping to fight back using techniques that it has learnt from the Japanese and already applied in Europe.
The firm hopes, one day, to build the technology into Skype, its internet-telephony service.No ghost in the machineBetter smartphones, fancier robots and bringing the internet to the illiterate would all be good things.
UPGRADING a mobile phone is usually about moving on to a fancier handset.
On a fancier measure, using ten-year inflation expectations, real yields on the periphery's sovereign bonds have fallen more, but are still much higher than anywhere else in the rich world.
Direct marketers are developing fancier ways to pull narrower consumer segments from databases, using powerful new statistical techniques.
Arsenal, Newcastle, Southampton and Everton are among those football clubs seeking larger and fancier stadiums.
As well as commanding fancier prices, specialty chemicals require less capital investment: the return on net assets for the Unilever quartet is over 27%, twice as good as ICI's.If these businesses are so sweet, why is Unilever selling them?
Their relative cheapness (basic models cost a few hundred dollars; fancier ones a few thousand) means that shots that once required a helicopter or a complicated set-up of gantries and wires are now achievable on a tight budget.
Chinese firms are starting to catch up with their fancier foreign rivals.
