What have you done Walkers?

Walkers Crisps are a solid British tradition (Fact Fans: Britains biggest selling brand for the last 2 years), with a branding that has been developed over the last 100 years to what was recently this:

I nearly spluttered over my sandwich today when I saw the ‘new’ Walkers branding:

What ugliness is this? Shiny gold effect gradients on blocky italic text? And what has happened to the Walkers typeface? What was once a bold, contemporary, yet with a sense of its tradition, typeface has been replaced by some skinny monstrosity! The whole effect says to me "Late 80’s Sci-fi action film’, not crisps.

The cost of this reversal of good taste? £20m of course!