I feel like that was generally a property of everything everywhere though. I still remember sticking a fork into my VCR (probably made in USA?) or basically every car having something wrong with it.
Things have gotten more reliable across the board imo.
According to people from the former soviet block I know, the reason they got so good at fixing stuff is because the first thing they did after buying an appliance from a store (after it became available eventually) was fixing it because nothing ever worked as expected. I guess "nothing" is an overstatement but I still wouldn't use the soviet union as an example for great product quality.