Have a look at the little plastic bars that connect heater vent louvers on 1994 Toyota 4 runners. You will find that the plastic of the louvers is fine, but the bar that makes them move as a unit if extremely fragile (now). It also is an individually part numbered part with date codes lol. This is how they tell you your car needs replaced without making it unreliable, so you go buy a new Toyota.

Also, the gears inside of refrigerator defrost timers in the 160 refrigerators we bought for an apartment complex. Shockingly, still mechanical. And one of the gears is date coded and has teeth made of a rubbery, disintegrating plastic around a regular nylon wheel. The vast majority of the timers failed in a two years window. At 7-8 years. The cheap replacement timers have no such nonsense and I’ve never seen one fail. Most people just would have replaced the cheap apartment fridge.

This is just some of what I’ve personally seen.

But you are right, I’m just some guy on the internet, I could be just making this up.

And corporations would never make things with life limitations to make more money. Surely. I mean, that would be like a subscription model! Ridiculous!