Unfortunately, this is not the case. Snap-On, like most other tool manufacturers, and manufacturers of all kinds, has worked on reducing costs considerably over time. Part of that means manufacturing under contract, rather than in-house, as well as using techniques which reduce materials required to meet specifications.

One of the things about mechanics hand tools where this is a challenge is that mechanics regularly use tools for purposes outside the specifications, because you need to get the job done, regardless of what happens to currently be in your toolbox. In the past, because tools were overbuilt, this wasn't an issue. For modern tools, they are much tighter in tolerance to their specifications, both in good and bad ways. A simple way to tell is simply weigh the tools, due to techniques like CAD modeling with FEA, you can reduce the materials needed to achieve the same targeted strength specification. Tool from 1960 and Tool from 2022 with the same SKU likely have the same specifications, but are built in /very/ different ways.

That’s not inconsistent with survivorship bias.

Intelligent people also tend to overrate their own knowledge, which seems to be what you are doing here.