Wouldn’t you normally see deceptive marketing going the other directions with products? If they turned a good product into a crap product but left the name the same, that would be deceptive. But the other way around seems to hurt the company, not the consumer.
Notwithstanding the desire to avoid new old stock, buying the new product would be pretty straightforward if high volume places are dealt with.
Perhaps I’m missing a perspective, but to me this isn’t a case of deceptive marketing. I guess im more optimistic and think it is a company that decided their product wasn’t performing as desired and made changes to fix it. Much like an auto company often has issues with a first model year vehicle, the second or third model year will have changes to address those issues.
It is deceptive in that Hornady will not admit that their previous version bullets were not as effected as advertised.
If one purchases Hornady DGX ammo or projectiles for loading, how will they know the product's performance level?
At a minimum, Hornady could have marketed the new version as,
"Our DGX was good but we listened to Professional Hunters and made the DGX2 even better!"
Additionally, in engineering and logistics, Configuration Management is used to identify what version of a part, software, fuel, and so on an item, part, sub assembly, or end item something is. Knowing the exact version of items is especially important in procurement of spare parts for a supply system, or for retailers' procurement of stock for sales.
And then there are us hunters. Hornady DGX are the greatest! Well the current version is. The old version of the same name, not so much. But hunter A buys old DGX thinking it preforms like the new DGX everyone is buzzing about.... There could be a potential problem with a pissed off bleeding buffalo..