In fairness to Ludwig the rivetted seam wasn't really an idea someone came up with as something "new and improved" but rather an unfortunate attempt to fix the vexing problem of the new drum wrap they were using shrinking and pulling apart at the seam. They were kind of grabbing at straws trying to fix it. Bill Ludwig Jr. thought about civil war era drums that had tacks on them and his engineering staff "refined" that idea into rivets. They did their best to hide them in the promo materials so I suspect they knew it was a bad idea from the get go.
Gretsch made the mistake of continuing to use outdated stands and hardware well past when all the other companies had followed Rogers lead and dropped the standard W & A designs and come up with their own unique hardware which grew increasingly robust...except for Gretsch who kept using the antiquated W & A designs until the early 80's.
More recently Ludwig brought back the flat back Imperial (their high end lug design) and then put them on drums they called "Club Dates" with all the "low cost" baggage that name carries (not that they were bad drums). It's like if Ford had brought out their re-issue GT-40 cars of 10 or so years ago and introduced them as the new Ford Taurus. Ludwig could have built the very same center lug drums but just made up a new name "Imperial Clubs", "Imperial Classics", whatever.
Some of the products mentioned above were just plain dumb but a lot of them are just matters of taste, for every drummer that thinks it was a dumb idea there's another one who loved that holder/stand/shell/head/snare/etc. etc.
