Incidentally, Tandy Corp. doesn't exist anymore. They became RadioShack Corp. (NYSE:RSH) quite a while ago.
Huh. Well I'll be damned. I thought I was going to get to call them Tandy Corp for the rest of my life. No matter; I'll settle for Radio Shed, Radio Barn, the 'Barn, the 'Shed, the ToolShed, whatever.
In defense of Monster, their cables are usually nicer than the store brand, though store brands and others have improved quite a lot in just the past few years, with the quality and variety of manufacturing in China coming along as it has. (No "lead paint" jokes, okay?) I like the high-end stuff partly because some of it is actually made in the U.S., albeit frequently with a combination of domestic and imported components, or even all imported components. But it is nice to have a product that's been put together by hand in your own country, no matter where you live. (No idea if Monster's making anything in the U.S. anymore.)
What disgusts me about Monster -- aside from the lawsuit stuff -- is the simple fact that so many stores carry it and most consumers never seem to question that it's what they should be buying. They put so much money into advertising and legal expenses to get the market penetration and the shakedown money that they're after, but I wonder how much serious design effort they put into making cables? The inequity here reminds me of a certain business entity that I'll tentatively call a "speaker" company. Its name comes from a talented electrical engineer, has four letters and starts with a "B". They've become a huge marketing company that offers an astounding variety of iPod docks, autosound, and computer speakers, along with their traditional line of profoundly not-very-good home audio speakers. Few people of reasonable intelligence take them seriously, and many will gladly buy up-market and/or down-market to avoid them.