I don't know about the sockets, but back in the late 80's Sears Canada had
beautiful red handled pliers with "Craftsman", and "Made in Japan" on them.
Beautiful finish, close tolerances, no slop in the pivot, jaws that lined
up. I sure wish I had bought some, but I couldn't afford them. Compare
that to the US-made black handled crap that you get at Sears now.

Around the time of the quality problems, I saw lots of sockets
in the Searz stores with INDIA cast into them. I thought the
Craftsman stuff was all US-made and the crap Chi/Tai/Indian
imports. Some were Japanese? Japanese tools imported here were
real crap in the 60's but back to high quality in the 80's.