Hi there. Thank you for this, but what I mean is, to whom did they complain? Was it to Dyson? This I did not know you see, and I very much appreciate what you've said.
The 'dumbing down' of colours is merely an example of James Dyson taking a sensible business decision. Yes, the cleaners do indeed look much less vibrant and exciting, but I think the days when the "brand" needed to be promoted with a highly coloured identity is long gone. Also, the more models which use the same colour parts, the cheaper the process is, as there is no need to run off batches of coloured stock and then have the bother of storing them all ready for assembly, and further more for spares. It never ceased to amaze me the lengths which Dyson went to in attempting to colour co-ordinate his cleaners, right down to the mains leads. It was an expensive exercise and frankly was an over-kill. When the bulk of many of his cleaners was always grey, it was logical to use this colour as his base for all generic parts.
However, Dyson is of course not alone in attempting the co-ordinated route; whilst it was very common during the 1960's and early 1970's to do this, by the end of the 70's generic white parts were very much leading the way, with black and brown being added in the early 80's, if not before. In light of that, it surprised me a good deal in the mid 1980's to see Electrolux reverting to colour-matched tools on their 600 series, as did Hoover on their Total System models. Neither carried this forward to the respective replacement cleaners (Contour and Turbopower2). I would assume that as practically all other cleaners on sale at that time had black or grey tools, there was seen to be no need for colours.