They basically ran out of material after moonraker. After which Ian Flemings influence was totally gone. One of them basically was a glorified BMW commercial.

They basically ran out of material after moonraker. After which Ian Flemings influence was totally gone. One of them basically was a glorified BMW commercial. Another one the 'gadgets' where whatever was cool tech for sony at the time. Which is why your skymall analogy works decent enough. The only new one that came close to what 'bond' was is Casino Royal which was loosely based on Ian FLemings book. Even Ian Fleming saw the problem with the genre he had basically made up was that you could not always fight the same baddy all the time. So he created SMIRSH to do have a way to plug in new bad guys.