Honestly, this is exactly what I would expect to see always. There's some percentage of complex appliances that are going to fail early in their lifetime, and t

Honestly, this is exactly what I would expect to see always. There's some percentage of complex appliances that are going to fail early in their lifetime, and the ones that last longer than a few years will probably last for decades. The fridge that's been working for 12 years with zero problems is far less likely to fail than a 5-month old fridge or a 40-year old fridge. So I'd be surprised the the pattern hasn't always been like this to some extent. The particular rates might vary over time, but the pattern of failing appliances being either relatively new or really old is probably very consistent.