My Dad still has a set of crappy plastic calipers, and after seeing that he has a cheapo chinese made set of dial calipers already, I promptly threw away those horrible plastic calipers after I gave him a very nice set of digital Mitutoyo's in 6 inch size. I have a set of 12 inch Mitutoyo digitals and I am never going back to a cheapo set, and trying to pry any junk like that out of my Dad's hands.... well, let me just say that he isn't changing quickly, but there is progress.
He pulled the plastic calipers out of the trash, I found out later.......