Sorry, I've thrown them away. In case it happens again, I'll send you a photograph. Not that I'd really want it to happen again though.
Those used different dyes in the reflective layer; the Ricoh ones were gold (from around 1993), the Sony ones a greenish silver (from around 1999), but yeah, they were obviously of poor quality.
Neither would I; neither did I.
Well, duh. If you find blanks that won't ever fail, they won't ever fail. Can't contradict you on that one.
I don't know about any studies. I talked to the person in charge of the music department personally during a conference on long-term data preservation. He did not seem amused. The quality of some CDs from the mid-80s seems to have been less than perfect.
I have no link, just a colleague who works there. It's not a widespread problem, mind you, but some audio CDs have given up on them.
I don't know about that. It's the magazine that said that there are huge differences between CD-R manufacturers, and that some are significantly less durable and produce significantly more read errors than others. They also once did a 15-year longevity test that was passed only by one manufacturer. I do agree with Claude though, that much of what they write seems to be in some correlation with what ads are placed in the magazine.