I had a strange observation. My nearby Walmart Coats and Clark thread came on one of those spools with that little slit that caused me lots of headaches too. However, when I travel a distance to JoAnns, the Coats and Clark spools had the end cap. Strange....I wondered if C&C had a zillion of those spools with the slits in their store room and are trying to use them up at Walmarts, or are they just cheaper to make so Walmart gets them.

It's more likely that Walmart required concessions from C&C to keep them as a supplier and they found the cheaper way to do so. Walmart asks many suppliers to meet a certain price and it's up to the company to either meet that price point or not be on the store shelves.

yes, then i remember i have a larger disk to fit onto the spool. i use that for the most part now.no more problems.

speaking of thread brands, anyone know why connectingthreads now sells their threads with the center round "spool" poking out of both ends. I cannot stand it up anywhere now. Very irritating.

Or could it be that WalMart has the old style old inventory to get rid of it?

I know and it's very annoying.

I do think the newer spools are not made with the slot anymore.
How about putting a small drop of glue on the slit then the thread won't catch?

Both of my straight stitch only machine, that I use all the time. Have round things that stick down onto the end of the spool holder keeps thread from touching any part of the spool.

I got one spool at Walmart only because it is 1.5 mi there, about 9 to JAF, and 10.5 to my favorite quilt shop. It was so bad I threw it away and drove 10 mi to buy more. Until I got it home, I didn’t even realize it was the spool with the slit. Hadn’t seen one in years. Will never ever buy thread at Wally World again. Turning the spool didn’t help, tried both the vertical and horizontal spool holders, and the thread disc did nothing.