I was asked to weigh in here and this assessment is partly right.
When Laudisi acquired Peterson, all (or almost all) spigot stems were acrylic and had been for a few years. We added back the System Spigot series, which used vulcanite P-lip stems. And for some (but not all) spigot series, we've moved to thinner vulcanite stems, while continuing to use the acrylic for the Red Spigots, Green Spigots, Newgrange Spigots, Natural Spigots (and I'm sure I forgetting something).
Systematically over a few years prior to 2018 (when Laudisi acquired the business), as Peterson struggled, there was significant reduction in complexity, both by reducing the number of shapes and reducing the number of stems. That led to a series of bad, ahistorical, unaesthetic decisions around Peterson stems. It doesn't mean they were all bad, but there were a lot of situations where the wrong stem was used for a given pipe.
Laudisi has been systematically reversing these trends, adding both shapes and stem options.
Quickly some background on stem diameters: for the acrylic spigot series, there are actually three different stem sizes. Most shapes get the fatter stem (that's about 11mm in diameter where it enters the pipe), but pipes that have narrower shanks (15, 406, 124, 127, 128 and a number of others) got one of two different thinner stems (about 9mm diameter) that varied in style slightly and in length.
So, thinner acrylic stems have been around for awhile (though we're using more of them because we've added back some smaller shapes).
Thinner vulcanite stems--for which there's a lot of historical precedence at Peterson from an aesthetic standpoint--was something that I was a major proponent of, since it would give us a historically appropriate alternative to acrylic stems that was also a fishtail.
More generally, Peterson is somewhat unusual at this point in its dedication to preserving vulcanite stems. As pipe smokers ourselves, we like vulcanite stems both for mouth-feel and tooth-feel reasons and for historical reasons for the brand (weirdly, because I tend to have very strong pipe opinions, I'm actually pretty moderate among our Peterson stem interlocutors on the acrylic vs vulcanite debate; you wouldn't imagine how heated stem discussions can get at Peterson).
So, perhaps you like them, perhaps you don't. I'm on the side of liking them for a host of practical and historical/aesthetic reasons. The current, fatter acrylic stems used for most spigots are an aesthetic compromise between a couple of strands of Peterson's aesthetic history that I think look great on a lot of shapes, but we felt there was also room for us to pick up another historical, aesthetic strand and run with it.
Also, I just think the thin-stem-spigot-thing is awesome. On a small billiard, it's visually balanced, but I also really love the insane juxtaposition between an XL02 bowl and the thin stem.
Sykes
