Shrinkflation - examples?

[Mcr Warrior]

"Shrinkflation" is the business practice where pack sizes of items (often food items) shrink in size or quantity, yet the selling price remains the same, or even increases!

An example: Packs of McVities (Jaffa Cakes) Cake Bars came, until recently, in packs of eight and were being sold for £1 at my local discount retailer.

Now the pack size has been reduced to seven cake bars, yet the price has remained at £1, which seems slightly sharp practice.

Any other examples out there?

P.S. Fairly sure that tubs of Nestlé Quality Street, Cadbury's Roses / Cadbury's Heroes (and similar other products) no longer contain 1 kg of contents, if indeed they ever did!

 

[BrokenSam]

Really get my back up this practice. Remember when Cadburies chocolate went smaller and the company put out some nonsense about smoother edges for a better eating experience!!

They think we are idiots.

 

[Geezertronic]

Some pet food went from 48 pouches in a box to 44 pouches, some even down to 40 pouches now

 

[pdeaves]

I don't touch them now but Mars bars are tiddly now compared to how I remember them (unless at the point I remember them I was very small, too, so they seemed bigger!)

 

[ABB125]

Packs of Jaffa Cakes seem to contain 10 cakes now. Down from 11. Which was itself down from 12 a few years ago. I don't know about the price, but I suspect it's at least the same, probably gone up though!

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Packs of Jaffa Cakes seem to contain 10 cakes now. Down from 11. Which was itself down from 12 a few years ago. I don't know about the price, but I suspect it's at least the same, probably gone up though!

The annoying thing about that is that the "serving size" is three cakes...

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Wagon Wheels.

They should be called Wagon Hubs these days...

 

[nlogax]

Cadbury were allegedly trying to ensure certain bars came in at or under 100 calories. The Curly Wurly was a high profile victim, being reduced in net weight from 26g to 22g in order to make that threshold. Bear in mind the 1970s originals were a choctastic 58g.

The annoying thing about that is that the "serving size" is three cakes...

Three cakes? Pfft, that's just a snifter.

 

[yorksrob]

Pretty much every chocolate bar that's been around since the 1980's.

 

[Butts]

Pretty much every chocolate bar that's been around since the 1980's.

And packets of Crisps as well, and the number of packets in the big multi-packs.

Train Lounges/Onboard in 1st Class have gone from 50g Grab Bags, through 40g and 30g and now the new low of 20g

 

[yorksrob]

And packets of Crisps as well, and the number of packets in the big multi-packs.

Train Lounges/Onboard in 1st Class have gone from 50g Grab Bags, through 40g and 30g and now the new low of 20g

Yes, multi-packs are notorious !

 

[Paul Jones 88]

Packs of fresh air that have a few crisps in them, advertised by the football bloke.

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

What irritates me the most are the multipacks of chocolate bars, cereal bars, etc. which give you this deceptively-sized box with a "window" cut-out. Inside, they only pack as many bars of whatever so as to cover the window, so you go to open the box expecting five bars and end up with three miserable, tiny ones, and two enormous gaps of air staring back at you either side - and yet they carry on shrinking...

Experienced something similar the other day, actually. I was at Lidl and looking to buy a quiche for dinner - one was a quiche in a circular box, and the other was a slightly more expensive quiche in a square box. Perhaps I'm just ridiculously naive, but I went for the one in the square box, went home, and to my complete and utter disappointment, it was no bigger than the one in the circular box. Am I stupid for assuming that it would've been a square quiche?

 

[GusB]

P.S. Fairly sure that tubs of Nestlé Quality Street, Cadbury's Roses / Cadbury's Heroes (and similar other products) no longer contain 1 kg of contents, if indeed they ever did!

The big tubs of sweets have been smaller for quite a while. I've got an empty Roses tin (when they were actually metal) in a cupboard and the net weight printed on it was 826g (850g with wrappers). I can't remember exactly when it was bought, but it has been in the cupboard for a few years now. I can't find the empty plastic Celebrations tub that I bought most recently, but I'm fairly certain it was less than a kilo too.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

Does anyone have evidence, packs and prices from decades ago?

I got VERY annoyed by oatcakes, round in a square box with lots of air at the top, but I think standard box sizes may be something to do with it.

The Guardian sometimes has pictures of strange BOGOF, buy one get one free, offers, something like: 'was a pound each, now five for a fiver!'

I am retired now so I spend time at home checking prices, and buy accordingly.

 

[GusB]

Actually, now I think about it, there was one prime example of shrinkflation that I experienced some years ago, and that was my local dairy's introduction of 500ml bottles of milk. Our order was for 4 pints at a time, and this was usually delivered in either glass pint bottles, or Tetrapak pint cartons. Occasionally a 500ml bottle would be delivered, possibly because they'd run out of pints, but it eventually became a habit, and there was no reduction in the bill at the end of the month. I'm not going to quibble about 68ml if it's a one-off, but over the course of a week we were being diddled out of more than a pint.

 

[PeterY]

The annoying thing about that is that the "serving size" is three cakes...

No problem to eat the whole packet of Jaffa cakes in one sitting. .

Portion sizes always amuse me. I'm not a big eater but 1 portion of an item eg Mr Kipling Manor house cake, serves 8, 8 mice I assume but I cut it into 4. Now that's a portion

 

[nlogax]

Does anyone have evidence, packs and prices from decades ago?

You could try sifting through this pile of scans of actual wrappers.

https://forums.doyouremember.co.uk/forum/culture/food-and-drink/10150-sweet-wrappers-over-the-years

Sweet wrappers over the years​

 

[DelW]

Really get my back up this practice. Remember when Cadburies chocolate went smaller and the company put out some nonsense about smoother edges for a better eating experience!!

They think we are idiots.

The infamous case was when Toblerone drastically increased the spacing between the projecting chunks, so the bar was the same overall size but weighed rather less.

Train Lounges/Onboard in 1st Class have gone from 50g Grab Bags, through 40g and 30g and now the new low of 20g

At one time when I was still flying domestically, BA free issue peanuts went down to a 10g packet. You could count the individual nuts at a glance.

 

[Peter C]

P.S. Fairly sure that tubs of Nestlé Quality Street, Cadbury's Roses / Cadbury's Heroes (and similar other products) no longer contain 1 kg of contents, if indeed they ever did!

I think this photo does a pretty good job to illustrate that:

Left to right: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
(it's been shared on seemingly every site imaginable, but I found it on https://www.packagingnews.co.uk/new...quality-street-tin-sizes-criticism-18-12-2015)

The iconic Christmas tins have been hugely popular for decades, with chocolate lovers both enjoying the confectionery and using the tin to store other items over the festive period.

The furore snowballed earlier this week when one consumer – Charlotte Stacey Hook from Washington, Tyne & Wear – posted a picture of the Quality Street tins she has collected over the past 20 years, which clearly showed the shrinking sizes.



“Look how they’ve changed in size from 1998 till 2014! Bring back the big tins! Loyal Quality Street customer!”, Hook wrote on Quality Street’s Facebook page, which has received 85,000 likes.

The Sun also produced this in 2018:

Quality Street, Celebrations and Roses tins shrink AGAIN with Christmas treats now 40% smaller than 10 years ago

THE Christmas treats that sustain families throughout the festive period really are getting smaller – as Quality Street and Roses tins have shrunk by 40 per cent in ten years – but pri…

www.thesun.co.uk

THE Christmas treats that sustain families throughout the festive period really are getting smaller - as Quality Street and Roses tins have shrunk by 40 per cent in ten years - but prices have stayed the same.

Every year the same debate is had about the drop in size from the family favourites, but it turns out they are getting smaller at a rapid rate.
The standard size tub of Quality Street has dropped from 1,200g to 720g, with Roses joining the streamlining by going from 1,100g to 660g.

While Celebrations tubs have gone from 975g to 650g in less than a decade.

In some cases the price of a large tub has stayed at £5.

-Peter

 

[Gloster]

Toilet rolls. The centre cardboard bit is of a larger diameter than it used to be, but the external measurement of the roll is no greater. I suspect that they also keep the number of sheets up by having the perforations closer together.

 

[Cowley]

Toilet rolls. The centre cardboard bit is of a larger diameter than it used to be, but the external measurement of the roll is no greater. I suspect that they also keep the number of sheets up by having the perforations closer together.

Dammit! I knew that hamster was overweight…

 

[Peter C]

Toilet rolls. The centre cardboard bit is of a larger diameter than it used to be, but the external measurement of the roll is no greater. I suspect that they also keep the number of sheets up by having the perforations closer together.

I seem to remember reading or hearing somewhere that toilet rolls (or kitchen towels, or similar) from a particular manufacturer - can't remember which one now - had decreased in size as that made it more environmentally-friendly to transport. By shrinking the whole thing - so not what you're describing, but close, they could fit so many more onto a lorry which meant the lorries had to make fewer journeys. It was only a tiny amount from what I remember.

-Peter

 

[Darandio]

Space Raiders

Used to be a pack of 10 for £1. That moved to a pack of 8 for £1 and has been like that for quite some time. Now they are being replaced by a pack of 6 for £1.

Travesty!

 

[Butts]

I think this photo does a pretty good job to illustrate that:
View attachment 99366
Left to right: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
(it's been shared on seemingly every site imaginable, but I found it on https://www.packagingnews.co.uk/new...quality-street-tin-sizes-criticism-18-12-2015)



The Sun also produced this in 2018:
View attachment 99367

Quality Street, Celebrations and Roses tins shrink AGAIN with Christmas treats now 40% smaller than 10 years ago

THE Christmas treats that sustain families throughout the festive period really are getting smaller – as Quality Street and Roses tins have shrunk by 40 per cent in ten years – but pri…

www.thesun.co.uk

-Peter

To be fair I think a lot of the tin size variation here is so Supermarkets can knock them out for less than a fiver.

The Big Tins are also still available in some places but a lot more expensive.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

To be fair I think a lot of the tin size variation here is so Supermarkets can knock them out for less than a fiver.

Which of course is an example of "shrinkflation", same price point as before but less product! Which possibly isn't all that fair, all things considered!

 

[Busaholic]

Toilet rolls. The centre cardboard bit is of a larger diameter than it used to be, but the external measurement of the roll is no greater. I suspect that they also keep the number of sheets up by having the perforations closer together.

I have an unused loo in a shop that is currently in an undefined state, and it contains a full Andrex loo roll c 2015 - I haven't attempted to weigh it but it's definitely much larger and more weighty than their current offering. I believe packs of loo and kitchen rolls should be sold with a weight of pack given.

 

[oldman]

Borders Dark Chocolate Ginger Biscuits - was 10 to a packet, new more environmentally friendly packaging, but only 9 biscuits. Same price.

 

[Class465pacer]

Lucozade is a recent example. Previously 1 litre for £1, now 900ml for... £1.

 

[johntea]

I always find it interesting that you get the usual 500ml fizzy drink selection but in an effort to compete Pepsi actually comes in 600ml for around the same price! (Also I used to be a Coke addict...of the drink variety of course but since the whole sugar tax thing now find myself unable to drink annything other than Pepsi Max!)