so Shrinkflation is normal in most products then?
This would be the perfect time for him to make “I Hate Mars Bars.”
Here’s just the picture:
Damn those are some grippers
I bet the ingredients are worse now too
It’s a weird thing to think about, but in a ship-of-Theseus sort of way a lot of the products we grew up with don’t really exist anymore. By that I mean, if it’s half the size and made of different ingredients then the Mars Bar as it was introduced has effectively been discontinued. There’s just some other, crappier knock-off being sold under the same name now.
Yep, really stretching the bounds of how far name recognition will get them. All of Christie, Mondelez and Nestle products are barely even edible anymore. Forget the shrinkage, it’d be slop if they doubled the size.
Mondelez used to be a champion of quality but quarterly earrings erode all scruples.
That’s almost the worst part. Not only is the food ultra-processed now, but it’s all engineered to extract every fraction of a penny in margins.
If this goes on, I might as well just inject palm oil straight to my veins.
When I was a kid, a pound of coffee was 16 ounces (US). Now it’s down to 12. They do it in small steps, so no one realizes it’s happening until you see something like this.
Back in the dialup days when brands were first coming online I used to have quite a thing for a Toffee Crisp. When I got a bar that was noticeably smaller than the last, I emailed them expecting a reply about market forces or cost of ingredients, but maybe they’d also send a voucher for a free bar or something.
Instead they tried to gaslight me, telling me they’d always been that size and that I must be imagining it. I was so put out by it that, other than a very occasional multi-pack for picnics, I haven’t bought a single-serve Toffee Crisp, Mars Bar, Snickers etc since.
When shrinkflation became a recognised term I felt so vindicated! I wish I still had that email so that I could shove it in their faces.
I saw a Curly Wurly in a shop the other day, and they’re now a pale imitation of what they were.
Remember BJ Novak calling out Cadburys blatant advertising lie about the new eggs were not getting smaller. That you were getting bigger.
Start of CadburyGate segment:
https://youtu.be/TlXLCrzpToo?t=172
Fulls interview
IMO the size is irrelevant after how they ruined the filling. And I bet the chocolate shell is also not as good as it used to be. They used to be an automatic buy when i saw them in stores because they are so good. In their current form, I don’t understand why people bother getting them at all.
Yep, one of my favourites before, after they changed they were so bad though; somebody working for them offered a store tray full and we just refused.
Ahead of his time on the call out. Now corporations just shrinkflate openly.
This explains why I only needed to eat 1 Mars bar to feels satisfied back in the days while I now have to eat 3-4 bars.
I can eat many, but they never completely fill the void inside.
Not really. That bar was 62.5g while modern ones are 40g. So to offset shrinkflation you’d have to eat about 1.5 modern bars, not 3-4.
I took that as part of the joke.
No jokes, math here
Factoring in 35 years of inflation. A $0.50 mars bar in 1991 is $1.21 today. The cost of a Mars bar today is at least $1.50 USD (after converting from UK pounds) and that’s being generous.
Companies are greedier than ever and there seems to be no stopping it (meaning because of the oligarchy in the US, Congress will never do a damn thing about it, and certainly the spoiled man-baby’s executive branch will do nothing about it), and no end in sight of it.
Fuck them all.
That’s the official inflation numbers, which are lies. It’s an open secret that in the 90s there was a political movement among the owners to artificially lower reported inflation (see: Boskin Commission for example) because it would boost the economy (on paper) while letting them absorb the gains.
Underreporting by 1-2% a year doesn’t seem like much until you do it for several decades. Looking at actual inflation instead of the reported lie, that mars bar is closer to $2 today. Shrinkflation had to happen to keep the bigger con going. Most businesses will, of course, cheat the margins at every instance.
TLDR; shrinkflation is a symptom, not the disease
I would also be surprised if the cost of production, now using cheaper ingredients and far more automation, hadn’t also decreased.
I visited a chocolate confection assembly plant. The only things humans do now is random tasks like flip the random bar that for some reason fell odd onto conveyor or shift the skewed box on the pallet, or open the door for a shipment.
The rest was automatic, from the pipes running chocolate throughout the plant to the final gluing and boxing.
The costs are materials, and the factory operation cost, labour is almost nothing. So to increase profit they really can only cheapen or lesson the materials
Does infinite growth mean eternal shrinkflation? Will it ever plateau? Or collapse?
Shrinkflation implies a customer base that would either go elsewhere or without. I’m sure you’ve seen the efforts to eliminate all competition (establishing trusts, i.e. mega mergers) and weaseling into contracts like government that can’t be avoided.
When your audience has no choice, you have no limits.
Oh absolutely. Productivity has increased drastically since the 90s but wages never kept up.
Don’t say it in cop voice. Say:
workers engineers and scientists made everything drastically more productive and the pedophiles stole all the gains. We keep letting them.
We’re saying the same thing. The productivity surplus is getting stolen by the Epstein class. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything.
I know. You were trained to say it in a way that contains linguistic ‘outs’ for boot lickers and disattributes the harm. Read back my post and look at the formatting.
Not to mention less cacao
In 1991 those were closer to 30 cents.
I was 12, so I didn’t have 3 cents to rub together, let alone 30. I assumed it was similar to candy bars when I was in high school, which were about $0.50 at the time.
I was only like 9, but I remember that shit. Lol.
Least those were the prices here in the Midwest. Thirtyish cent candy bars, 25 cent bags of small chips, 35 cent cans of coca cola, 59 cents for a 20 ounce. If hamburger was a dollar a pound, it’s because it wasn’t on sale that week.
You clearly have a better memory than I :)
Terrible with some things and great with others. I could drive somewhere 5 times in a day, and may not be able to find my way back in a week.
We’ve had the technology to stop this since 1791. Arguments about maturity could be made that put an industrial version as late as 1917.
That’s still over a century ago.
… posted a photo on social media of the 62.5g bar alongside one of today’s Mars Bars, which is 40g.
“Over the last 35 years, we have made a number of updates to our bar sizes and pack formats to reflect consumer demand, alongside considering wider external factors such as manufacturing costs and the price of cocoa.”
I’m sure your customers have been demanding smaller bars that cost more.
I’m sure your customers have been demanding smaller bars that cost more.
Well, their customers have kept on buying their products so clearly they don’t care too much.
There was a dollarstore knock off mars bar we bought for a while 50¢ each
“We didn’t only shrink the size, we also lowered the quality of ingredients to maximize profits!”
The only people who enjoy Mars bars are shareholders
There’s a large number of people talking glp-1s (ozempic et. al) and they actually are looking for smaller portion sizes, which is driving a huge trend in grocery now of boxing up larger quantities of smaller items.
Of course the industry has used this to their advantage. Instead of just offering a 4-pack of frozen dairy treats at 2 oz each, they can offer an 8-pack at .8 oz each (less total product) and sell it alongside that one for even more, and they actually will sell more of the 8-pack.
Yes, because shrinkflation wasn’t a thing until Ozempic arrived.
Also, the % of the population taking Ozempic is what, a rounding error?
If people weren’t buying more of them, they wouldn’t’ve changed the size.
What people say they want and what they actually purchase are often different.
edit: Yet again, Lemmy proves ignorance is rampant and people have absolutely no concept of the real world.
Companies have been trying to cheap out in manufacturing costd since manufacturing was invented.
Don’t blame the consumer when the candy bar cartel shrinks their shit then lies about it.
Me: doesn’t buy them
Candy: shrinks anyway
Me: “but the internet says that won’t happen!”
If people weren’t buying more of them, they wouldn’t’ve changed the size.
That’s not a valid conclusion.
The only thing that we can say for sure is that the companies benefit from shrinkflation in some way otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
If sales drop due to the smaller sizes but they still make more profit overall then you can be sure that we’d be getting smaller bars.
The only thing that we can say for sure is that the companies benefit from shrinkflation in some way otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
Nitpick, even though I agree with you: companies believe they will benefit. We can’t rule out how fucking stupid a lot of management types are. Like whatever company fired people for AI and then had to retire them, plus eat the lost potential from fucking around with AI for months.
And even when the individuals aren’t stupid, the incentives are fucked. Google kills products because of internal fighting for promotions and recognition, not anything that’s good for users or the companies.
You are assuming both options were on the market for consumers to choose from.
These are unilateral decisions.
I always skip the smaller bags of chips in favor of the biggest ones available. Same goes for Little Debbie’s offerings.
I am making no such assumption, and you clearly do not know how businesses operate.
I’m not fond of much of what they do, but I’m speaking in realities, not idealations.
You “make no such assumptions” of whether both sizes were available in 1991, but you do assume that the user has no idea how businesses operate. You’re not speaking in reality at all, you’re just arguing nonsensically
Y’all go live in made-up land, I guess.
If people weren’t buying more of them, they wouldn’t’ve changed the size
That’s what you said. If a business is already making sales and profit, why would they decrease the size? You think they were selling the candy at a loss or something, and had to slowly increase revenue?
It’s the definition of “shrinkflation” and it’s anti-consumerism because they aren’t making it obvious that they’re increasing the cost of the product
What kind of ignorant are you, that you can’t wrap your head around that? Go spout your elitist, anti-intellectualism elsewhere, cause ain’t nobody here buying it
And if you truly believe in what you’re saying, good luck my dude, and may god have mercy on your soul
Are you 15? Or do you just lack all common sense and ability to understand the universe around you?
I’m serious. What you’ve written is so far from reality that I feel compelled to make sure you’re OK and not like, IDK, stroking out somewhere.
They had a better font back then too.
I clearly remember they were 68 grams when I was a kid, which always weighed on my mind when I had to choose between a Mars bar and the 78 gram Oh Henry
I always had the feeling that they were 56% bigger when I was a kid.
You were just smaller then.
Even the font weight shrank
Also, recipe blogs are a great source of information on shrinkflation. Going to the store to look for a package size that no longer exists is fun.
