This is unfortunately the norm with corporations. They are loathe to be seen increasing prices, so they simply cut back on the product hoping no one notices.

Or, they change the formulation for the product and call it "concentrated", knowing full well that the consumer will simply use more than they need to resulting in not only the same profit, but more sales.

I was dragged out to dinner last night at Outback. Not my favorite place, but the consensus among the group was that was choice. I noticed that their salads have shrunk considerably, as well as the portions on the entree everyone ordered.

It's not paranoia when they're really after you...

and of course cereal boxes have been shrinking the past couple years.

.....Northern is better, anyway. I wouldn't have agreed with meal shrinkage (Outback) when I was a teenager, but I do decades later! (Those were the days of being able to eat a 32 oz. porterhouse!) It's rare when I eat at a sit-down place that I don't take a box of leftovers home. If I don't, it means the food was lousy!

.....Outback's bloomin' onion is an awesome treat, but frankly, their steaks are very average. (It's actually pretty hard to mess up a steak). Outback puts too much red pepper on the thing, and there's no charcoal or hickory taste. Bleh. Sad fact is that anyone with a bag of Kingsford and a closed grill can blow most steakhouses away at home!

I seriously doubt your ass is going to be any stinkier with 2cm less wide toilet paper. all this does is save paper (hello, REDUCE is the first of the three 'R' of sustainability!). get over it.

and you're still on about the cabury thing? dude they list the grams on the packaging, theres no mystery there! full transparency.

@zentec: 64.5 percent of U.S. adults, age 20 years and older, are overweight

That means us overweight people are the majority now so stop making everything for skinny people.

Consumers don't notice a shrink in size of product as much as they would a rise in price. Inflation happens. And who really cares if their TP is a CENTIMETER! smaller?

Well, at least the roll will finally fit on my Ikea TP holders, which were apparently designed to hold metric TP rolls and are a half-inch too narrow.

They've obviously taken a clue from the food industry where, for example, I've noticed "half-gallons" of ice-cream have shrunk to 1.75 quarts. If you eat 1.75 quarts of ice cream instead of a half-gallon..that's 12.5% less, and if input=output...well..you know where I'm going with this.

@zentec:

That's why I stopped going to outback. They used to give you good sized portions for the price. The last year or more, the portions are very small, but the same price. Definitely not worth it.

barilla's pasta sauce recently shrunk in size by an ounce or two. they had the old bottles and new bottles side by side in the grocery store.

This is obviously the set-up for the inevitable "Now with 20% more!" packaging. ;)

One of marketing's biggest heroes is the person who invented the 5 ounce cup of coffee. A can of ground coffee used to be 16 ounces and made so many 6 ounce cups. So they redefined the cup and changed to the 13 ounce pound. Of course the price didn't change...

Why -adverb
1. for what? for what reason, cause, or purpose?
Source:dictionary.com

Somebody at Charmin just failed first grade English.
Seriously though, they can just say that TP-making cost more nowadays and they did this to avoid jacking up prices. We understand.

In protest against this industry, I'm boycotting all toliet paper!

Those aren't the only things shrinking. Have you checked your local newspapers? I remember one recently shrinking and claimed it was a "more convenient size" for their readers. Right.

We're all so uptight these days that our target spot is shrinking as our self-righteous asses continue to pucker. Charmin knows this and adjusted accordingly. Lowering prices would only encourage higher usage and the destruction of more trees. Think of it as a bio-carbon offset. Now relax and have a smooth one.

there's two ways of seeing this:

1: the company is trying to save paper
2: the company is trying to get more profit. i'm not math guy but cutting out 1cm will actually add up to a lot in the long run. it's like that story about that airline that removed one olive from their martini and saved them thousands.

however, since they are a company, they probably did it save tons and tons of money.

i just measured a random sheet of toilet paper. it's 11.43 x 10.16 cm. that's 116 cm squared (i rounded down).

so we remove 1 cm from the width, it's 10.43 x 10.16. that's 106 cm squared (rounded up).

that's an 8% reduction in size. so a roll of 1000 with the 8% reduction is missing 80 sheets...

oh i forgot to mention. there's a company called royce rolls that make toilet paper dispensers. i found this out while sitting on the can during my college days.

@lonelymaytagguy: Yeah, and that same asshole measured the graduations for my Mr. Coffee machine, which claims to be 4 cups, but is really four 5-ounce cups, and thus 20 oz. Great for how I use it (just me filling a 14 oz mug), but I can't make coffee for two people at the same time in it. Jerks.

I find the use of toilet paper by Americans to be a strange phenomenon considering the number of "anti-germ" products on store shelves. You use soap & water to wash your hands, but Americans just try wiping dry paper across their ever-expanding arses. Wash those wide-loads after use! Nasty.

I reported this back in September in a comment on this very blog. Glad to see you've finally caught up. :)

http://consumerist.com/consumer/mayo/wheres-the-mayo-19845...

i think Charmin sucks. it has a weird, 'fuzzy' texture.

I thought something was going on! I grew up with the big, 2000 sheet Marcal rolls but my roommate likes the pricey fluffy stuff. This weekend, we went through four rolls of it. The cardboard tubes sat in the trash like Easter eggs.

A waste indeed.

What's with the talk about this especially effecting the overweight? Do fat people have larger anuses than the trim?

I was positive someone was going to post that they never use toilet paper because it's bad for the environment, and suggest we return to the rag-on-stick method from outhouse days. Using an old Sears catalogue is no longer an option.

@FLConsumer: Well, your typical American doesn't practice ATM, so I don't think it's that big an issue, whereas your hands make contact with your face several times a day.

I was recently pondering who standardized the width of toilet paper anyway. Anyone know?

Here in Mexico, sheets are about a quarter of an inch narrower. It hasn't bothered my butt one bit.

Wonder what the savings to the company are in an across-the-board quarter inch reduction?

I thought consumerist was for people who want to consume more intelligently, not simply more.

I think toilet paper is a fine size. I thought cadbury eggs were too large when I was a child. Now that child obesity has taken off and everyone's talking about the amount of waste we produce, I have to ask....

Isn't this GOOD news?!?

Maybe people will shrink next week. Less of food products means a teeny tiny waist! Yes, I am spending more money on less product to get slimmer! So logical! :D

Re: width of the t.p.

Who would be more likely to fit a baseball in their cleavage without dropping not holding it with their hand, Calista Flockhart or Salma Hayek?

Same concept with the width of the paper? LOL