That couple must really love Vitamin C. That or their bottle of vodka is hidden behind the Tropicana carton.

Linda rocks. Why do we need an Easy Pour Pitcher? I didn't realize drinking orange juice was so difficult in the past.

Oh thank God, finally, an easy pour pitcher. I haven't drunk orange juice in years due to the difficulties involved in the old packaging. Without getting into any specifics, I almost lost my left ring finger and burnt down half a warehouse in my old OJ-drinking days.

Well, with the old Difficult-Pour cap, the half the orange juice ended up on the floor! So even with 7% less juice, I'll be saving money! Thanks, Tropicana!

The new Easy Pour Pitcher hates our freedom.

I don't think that she gets it. Since the cap is different, wouldn't it be considered a different product? Therefore there's isn't much to argue about, her frustration is understandable, but doesn't have any legal power. At least I think so.

@bnosach: Please stop commenting. Or try thinking beforehand.

Doesn't seem like anything to be angry about, its not a "rip off". just something to be aware of!

I always thought it would be neat to take pictures and measurements of popular foods, so we can document the slowly shrinking amount of cream in oreos etc etc as it happens

Hey guys, I know that nobody likes it when companies secretly decrease the size of their products, but we're going to have to learn to live with it. Unless you've been living in a cave recently, you've probably heard about something called "inflation." Tropicana needs to make a profit, so as costs go up they can either a) raise their prices, or b) cut quantity. Which option they pick probably depends on demand elasticity or whatever; the point is, this time they chose 'b.'

I guess it would be nice if they put a big sign on their bottles saying: "LOOK! YOU'RE NOW GETTING LESS ORANGE JUICE!" But I just don't see that happening.

Inflation ain't fun, but it's a fact.

I'll admit I have been pwned by OJ every now and then. It always involved vodka though. It always does =(

What ever happened to being polite or nice to others? Sure, I understand the need to vent to companies... but I'm sure yelling at some poor guy whose job it is to answer the phone is really the best way to have the company understand your concerns. Like that guy really has anything to do with product packaging or marketing.

Sheesh, whatever happened to being polite to other people?

@ratnerstar: This is true, but I'd like to see how much money they spent on R & D for this new design, and how much it cost them to switch over to it, and exactly how long it will take them to recoup that loss for their precious 9% markup.

Tropicana is very sneaky. They know that if consumers were aware that the price of OJ went up, they would switch brands.

One way to save money is to mix OJ with water. Straight OJ has too much sugar in it.

@ratnerstar: You'd be surprised how understanding consumers can be when companies are transparent and just come out and say, "Look, commodity prices are going through the roof, we have to raise our prices", instead of the trying to bullshit the customers.

I'm not saying they have to advertise it (though again, a sincere, to-the-point press release can do wonders), but when a clearly non-stupid customer has a question, they need to be able to turn off the corporate-speak and give an honest response.

I should have known that they'd pull something like this when they touted their new packaging on the old packaging, like a new container was some sort of Holy OJ Grail being passed down from the heavens into my unworthy hands.

I buy the giant jugs of Tropicana almost exclusively, and getting one less glass out of it is going to annoy me to no end. Why can't a company just be honest and jack up the price 9%? Inflation is everywhere. They don't have to treat us like we're idiots.

Oh, and I had no trouble pouring out of the old packaging, thank you very much.

You think this is a rip-off? Ever seen Tropicana Light 'n Healthy at the store? It's basically watered down oj (42% juice content) with some splenda thrown in, and, at least at the place we shop, it's 20-30 cents more than regular oj.

wow that tropicana carton is badly photoshopped in. I mean... who owns stemware that's taller and wider than a half gallon of juice?

I buy generic frozen concentrate for $1.50 a can and add more water than the instructions indicate. PWNED!

ratnerstar noted:
Unless you've been living in a cave recently, you've probably heard about something called "inflation." Tropicana needs to make a profit, so as costs go up they can either a) raise their prices, or b) cut quantity. Which option they pick probably depends on demand elasticity or whatever; the point is, this time they chose 'b.'

There is a difference between simply raising prices (which consumers can respond to) and lowering the quantity in what appears to be the same container (which consumers are generally unaware of).

The first is expected and not troubling; the second is sneaky at best and fraud at worst.

Maybe they figured that now that it's easier to pour my orange juice screwdrivers, and the fact that there's 7 ounces les, Tropicana can get more $$. I wonder if Greygoose will introduce their easier to pour bottles next.

Worse than that is they've started using Brazilian and/or Mexican orange juice. Used to be, IIRC, they were exclusively or almost exclusively US oranges.

This isn't an anti-imports thing...this is about US oranges being just BETTER. I mean Brazilian orange juice tastes like grapefruit juice, and Mexican tastes just..meh. The only reason ANYONE drinks Brazilian orange juice is that it is the cheapest in the world.

AFAIK, the only major brand left that's all US oranges is Florida's Natural.

@ConsumptionJunkie:

I actually do that with all soft drinks. They just taste too sweet otherwise.

@tbbx: Ah, but fraud is out of the question because of the new easy to pour bottle! Sure is sneaky though. They distract you with the shiny new label indicating the "improved" bottle to distract you from the shrinking quantity.

This really isn't anything new, one time I was at the grocery store bc my mom had told me to get orange juice. I almost grabbed the carafe style bc it was prettier than the box, then I looked at the volume and realized the box had more OJ for the same price.

p.s. We need an edit and/or preview button.

The ever shrinking product disguised as some lame new & improved is dishonest. Just raise the price, don't lie to me.

I wonder if the e-z pour cap is designed for emaciated 80 year old female alcoholics with a Pall Mall hanging out of the corner of their mouth. It must be hell trying to make your third screwdriver between all that arthritis and Days of our Lives coming on the tube. That is the only demographic I can assume would need this new cap.

Schooner tuna, the tuna with a heart.

Truth in advertising always works in movies.

*Mr. Mom....starring Michael Keaton

For real, Consumerist? Why does this rate mentioning? Let's look at the facts:
1) The "Same design, less product" story was old when you ran the one about Country Crock.
2) The company admitted to it over the phone and tried to explain the reasoning to this lady (who apparently just needed to vent that day because, come on, get over it, seriously)
3) The lady who submitted the story obviously lives under a rock, or in a magical world where knock-on price increases don't exist, based on her (frankly baffling) anger in this situation
4) I don't really need a #4, I'd just like to point out how ridiculous it is for her to expect the company to allow rising commodity costs to eat into their profit margin. BTW, I'd bet she thinks a gas tax holiday's a good idea. But now I'm just speculating.

@TechnoDestructo:

Bingo.

You know, they might have a little more room to move on rising prices if they didn't pay to ship their "juice" fom FUCKING CENTRAL AMERICA.

True story. I was sitting in a favorite restaurant in Florida in 2005 and ordered some fresh Florida O.J.
Nothin doin. All they had was Tropicana. I told the waitress (politely) that if that was all they had,I would just have a diet coke and thanks anyway...In '06 went back to the same restaurant and they had LOTS of placards and signs announcing that due to popular demand,locally grown juice was back-for less money.

Moral of the story- Tropicana is a fraud. It doesn't matter what the size of the container is-it's just cheap juice from god knows where.

@Snarkysnake: Also, Tropicana Field isn't actually a field - it's actually a domed stadium with artificial turf!

For those who argue against the consumerist posting stories such as this. Isnt' this site about consumer alertness? Not just stories of out and out BS company policies and crappy customer service.

@spinachdip: Actually, I agree with you. I'd definitely prefer to patronize a company that was honest about price increases. But given how risk averse most corporations are, it seems unlikely that we will see a sudden outbreak of truth-telling.

@bohemian: I wonder if the e-z pour cap is designed for emaciated 80 year old female alcoholics with a Pall Mall hanging out of the corner of their mouth. It must be hell trying to make your third screwdriver between all that arthritis and Days of our Lives coming on the tube.

That is perhaps the best post I have ever read. I got one hell of a picture. I posted this on my myspace.

Anyone who buys a jug of juice should know they are spending more money on packaging and advertisement then they really are on the juice. I'm surprised she is really all that angry. Product amounts inflate and shrink all the time. I've been buying my own groceries for about ten years now and as a package reader (and an ingredients reader) this is something seen to me as normal. If I don't like it, I simply don't buy it.

Oooo, I hate sneaky package shrink tactics. If companies didn't do it so much I'd probably never have noticed. But since the practice is so pervasive, I definitely compare quantity as well as price when making my purchase decisions.

I also water my OJ down a bit; it's too sweet for my taste. Since I like my OJ ice-cold, I put some ice in it and let it melt down a bit before I drink it.

I just think that giant jugs are always nice.

@ratnerstar: Seriously, if I could travel back in time, the second thing I would do after betting on sports scores is going to the nation's top business schools and shooting all the professors who taught and wrote textbooks for the current generation of corporate execs. Their basic M.O. seems to be:
a) Don't innovate. It's much safer to just do whatever the industry leader did last year.
b) Ignore the value of anything that can't be easily quantified
c) Squeeze every penny out of the customer, even if it means alienating them forever
d) Overemphasize volume, revenue, and market share at the expense of profits and liquidity

@TechnoDestructo: Glad to see that I'm not the only one noticing the change.

From what my own taste buds tell me, Brazillian oranges used in juices tend to be on the bitter side. And apparantly, it's perennially bitter, unlike American oranges, which bitterness is dependent on the time of year.

I also think Tropicana recently started to water down the juice a little bit more too. I recall that the consistency used to be just a tad bit thicker. Now, it just looks like orange colored water.

@tartis: But how about jugs that have been reduced in size?

The title made me believe somehow, that the company would dilute even more the orange juice with water...

@tartis: My avatar wholeheartedly agrees with you.

Floridians have a great option: Bags of fresh locally grown oranges go for $5 around here. They're just too goddamn lazy to take advantage of it.

@MikeGrenade:

Orange juice is great fresh squeezed. I live in Wisconsin, but my grandparents ship me boxes of oranges so I can juice them myself!

@thesabre:
Tell me about it. Sometimes when I walk down the street people yell at me, "What the hell is wrong with you Hawaiians?!"

I don't know. I really don't.

@thesabre: Sheesh, whatever happened to being polite to other people?

So if you caught a pickpocket trying to take your wallet, you would

"be polite" and wouldn't punch his lights out?

Why are sheep like you even on this site?

@ratnerstar:

Alternately, they could bite the bullet and do what is good for the country: Take a tiny hit on profit.

As it stands, one of the reasons juice and dairy products are so expensive is because of the waste involved. Stores and producers throw out massive amounts of product because they drastically overproduce. As prices increase, demand (of course) decreases, which causes more waste - increasing the price.

If they'd produce less, we'd all win. Excepting, of course, the second- and third-world orange growers.

An old-style orange juice carton killed my brother.

Tropicana used to have 64 oz cartons. I'm assuming all that's changing is the big bottles, from 96 to 89 oz. (I still don't get why people buy the bottle for 2x the price of a carton, when 2 cartons have more OJ...)

Anyway, Tropicana also owns the Simply Orange brand. Which has 59 oz bottles with an easy pour neck for the same price as the Tropicana carton, for the same price. Bottled at the same factory, from the same OJ source....

/rant

@P_Smith: Why are tools like you even alive? How is a company raising its prices/shrinking its product even remotely like a pickpocket? It's more like, if you caught a police man giving you a completely legit parking ticket and being shocked, even after you voluntarily choose to ignore the handicap parking blue and white paint.

@ratnerstar: I agree 100%, it sucks, but either you lose some product (9% seems like alot though) or they raise the price. Which would you prefer? Most people don't like seeing prices going up on their products or they'll switch to a competitor, so they figure you'll be alot less likely to notice a few less oz's, and maybe distract you with a pretty new pour spout.

@heidiho:

Somewhat amazed that it isn't grape soda....just saying...

Inflation isn't 9%....BOHICA