It looks like the fell Grocery Shrink Ray may have hit cans of Arizona Ice Tea, reducing the size of their 12 oz cans to 11.5 oz cans. We couldn’t find any definite pictures of 12oz Arizona Ice Tea cans, but we did find them being sold on this website in 12 oz cans. What happens to a product when the shrink ray hits it? I imagine it goes eek! eek! eek! and the last eek is an octave higher than the first.
(Thanks to Cynicor!)
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I call bullshit. I drink Arizona Ice tea all the time, and have not seen it shrink. I chuck the 12oz website to a lasy programmer… Or editor.
Anyone who drinks tea deserves whatever comes their way. I only drink free-range water dispensed out of my faucet made with recycled materials.
Kidding aside, this reminds me of the whole “Arizona Southern Sweet Tea has racist packaging!” brouhaha that Snopes covered. I still see those racist packages in grocery stores.
I’m guessing this was because the people who drank it wanted to be done with it faster. That stuff is gross. It taste like sugar water.
I thought Arizona Iced Tea only came in those mega cans. Also, a lot of non-carbonated drinks come in 11.5 oz cans.
Watch for the food companies to continue training us to buy products based on shape and vague size estimates instead of weight/volume. The recent article about beer glass sizes comes to mind. Vernacular has a way of protecting us from the shrink ray, so these companies would like to change it:
There are times when we buy things based on a named weight or volume, such as “a gallon of milk” or “a pound of potatoes”. These items are generally resistant to the grocery shrink ray because you can’t buy a “gallon of milk” that consists of only 120 fl oz (1 gal = 128 fl oz). However, many of our food choices involve only the packaging: “a can of Coke” or “bag of chips”. Once “a gallon of milk” becomes “a jug of milk”, we’ll start to see 120 fl oz milk, then 100 fl oz, etc. When this happens, nothing will stand in the way of the grocery shrink ray.
@BloggyMcBlogBlog: Individual 23oz .99cent cans, and 12/24 packs of the smaller ones.
I’ve never seen an AZ Iced Tea come in 12oz. Around here they’re in the taller cans.
I buy my beer in pounder cans (16oz) tought to shrink those without notice. I like the pounders because I can say I only had 4 beers when I really had 5 and third.
I have never even seen an Arizona can that size, the only cans I have seen were the 23.5oz variety. Which makes me bring up one thing, how come you can’t find the Peach flavored one in anything other than the can, but you can find Diet Peach in a giant half gallon container!
regardless of shrinkage, I love Arizona.In a $5.00 per drink world, a $.99 beverage is badass.
Especially in 23.5 Fl Ounces.
That’s it…I’m writing my congressman about this. I hate how companies are doing this.
Yes, I would get outraged if they increased prices, but “innocently” reducing how much product I get is the same. The products should be clearly marked that they’ve lowered the amount of product they include.
Anyone else want to join me in a letter writing campaign?
@linus: Your congressmen is busy ruining the country in much bigger ways.
@linus: I would. Unfortunately the pack of stationary I usually get had too few sheets so I’m out of paper.
Product shrinkage I can live with, as I’ve grown to accecpt it, even if I don’t like it, but to market a 12oz can with 11.5 oz of product is somehow much worse.
@Applekid: “stationEry”
Ok seriously, have you forgotten what the “shrink ray” even means? It means same price for a smaller product. The last 5 or so stories you’ve posted about the “shrink ray” haven’t mentioned price. (and one story was either confusion by the poster or outright deception, since the product didn’t match the shelf sticker)
All you’ve been doing lately is prove that product comes in different sizes.
@Bladefist: You’re so right…*sigh*
By the by, I was reading the Declaration of Independance the other day (you know, for funsies) and what’s interesting is this little gem:
Not saying that we should overthrow the government…just saying that there is precident for it.
We carry some of Arizona’s teas in the cafe I own so I called the distributor in our area (DR Pepper/7Up) about this and they said all of their product that they had in the warehouse was still 12oz and that they had not heard anything from Arizona about the size being changed.
@Applekid: Curses, foiled again.
@linus: Okay, you’ve convinced me. Let’s overthrow the government!
@linus: And “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act” established into law that that is illegal. Contradictions in the law much?
@Cap’n Jack: Let me make it clear that I’m not advocating to overthrow the government!
@Cap’n Jack: Can we start by throwing cases of Arizona iced tea into Boston Harbor?
@linus: The FBI stopped reading your comments and are on their way to your house now.
I am furious that this would even be made into a story…oh wait.
Pretty much every store writes down the price/unit for everything. I don’t really pay attention to the price for a package but rather prize/oz (or whatever the unit is) and buy based on that. Thus I don’t really notice anything like this.
maybe the consumers teeth all rotted so they thought the .5 might save a tooth a day?
Price per weight,yeap:especially in the supermarket.But most won’t remember or notice that as well.If they would just come out and say a new size.Sooner or later most will notice but then they’ll be on to the next shrink.
I also noticed Skippy Peanut Butter is down to 16.3 oz compared to 18 0z in the past.And a local dollar store is now carrying a 12 oz size instead of 18oz.
FYI- to anyone who is looking for a healthy alternative to soft drinks, DO NOT DRINK ARIZONA TEA! I used to drink them all the time because they claim on the front to be sweetened with Sue Bee honey. One day I decided to read the ingredients list and lo and behold one of the first ingredients after water was HFCS. The big can has 54 carbs and 210 calories.
@courtarro:
Absolutely correct
Yo, it is called inflation. Shrink the sizes or increase the prices. This whole package shrinking is not an issue until standardized sizes, such as 1 gallon or 10 lbs are no longer meeting their standards.
BTW, I suspect we will see a lot of 9.5lb bags of food being passed off as 10 lb bags. The State weight and measure boys really need to watch for weight fraud until gas prices settle out.
@colinjay:
Oh great, HFCS. The evil sweetner has struck again.
@czarandy: Unit pricing could be helpful, but it usually isn’t. Because stores mix up their units of measurement. My grocery has the following types of unit pricing for toilet tissue:
–per roll;
–per ft2.
Other product unit prices show similar confusion. Bottled water:
–per oz;
–per liter;
–per bottle.
All this is complicated by the fact that mfgrs are shrinking products to odd sizes (like the 16.3 oz peanut butter referenced above, which I recently saw), and the recent invention of the 20-pack (instead of 24) of bottled water. Such silliness means you have to choose the proper unit and do the word problems yourself. Don’t forget to bring a pen, paper and a calculator to the store.
If it makes you feel better, Fuze went from an 18oz glass bottle to an 18.5oz plastic bottle and it’s still the same price…
I don’t know about non-alcoholic beverages, but I worked in beer about 10 years ago and state to state laws and regulations made it such that we could sell 12 oz beers in one state, but had to have a 11.5 oz package in another because you couldn’t sell it in 12 oz increments (40′s sold well there). Of course that might be a more heavily regulated industry than most.
Hmmm I have never seen a 12oz can of Arizona anything. I think 16 is the minimum and it goes as high as 42 oz for anyone who wishes to truly test their bladder control. They make gallon/128 oz but that’s a “family size.” I pray for you if you feed your kids that.
They changed from 15.5 cans to 16 bottles here. Grocery GROW ray for my favorite drink!
I first noticed the 11.5 ounce cans and bottles of Canadian beer. I thought it was because it was a round 340 milliliters.
@sean77: Consumerist came up with the term and (much like other organizations often do) can change the definition to mean whatever they need it to in order to make the story work.
P.S. Apparently the standard volume for a can of soda/drink in Europe is 330-340ml
uhhh, fake?
Arizona Iced Tea is often in large pint jugs at the 99 cent store. They wouldn’t bother selling a smaller amount. Looks misleading and fake or from somewhere else.