shrinking-packages
—>Watch NBC Nightly News on Thursday, 12/04/08, for a snippet of yours truly, Ben Popken, laying down some tough talk on the good 'ol Grocery Shrink Ray, THE STORY THAT NEVER DIES!!! MUAHAHA! More »
—>The Grocery Shrink Ray continues its miniature spree across the supermarket aisles of America. Here's 14 more victims that have surfaced in the past week, as spotted by our watchful bands of deputized Consumerist reader-investigators... More »
—>The Grocery Shrink Ray has expanded its range and is no longer just hitting the US. Pint-sized woe has befallen the the UK snack section. For one, the Dairylea triangle is shrinking from 180 to 160g per cheese wheel. Other shrunken products include Rolo, Palmolive, Olvatine, Dairy Milk, Mars bars, Yorkie chocolate bars, and Pringles.Check out the company double-talk as they tried to explain away the changes, sometimes with verbal softshoe, others with oddly pugilistic rebuttals: More »
—>The Chicago Tribune quoted me in a piece on the Grocery Shrink Ray. Paraphrasing a food science. expert, it says, "Broadly defined, packaging costs often outweigh ingredient costs, Hotchkiss said. And a penny shaved off packaging can translate into millions of dollars in savings for a high-volume consumer product." This is interesting because it means the greatest cost savings come from reducing package costs, rather than ingredient amount. Which means if they're reducing ingredient amounts, they've got to be really hurting. Maybe if I really wanted to do my part to help the economy I should have spent that stimulus check on juice, cereal, paper towels, mayonnaise and ice cream. More »
—>Joe spotted this box of Bausch & Lomb Boston contact solution at his Target, another victim of the Grocery Shrink Ray. "Someone at Target wasn't smart enough to change the original price label...4oz down to 3.5oz is significant when you are dealing with an everyday item like this at $7-7.99 per bottle," he writes. Full pic inside. More »
—>Mark says he's found fault with Faultless spray starch. The bottle shrunk by two ounces and is being sold for the same price, another victim of the Grocery Shrink Ray. Compare the products here and here. What's interesting is that when he called his mom, she said she had a different brand of starch spray. It too had shrunk by two ounces. Could manufacturers be colluding together to all decrease their products by the same amount at the same time? I've heard of price-fixing, but what about the legality of size-fixing? In any event, Mark emailed customer service about the new package. Their cheery reply, inside... More »
—>Andrew writes: More »
—>NPR's Michele Norris on "All Things Considered" did a nice interview with me about that deadly Grocery Shrink Ray sweeping supermarkets across America. It looks like it just aired, you can listen to it online here. If you want to look at previous stories in the Grocery Shrink Ray series, check 'em out here. And if you have a example of a product that is shrinking in terms of volume or net weight and you want to submit it to us for a possible post, just send it on in to tips@consumerist.com. More »
—>Michael sends in this latest Grocery Shrink Ray victim, found at the Petsmart where he works. He writes, "The price is the same, and the 20lb bag is apparently being "upgraded" to an 18lb bag. This was the only 20lb bag left, but consumers who pay attention may be able to still be able to find some of the larger bags in stores." More »
—>Media interest in The Grocery Shrink Ray sweeping across America continues, I was interviewed recently by CNNMoney.com, The Brian Lehrer Show, and Agence France-Press. Everyone knows prices are higher and manufacturers need to pass them on somehow. I don't like the method of shrinking sizes while keeping the prices the same. Or when they combine it with a package redesign, hoping we'll be so distracted by a new spigot that we won't notice we're getting less. My local pizza parlor went about it differently. They raised prices and taped up two articles explaining how rising wheat costs are driving up the cost of making pizza. They didn't, however, cut their pies into 12 slices instead of 8. More »
—>Starting this week, a few portions are smaller and prices higher at Arby's in the OK-KS-MO-AR region. Here's the aftermath: More »
—>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. More »
—>These Sun Chips have shrunk from 11.5 oz to 10.5 oz and are still being sold at the same price. "Not even healthy foods that normally are already sold in smaller portions are safe," says tipster MasonTwo who spotted these on the shelves at Walmart. CNN says the products most vulnerable to the Grocery Shrink Ray are paper towels, potato chips, sticks of gum, toilet paper, detergent and candy bars. Hey, look at the bright side, maybe the Grocery Shrink Ray is just what we need to fight the obesity crisis. More »
—>Country Crock's three-pound vats of fat are now three ounces lighter, but you can't tell by looking at the packaging. The crock-purveyor Unilever claims that the adjustment was made not to ensure optimal profitability, but to "ensure optimal consumer satisfaction." More »
I'm was browsing my local HyVee (supermarket) and found one interesting deal. You can either buy their 15 pack "Best Seller" spring water for $3.88 or if you look down you will notice that the same exact 24 pack of spring water can be bought for $3.88. I know it might get confusing to compare unit prices or price per oz, but this is just ridiculous. I like how the box for the 15 pack says "NOW" right next to it, as if getting less for the same price is actually a good thing. I guess it is harder to carry 24 bottles vs 15 bottles, so you are actually paying for the convenience.We're going to guess that HyVee is in the process of raising the price of their bottled water. 15 is the new 24, don't you know? More »
—> Brawny's not the only product skimping on size to sneakily increase profits. Here are two more items readers have noticed recently.
Henry writes:
Our house uses Skippy Peanut Butter, but i just found out they changed their jars from 18 ounces to 16.2 ounces for the same price. I know 2 ounces is not a huge amount of peanut better, but still.And Matt writes:
I have noticed this same thing with Quilted Northern. I don't know what the price used to be but i noticed while shopping at sams club now you get less quilted northern than you used to.If you know of another company that's downsized a product without passing along the savings, let us know. Maybe we can put together a single reference post so shoppers will see which products are the worst offenders. More »
