The bane of loyal customers everywhere has struck again, and this time the Grocery Shrink Ray fixed its beady glare on reader Chuck’s favorite granola bars — Sunbelt chocolate chip. At first, he was pleased about the “new” number of bars in a bigger box. There were now 10 bars to be enjoyed instead of the previous eight. Hurray! But all was not as it seemed, as Chuck soon found out.

Chucks says one of the reasons he’s always liked Sunbelt’s bars is that they were bigger than your typical granola bar. He was intrigued by new packaging and the additional two bars while at the store, so he bought a box.

Upon closer inspection, this wondrous, larger box filled with more food was far from pleasing, writes Chuck, along with submitting the picture of the two boxes of bars (old on the left, new on the right)

As a fairly regular reader of The Consumerist, I was interested to compare the new box with the old box I had at home. As you can see from the attached photo, the new box is bigger, but that’s about all. The size of the bars decreased and the net weight of the box decreased from 12 oz to 10.56 oz. I forgot to check the price, but I’m sure it didn’t decrease.

To be honest, I’m a little offended that they would think they could put less food in a bigger box and advertise that the box has more bars, and not expect me to notice it. Are people like me really in the minority? I don’t know about others who buy their product, but now that they have lost their size advantage, I think I’m going to look closer at whether I’d rather just switch to another brand.

Sure, maybe Sunbelt used a thinner cardboard for the box, but if there were two bars of the original size added, super thin cardboard wouldn’t do much to decrease the net weight. And as for that likely price decrease, we agree. There’s rarely ever a Grocery Biggify Ray that shrinks prices as well.

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