shadow inflation

Readers Write In With Examples Of More Shrinking Products

Readers Write In With Examples Of More Shrinking Products

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.

Brawny Paper Towels Shrink By 20% While Price Goes up 6%

Brawny Paper Towels Shrink By 20% While Price Goes up 6%

Yet another common product has been hit with the shrinking ray—this time it’s Brawny paper towels, which Jason noticed recently received a new package design, apparently to disguise that there are now fewer sheets and a higher price.

New, Taller Honey Nut Cheerios Box Is 1.5 Oz Lighter

New, Taller Honey Nut Cheerios Box Is 1.5 Oz Lighter

Frugal Frugalson over at Picking up Nickles made a side-by-side comparison of General Mills’ newer “Right Size, Right Price” cereal boxes. Apparently, the right size is 1.5 oz less, and the right price is about 9% more.

Donning my detective’s cap, I found that the 14oz box of General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios at my local market had been replaced by a 12.5oz box for the same $2.99 price. That works out to a 8.9% price increase, which is a bit larger than the average price increase of 2.9% claimed in this New York Times article.