Has Anyone Else Noticed....

Toothpaste is smaller!

A lot of things are less for the same price, but toothpaste is the one I noticed the most for some reason. I don't like it.

The dry cat food we feed Tuxie! (Hill's c/d)

Yep. I read an article a couple years ago that all this is becaue of the recession. It even said that the Girl Scouts weren't raising the prices for cookies that year; just putting less in each box....

Easter Bunnies

And it is always marketed like the customer is getting a benefit - more environmental = smaller = more convenient....It is so insulting that they think we don't know what is going on.

I noticed with my Quaker Oats oatmeal canisters. When the manufacturers came out with "value added" features like an easy pour spout...I knew immediately something was also being taken away.

Ice cream is less ounces per gallon. Orange juice is less ounces. You get 59 ounces instead of 64. I have also noticed that stores are not stocking as many items as they have carried in the past, especially Wal Mart.

Interesting question. I was thinking about posting something similar.

I went to Safeway last week and bought 2 jars of Maxwell House instant decaf coffee. The first thing I noticed is that the jars are now plastic (I bought coffee earlier this year and the jars were glass). The second was the obvious size change.

I had finished the last glass jar of coffee I had the day before. I had not yet thrown it away. When I got the jar home I poured one of the plastic ones into the empty glass jar. The volume was 3/4 of the amount compared to the glass jar. And the price was about $2.00 more.

Changing volumes and often keeping the same size packaging is a valid, but sneaky way of increasing the price of a product.

Manufacturing companies realize that people don't want to "see" an increase in price, so they go about it in a non visual way. Same packaging, same price, but a lesser quantity in the bottle/box. Most people aren't aware that they are getting less for their dollar than they did before because most people just look at the package and price and take it for granted that everything is the same as it was the last time they purchased.

The worse case of this that I've seen is from Adrian Arpel, a cosmetic company.

I had a facial there once and purchased some of their products, including a great smelling facial toner. The spray bottle was the visual size of a regular standard sized bottle of shampoo. I paid twenty-some dollars for it. This was back in the 1980's. Twenty-something dollars was a lot of money!

However, a few weeks later I discovered that the bulk of the plastic bottle was actually hollow, and that it concealed a metal spray can inside that was only about 2 inches deep and contained about maybe 1/4 of the amount that the plastic bottle visually appeared to hold. The volume of toner was 60 ml (1/4 cup or 2 ounces). The bottle that contained the metal canister, would have held about 250 ml (about 1 cup or 8 ounces) if it were filled with liquid.

Was I every ticked off! I complained to the company, but their response was that they had the actual volume of product listed on the bottle and I should have known that the volume was less than the size of the bottle it was sold in. Like DUH!!!!

I never bought from them again.

I quit buying a lot of things because of this; first thing that went was ice cream when it went up a dollar and down from 2 litres to 1.8 litres and now the same ice cream is 8.99 for 1.4 litres. Lots of things I no longer buy including cereals, microwave meals (wonerful things in harvest time), smokies, pretend crab and lobster: in short, most packaged things and the only thing I still buy packaged are Lipton Sidekicks and assorted brands of herbed rice and wild rice. My coffee beans still come in a 907 gram pack (2 pounds) and the price varies from 9.99 to 13.99 and has fluctuated like that for several years. What I've learned from this is I still can't cook for squat and eat a lot of eggs and have lost weight.

Ice Cream...same price, but instead of getting a half-gallon, now you are getting 1.5 quarts

OH MY GOSH you got that right!! Makes me so mad !!! Prices are on the rise and sizes of our products are getting down-sized. Even TP rolls are shorter!!! They say that the rolls are Triple sized, but they make the rolls a bit shorter so it really is not more. And cracker boxes are smaller too now. Like the Cheezits. OH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I even noticed that my South Beach breakfast bars have gotten a bit shorter. Just so frustrating along with the gas prices !!!!!!!!!!!!

Cereal boxes, less in them but they kept the boxes the same size! Was at the store yesterday and laughing at a really tiny looking cereal box until my b/f pointed out it was 1oz more than the huge boxes beside it. Pretty much everything is doing that these days, shrink the amount you are getting but not the container it comes in. I did not notice the ice cream though, don't buy much for myself, I'll have to start paying more attention.

I'm all for reducing quantity without changing price on junk food packages. That and buying locally at Valu grocery stores. Anything to help the increasingly obese population to lose some weight.

Thing is, what they are reducing sizes on, and increasing price on are many things that were a staple of lunches I take to the field in harvest or stuff I kept around for my days trucking or running for parts and stuff; junk food just went up, and my favourite junk food is popcorn and that really hasnt changed in price beyond normal variations caused by weather effects on the crop. At least the guys can still have chicken burgers on my lunch taking days - they DO appreciate something hot over sandwiches and my cold sandwich array is greatly reduced with the smaller size, higher price cold cut packages. Also took a huge bite out of my dessert allowance (baking is even worse than cooking) for harvest time.

Not sure what a Valu store is, but the nearest real grocery store is 35 miles away and to a better one, 50 miles. I am so far out in the sticks that local shopping costs more than the fuel to get to either city: milk is almost 3 times the price, meat up to 5 times depending what it is, produce isn;t carried except for a few oranges and apples and a sad looking head of lettuse or two. Next town over is ok in a pinch - they are regulated by head office as to what they can charge. Even going to the big stores, we rely on imported stuff for everything but milk, meat, eggs and a few semi-locally grown veg; this area doesn't have the right climate for many things considered locally grown. Most around here grow their own veggies and freeze them, same for what little fruit survives the winters here.

Part of the weightloss in my case was dealing with an unusually brutal winter: 8 feet of snow and very very cold temps, and a weekly blizzard from the end of October to the middle of April. Anyone who says riding a tractor to move snow every day is not work had better follow me around for a few days of snow removal - it batters the body, and even with a nicely heated cab, you still expend a lot of energy keeping warm when you have to get out of the cab.

To me it seems like clothes are getting smaller....okay, I'm just getting bigger.
We have actually been getting bigger packages lately, but the prices are getting higher too. Everything seems to be now available in some super extra large packages, specially food. And it's expensive! The taxes just got higher this year (again).

This post has reminded me of that Jimmy Dean Sausage complaint call from a few years back, the man is calling to complain that a 12oz roll of sausage isnt enough to feed him, his brother in law, his wife and his daughter with a "couple of dozen eggs and a t-bone" lol and that he will not buy it for the same price as the 16oz roll used to be.

I'd post a link... but after he apparently thinks he has hung up the phone he uses some very foul language!

Yes! Remember when the airlines discovered they could save a fortune by taking away x number of peanuts per bag they gave out on flights? Paper towel rolls keep getting smaller and smaller.

Bars of soap. Not only are they smaller in weight, but (at least for Dial soap), the bars are formed differently and I swear they're shaped to break easier.

Yogurt. Breyers, for example, used to have 8-oz cups of yogurt. Well, they reduced them down to 6 ounces, I guess to match the other brands. A lot of the companies are now going down to 4 ounces and packaging them in quantities of four.

Tuna is now in a 5-ounce can. Which means that I would have to buy more cans in order to make my tuna recipes, since most recipes call for 1-2 cans of tuna. I don't....I have found that I can make do with a lesser amount of tuna. *sticking my tongue out at Chicken of the Sea and StarKist* So there, Chicken of the Sea/StarKist! Take that!

I find the whole thing frustrating.

I knew a man who ate a pound of bacon, a dozen eggs, a loaf of white bread (toast), and a 1/2-gallon of OJ every single morning for his breakfast. He was a very big man. He said he did physical labor for his job and he needed the energy.

OMG, how was he even able to move after eating all that?!!

The thing that's been bugging me since about last year is that the supermarkets have all stopped stocking certain brands (more upscale) and their own brands just can't compare. I do buy a lot of my local supermarket's brand, which I consider a good brand in itself, but sometimes they just can't compete.
And milk products! It would have to be a special occasion now for me to buy whipping cream as it's now nearly $6 for a little container. I've stopped buying my lactose free milk too.
It's annoying not to have choice.

Chips! I love my chips, but I want to cry almost every time I open a new bag to discover it only half way filled with chips and the other half filled with air!

Well, at least a half gallon of milk is still a half gallon (or CAN be, depending on who the dairy is), But the price of milk these days! What happened? I didn't know there was a shortage of cows! Suddenly milk zoomed up in price - like doubled in the last couple of months! Now I'm buying Silk because I can usually find coupons for it, then wait until someone is having a good sale on cow's milk .

And I have definitely noticed the size of ice cream containers has shrunk. Now they fit in my side by side fridge, whereas before, it was a tight fit (with the other stuff in there). Sadly, the price didn't shrink with the container.