To think shrinkflation is getting out of control?

Tie a hair bobble around the pack and only one wipe will come out at a time 🙂

Some shops seem to still regularly sell both sizes.

I may be terribly mistaken, but the apples in the 4-packs usually seem to be bigger than those in the 6-packs.

Lol!!!!

👏

You could, maybe, make a case for “junk food” coming in smaller sizes. But I’m sure Pink Lady apples were in packs of 6. Now 4 and cost more.

TWVIII

Even if they do, though, if the paper is so thin that you need to use a yard at a time, if doesn’t help.

I've tidied up in the kitchen just now and used a good 1/4 of a new roll of kitchen paper just to wipe the surfaces. Ridiculous. Fair enough, I should be using washable tea towels or something to be more environmentally friendly, but they’d need washing with, you’ve guessed it, shrinkflationed washing powder.

Yes, this.

At least Cadbury had no choice but to change their 'egg box' to a generic card box when they reduced packs of Creme Eggs from 6 - 5. That would have been very obvious, if they'd kept a half-dozen egg box but with one of the sections now empty!

The christmas boxes of Celebrations are 50g smaller this year than they were last year 😟

I squeeze some hot water into the bottle and shake it well to get the dregs out - usually get another two uses out of it that way!

Also, new for this year, do they think nobody will notice that a tub of Celebrations is a lot shallower than last year?

The manufacturers must love products that aren't on sale all year around, as it's their perfect opportunity to reduce the pack size without it being so obvious.

I understand that some people might not be able to afford the relative price for the original size of product, but reducing the amount of product must increase production cost because the ratio of product to packaging has gone down, so this is false economy - we are paying for more packaging.

In the example of roll-on deodorant I mentioned upthread, the packaging must be a significant part of the product cost as it's not just a straightforward wrapper or bottle.

It's bad enough that they didn't make deodorants in larger sizes to begin with, as you don't need it to be portable if it's the one you keep in your bathroom but this change in the bottle shape is taking the absolute piss from a sustainability perspective (and before anyone jumps on the thread to say that I should rub myself with a block of sea-salt or whatever if I care about the planet, so called 'natural' deodorants don't touch my menopausal sweats, I need an anti-persipirant or else my armpits are sodden).

They'll probably try to gaslight us by telling us they only seemed to be bigger before, because we were children!

The one that absolutely pisses me off is fresh cut herbs like coriander - used to be a nice neat bunch in a pack where you could use a bit then put a trickle of water in the pack to keep the stems fresh for ages.

Now many stores just fling the stalks in all over the place like they've been in a tornado so it's much harder to put them in water.

Also, you used to get skinned fillets of salmon. Hardly ever see them.

Potatoes in general. A 5lb bag is now 2kg (4.4lb) and twice the price. The bag will be 50% useable potatoes, and the rest are tiny little pebbles that are impossible to peel. So you’re actually getting about 2lb of spuds for what you used to pay for 10lb.

The other incredibly annoying thing is rounded lids on shampoo, shower gel, washing up liquid etc. It’s done deliberately so we can’t turn them upside down to get the last dregs out, and end up having to buy a new bottle sooner. So they make the bottle smaller, charge us more for it, and prevent us using all of it. I suppose that’s capitalism!

Also, call me a cynic, but I wonder if it's deliberate that baby/cleaning wipes now always seem to be jammed in, in a way that you really struggle to get just one out at a time, coupled with weaker and less reliable reseal tabs, which makes them dry out more quickly.

Makes me wonder if that's deliberate too, to make people use more than they need each time or them becoming useless, so they keep coming back sooner to buy more.

Anyone notice the thickness of bacon has reduced, normal is now very thin and usually ends up breaking when you try and separate the slices, have to buy thick cut now to keep it in intact.

Also fruit and vegetables aren’t lasting as long, melons and peppers especially this year seem to go off within days of buying them and lettuces now full of dirt.

Maryland mini cookies, you’d be lucky to get six cookies in a packet, 6x6 in a multi pack so that’s £1.50 for 36 tiny cookies, plus manufacturing is so shoddy one bag has always been heat sealed to the main bag and ends up breaking when you open it rendering it unusable for packed lunches.

Dove shower gel has reduced in size from 500ml to 400ml and increased the price from £2.50 to £4.50 per bottle.

I honestly don't know how they have the front, and I've stopped buying it now. I wonder how many others have done similar because it's outrageous.

But many shoppers don't have enough money week to week to buy the same size pack at a much higher price, so we do everything we can to keep the purchase price affordable and unfortunately that means smaller packs and often changing recipes to cheaper ingredients.

But how are you going to fatten a pig by constantly weighing it?

Folk know that they have less money and can afford less, so how does it help them in any way to try to make them think that they're still getting the same 'standard' size rather than facing the fact that they can now only afford the smaller one - or a standard one less often - and they'll just have to eke it out? If anything, it makes it worse if they think they're still getting the same, and then they suddenly realise that it's all gone - whereas with a smaller packet, they would have known to be more economical with using it from the start.

Nobody is expecting the supermarkets and massive food companies to operate at a loss. We all know about inflation and that prices regularly go up across the board - meaning that we either have to keep paying more for them or hit a point where we have to stop buying something if it becomes unaffordable and do without it. We just don't like to be deliberately deceived and ripped off at every corner; the additional lies about it supposedly being for our health or convenience or "what consumers have told us they want" just serve to rub salt into the wound.

Yes, that's so annoying - with roll-ons what they've done is taken a chunk out of the bottle, so it's no longer a round bottle, same price, about 1/3 lower content.

I am really tired of seeing this with everything I buy. I would rather pay a higher price for the original size of product. If they want to introduce a smaller size why don't they just do it and keep it alongside the original size? All it means is you end up buying two of everything, wasting packaging and taking up unnecessary space in your cupboards.

Packs of baby wipes have gotten smaller recently. They’ve only taken approximately five wipes out but when I picked them up I knew straight away.

My favourite daily shower gel has shrunk and the bottle seemed half empty this week. It’s a Nivea brand.

Crips. I’ve stopped buying a lot of certain ones as the bags are empty.

Gold Bars are becoming an absolute joke. So small, if they get any smaller they may actually get to the point where a piece of real gold the same weight would cost less.

I bought a Mars Bar 😭