I appear to have reached that age where I object to companies cutting the size of products. It was only a day ago that I would shrug at how Mars Bars are a fraction of the size they once were, but now I\u2019m Mr Grump.<\/p>\n
Because butter has been hit by it. I can no longer stand idly by and, you know, get over it while I get on with my life, now that a pat of butter is the same width and height as it was, but getting on for a third less depth. The height and width fool you on supermarket shelves, but once you’ve picked it up, you know. You know it’s less. You know the company was trying to trick you.<\/p>\n
And you know damn well that the price has not been cut to match.<\/p>\n
Funny story. In 1990, the Hershey chocolate bar was introduced in America and priced at a nickel, five cents, or about 4p in the UK — and it stayed at a nickel until November 1969. They kept the price but, as I learned recently from the Acquired podcast<\/a>, they coped with inflation and rising costs by shrinking the bar. By November 1969, that Hershey bar was just about exactly half the weight it originally was.<\/p>\n Now, the company caved and doubled the price to 10 cents. That’s not enough to cover the cost of the bar, and especially not since to mollify buyers, the accompanied the price rise with a return to the original size of the bar. So now people are not thinking, well, it’s more expensive but they held on for 70 years, they’re thinking they’ve been progressively more duped for seven decades.<\/p>\n Whereas I’m thinking, this means we have always had this kind of shrinking and I should just live with it. I am mollified by the Hershey story because I love the detail behind things you don’t usually think of. I am mollified by the fact that I’ve noticed the shrinking so the global corporate conspiracy has failed to fool me.<\/p>\n But then I’m also mollified over shrinkage because if I ever had a Hershey bar craving, I dare say I could stretch to buying two of them.<\/p>\n What I can’t do, I learned this week, was buy a deep pan pizza from Pizza Hut ever again. The sole reason I liked those pizzas was this deep pan style and I thought the chain had made a mistake, but they haven’t. Deep pan is gone.<\/p>\n And I realise now that it was in an excellent episode of “Press Gang” — “The Week and Pizza” by Steven Moffat — that I first saw such a thing as a deep pan Pizza Hut pizza. I presume that was excessive product placement, but it was also effective because for thirty years now I’ve been buying it.<\/p>\n So I’m perusable by advertising, but not fooled by shrinkage, and I can’t get a decent pizza any more. I just do not know how I’m going to keep my overweight up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I appear to have reached that age where I object to companies cutting the size of products. It was only … Continue reading