Snacking just got more expensive. Various brands of popular snacks like potato chips and tortilla chips have just been downsized. In these cases, the price remained the same, but the new packages contain less. In other words, it is a hidden increase. On the bright side, you also get fewer calories per package.

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Here, regular Lay’s potato chips were reduced by half an ounce. While a half ounce may seem negligible, multiply that by millions of bags, and Frito-Lay has saved a fortune.

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Here too, the company lopped-off half an ounce per bag. And they did the same thing to some of their other brands and varieties.

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What is particularly deceptive about the downsizing of both Lay’s and Doritos is that the net weight statement is virtually at the bottom of the bag, just above the seam. When these bags sit on the store shelf, the bottom is compressed, and the net weight cannot be seen. Even picking up the bag, often the seam gets folded over the net weight statement, at least partially obscuring it. Could this just be careless placement of the disclosure by Frito-Lay or something more sinister? And what about that light colored font on the new Doritos bag? It is almost illegible.

Frito-Lay did not respond to a request to comment on their recent downsizing. Thanks to Richard G. for the tip on the chips.

Lastly, not to be outdone, Kellogg’s has downsized its chips too.

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For the product on the right, there’s another example of a company using a non-contrasting typeface to disclose the net weight of the product.

Thanks to Christian M. for the Pringles tip.

Last fall, Boston Market sent out an email offer to people on their mailing list promising a free rotisserie chicken. Of course, once you open the email, you learn that you have to buy a “family meal” in order to get it.

Worse, the coupon was geographically limited:

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Considering those stores are 3000 miles away from MrConsumer… thanks, but no thanks.

Two days later, the company realized its blunder and sent out an apology, including a coupon:

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The coupon requires “no purchase”, but the fine print indicates that you cannot use it if you buy one of their heavily discounted meals. In other words, buy nothing and dessert is on us, but buy something cheap, and like the soup Nazi might say, no dessert for you. Huh?

Clearly, the company merely copied over its standard exclusion language for other coupons without thinking. This is the most minor of issues, but there are other times when standard language in other companies’ coupons can be used wrong-headedly against a customer by an over-protective cashier.

Confession: the following items downsized in 2012, but we did not get a chance to feature them all on these pages last year.

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The old reliable 18 ounce bottle of Kraft barbecue sauce dropped in size by one-half an ounce. Thanks to John O. for the tip on Kraft.

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We lost a quarter of an ounce in the large size Old Spice deodorant sticks. The top of the stick says “Same Palm Tree, New Look,” but they somehow omitted that they were also giving the customer less. Should we say that stinks?

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Following the lead of other big brands of orange juice, Minute Maid also downsized its punch drinks by a full five ounces. Less sugar for the kids, just as well.

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This is not what you think. In a twist, the makers of Hefty bags UPsized their 44-count tall kitchen bags to 50-count, but only at Target (and they kept the price the same).

As we always say, downsizing is a sneaky way to raise the price of products because you are getting less for your money, and you may not realize it unless you scrutinize the fine print on the package .

When product manufacturers want to cut costs or increase their profits, they can do one of several things. Many don’t want to raise prices because of the consumer backlash and possible reduction in sales. So, many choose to downsize the product as we have demonstrated here. Others take a less conventional approach and reformulate their product so that it is cheaper to produce and distribute.

Breyers downsized their half-gallons of ice cream first to 56 ounces and then again to 48 ounces around 2008.

Now they have taken a new tack. They are reformulating many of their flavors.

Take a look at “old” Breyer’s Vanilla Fudge Twirl ice cream:

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Now take a look at the new package of “Vanilla Fudge Twirl”:

The new one is no longer even called “ice cream” but is now “frozen dairy dessert.” It is no longer “all natural” either. And the vanilla ice cream claim has been replaced with a “vanilla flavor claim.”

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Under federal law, to be called “ice cream”, a product must meet a certain standard of identity, which in this case requires that there be at least 10% milk fat in the product. That generally would come from the cream in the product. If the product does not meet the federal “recipe” for ice cream, it has to be called something else. In this case, they are calling it frozen dairy dessert which has no federal definition (other than it does not meet the standards to be called ice cream.)

Here are the ingredients statements from both vanilla fudge twirl packages:

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The old real ice cream product has milk and cream as the first two ingredients. The new version has cream listed as fourth (with milk, sugar and corn syrup predominating over cream). The new product also has half the fat as the old. While dieters might rejoice, the calories are nearly the same, and the taste is not likely to match the original.

The Breyers’ website spins why they changed many of their ice cream flavors to “frozen dairy dessert”:

Since 1866, Breyers products have consistently delivered high-quality ingredients, great flavors and smooth creaminess that our fans love, and we remain committed to that Pledge. Our Ice Cream and new Frozen Dairy Dessert varieties continue to use fresh milk, cream and sugar. What distinguishes our Frozen Dairy Dessert from our Ice Cream is that it’s blended in a whole new way to create a smoother texture.

Hmmm. They seem to have left out the fact that using less cream saves the company a lot of money.

All three major drugstore chains (CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens) now advertise sale items only for loyalty cardholders. No card, no savings. Unlike the old days, when you saw Bufferin on sale for $1.99 and actually paid $1.99 for it, now you pay maybe $2.99 (at CVS and Rite Aid) but a get a $1 coupon on your register receipt good only toward a future purchase. It is like getting an IOU for the savings they promised, rather than them giving it to you on the spot. Some would say it is almost like a pyramid scheme.

There are several problems from a consumer standpoint with this scheme. You don’t get instant savings, you are forced to come back again to use up the coupons, you might lose the coupons and thus lose the savings, the coupons expire in 14 days (Rite Aid) and 30 days (CVS), failing to use the coupons means in essence you will have often paid regular price for the advertised items, you may be forced to buy something you don’t want to use up the value of the coupons, and if you buy another sale item with the coupons you will be issued more coupons that will trigger the whole process again.

MrConsumer hates shopping at CVS and Rite Aid for those very reasons. When he does, he places back to back orders at the checkout, with items that will spit out coupons first. He then uses those very coupons immediately on his second order of non-coupon generating items. It a complete pain not just for the customer, but for the checkout clerk as well.

Not able to resist a Black Friday sale even at the drugstore, MrConsumer went to Rite Aid to buy some Russell Stover chocolates and some butter cookies. The chocolates came with a $3 coupon back from Rite Aid and the cookies were a straight $1.69 a tin. The plan was to first buy the candy in one transaction, and then use the $3 coupon toward the $3.39 for two cans of cookies in a second transaction.

As MrConsumer got closer to the checkout he overhead the cashier telling a customer some disturbing news. She said that their coupons are no longer printed out on the bottom of the sales receipt, but rather loaded automatically onto the customer’s loyalty card. Smart idea, I thought. Then she said that the value of the coupons loaded onto the card would not be available until the next day.

What? You are going to make me make a second trip back to the store just to use that damn $3 coupon on the butter cookies?

Upon protesting this change of policy, the manager on duty who happened to be nearby said that anyone can opt-out of the “load2card” program and they can do it right at the register.

Sure enough, they could, they did, and it worked.

Checking to see if people who sign up online for “load2card” are told about the opt-out provision, there it was in the fine print:

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By opting out, coupons will continue to print at the register and back-to-back transactions will still be possible.

The worst part about “load2card” for shoppers is this: with no coupons to shove into your wallet or pin onto your refrigerator, you are more likely to forget to use up those dollars before they expire in 14 days. How clever of those execs at Rite Aid to make the coupons out of site, out of mind. To be fair, however, they do offer an app for your smartphone to remind you what coupons are still loaded on your card.