Shrinkflation slowed a little in early 2025, but now seems to be picking up a bit again. Here are some more products that have been downsized over the past six months or so.
| Simply Orange Orange Juice |
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Except for store brand orange juice which in some cases is still 64 ounces, brand name OJ has had a steady decline in size going from 64 oz. to 59 oz. to 52 oz. and now to 46 oz. The latest casualty is Simply Orange whose carafes are now just 46 ounces. And in MrConsumer’s Stop & Shop, the price actually went UP 10 cents to $4.89! To look at the bottles head-on, it is hard to see how you lost a full glass of OJ in each one. You may be able to find old and new bottles side-by-side in your local supermarket right now.
*MOUSE PRINT:
Thanks to Richard G. for spotting this change.
| Ruffles |
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Potato chip bags have been downsized for decades. The latest example is Ruffles whose bags are now down to 8.5 ounces from nine ounces. But rest assured, you’ll still get the same amount of air or perhaps a bit more in each bag.
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Tide |
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Another category where there has been a lot of resizing is laundry detergents. The latest trend seems to be to keep the number of loads you get the same, but with fewer ounces of the product.
*MOUSE PRINT:
In this case, big bottles of Tide shrank by 14 ounces, but you still supposedly could get 100 itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie loads of laundry out of every bottle. The difference is usually explained by having some amount of water removed from the formulation. That makes the stuff more concentrated so you can use a little less in each wash load. Raise your hand if you actually do use less!
*MOUSE PRINT:
Less popular these days is powdered detergent, but that doesn’t exempt them from being downsized. Here, 25 ounces was removed from each box, but you still theoretically are able to get 143 loads out of it. The question becomes what unnecessary ingredient have they removed from this dry product that doesn’t affect its cleaning ability? It certainly is not water. Thanks to Brendan B. for spotting this change at Costco.
| Bounty Paper Towels |
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Paper products is another big category where we find shrinkflation. In this case, earlier this year, P&G downsized Bounty. In this case, their triple rolls went for 135 sheets down to 123. Thanks to both Richard G. and Brendan B. for spotting this.
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Crystal Light |
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With summer not too far away, don’t expect your Crystal Light packages to make as many bottles of lemonade as before. The old six-pack has become a four-pack.
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Pure Leaf Tea |
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Another summertime beverage also is now giving you less per bottle — Pure Leaf tea. The half gallon bottles lost five ounces and are now just 59 ounces. But the bottles are about the same height. One trick they used was making the cap larger. They also had to taper the bottle, it appears. Thanks to Denise H. for this submission.
CORRECTION: Both these sizes still exist. The larger one is a shelf-stable product in the grocery/beverages section, while the smaller one is sold in the refrigerated case, unchanged. Thanks to Kevin M. for the clarification.
*MOUSE PRINT:
If you spot a product that was downsized, please provide details and try to submit a picture showing the old and new side-by-side as you see above to Edgar (at symbol) MousePrint.org. Thanks.
The Bounty’s an interesting one.
1. A “triple” roll of 123 sheets equates to three regular roles. Thus, a regular roll is only 41 sheets.
2. And these are “select-a-size” sheets, which are 1/2 or less than size of a normal paper towel. So, are we to believe that a regular roll has only 20 full-size sheets? They really should stop calling these “triple” rolls, as a “triple” roll of today is about the size of a regular roll before all the downsizing.
3. Has anybody looked at the size of the sheets? I’d bet a dollar the sheet size is smaller today that they were when select-a-size first hit the market.
Yes I use Bounty triples select a size and I knew just from picking up the 6 pack at the store that it was smaller.
I called them out on it and they offered no apologies and even asked for my personal info but offered no coupon in the end and I was so furious when I hung up.
There will continue to be an infinite supply of these shrinking examples. Literally every packaged item in your basket needs to be scrutinized every time you shop. The manufacturers know that’s just too exhausting for the average shopper; there’s NO way to beat them at the game.
EXCEPT for the smartest shoppers who purchase by unit pricing. Then scan price or package size doesn’t matter, and the procurement process is seamless for those who are price conscious. It really doesn’t take long at all to educate yourself on your own ”unit price to buy at”, and then you avoid all the packaging nonsense.
Notice i said ‘packaged’ item in your basket, See how easy it is to buy broccoli, or beans or other produce? You got it– they’re unit priced. Like gasoline, which is unit priced, purchase decisions are easy-peasy. That same philosophy can apply to your whole shopping cart! Imagine your freedom when scan price and package size DO NOT MATTER– save money AND time!
True, but there are some flies in that ointment. For one, errors in unit pricing on shelf tags are common, if not rampant.
For two, the units are (in my opinion, deliberately) not standardized. Example, ground coffee #1 is unit priced per pound, while ground coffee #2 is priced per ounce, and yet a third one is priced per count because it contains 4 smaller packets inside.
And a third problem is with products for which unit pricing isn’t meaningful, because there’s no industry standard for the unit. Paper products are the one I can think of now, but there must be others. Sheet size, ply, and thickness are all highly variable from brand to brand, and even within a brand. I think paper products like paper towels and bath tissue should be required to be labeled with their total weight.
Yeah, haven’t found errors to be common or rampant at all. Maybe I’m just lucky my store has accurate tags.
In any event, everyone has a calculator in their pocket to easily rectify the infrequent discrepancies.
The nonstandard units ‘problem’ mentioned seem to be a very low percentage of items in my cart. Again, maybe I’m just lucky. It’s definitely just a matter of ‘retraining’ yourself to ignore scan price and package amounts…
I agree. Consumers who focus on the unit price rather than the selling price are more likely to be aware of shrinkflation which I like to define as being an increase in the unit price caused partially or entirely due to a change in the quantity in the package.
Much of the unit pricing in the USA is too difficult for consumers to use due to the use of inconsistent units of measure for different items of the same or similar products. This is partly due to the USA still using imperial not metric measurements. It is much less of a problem in countries which use metric. For example in the EU the main units are kg and litre. And some countries also allow per wash load for laundry detergents, which I like. However the. USA could still improve and continue using imperial.
Here’s what’s happening with the detergent, and it has to do with the relatively new laundry product on the market; laundry detergent sheets. These sheets are very small amounts of dessicated laundry detergent, essentially the same thing as laundry detergent powder, just pressed into sheets. It’s a more expensive form of detergent, so to make it seem cheaper, they sell you a small amount of detergent but tell you it washes the same amount of laundry as a customary dose of your typical conventional detergent.
How they get away with this is they take advantage of a little-known fact that most laundry will come clean with far less detergent than directed by typical laundry detergent instructions. For small loads that are very lightly soiled, as little as a teaspoon of regular liquid detergent can do the job.
The giveaway that laundry sheets are “cheating” on how many loads per package is that the directions on these laundry sheets say you may need to use more than one sheet if your clothes are very dirty. In other words, they are selling you only enough detergent for lightly soiled laundry, but charging you for full strength. You don’t see that with conventional detergents, which directions still usually prescribe a single amount based on load size alone, that is enough detergent to clean even very dirty clothes.
So what I predicted would happen, and what I think is happening now, is that the conventional detergent makers have caught on to the laundry sheets’ trick, and are now just prescribing a smaller amount of detergent per load, since it will still usually work. Maybe 10% less detergent still gets all but the very, very dirtiest clothes clean, and they know most consumers will never notice any difference.
(I never believed the theory that water is being removed to make te load count equivalent, because I am certain if that were the case, it would be used in the marketing. You would see “Now ultra concentrated!” or something like that on the label.)
How far can they push this? My next prediction is that the conventional detergents will eventually halve or quarter the amount of detergent directed, and reduce the amount of product accordingly, while inflating the number of loads claimed. Then the loads number will have the caveat that dirtier clothes may need two portions instead of one, the way laundry detergent sheets do.
On the oj, the new bottle appears narrower.
Over the weekend, I saw a Bounty ad for triple layer towels. How much more confusion these will add to the the great paper towel mystery. Will they count each section to be a towel or will they be considered three sheets?
They are three layer towels for sure. One main question here is how much longer can one Triple layer sheet last over a double layer one.
The triple layer package comes in less sheets per roll than the double for sure.
Coca-Cola Company should be forced to change the label to Simply Less Orange….
Simply Smaller
I wish they had just never changed OJ bottles. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we stop selling water in half liters and stop selling milk in gallon jugs.
The only reprieve I have on toilet paper and paper towels is that Costco generally doesn’t downsize and instead just changes the price. The last time they changed the size they announced it with signs around the product.
I noticed the change with Bounty almost immediately while shopping at Walmart. The logo had changed, and both the old and new packages were on the shelf side by side. The new one had 13 fewer sheets. Thanks to following your blog for years, I instinctively checked the fine print—and sure enough, there it was. I wish I had taken a photo and sent it in; that was nearly two months ago.
As for Powder Tide, I’ve been using it since the days of the full-cup formula. The new version claims to be more concentrated, but in reality, it’s not. The new box, has a label that says to use just one ounce (about two tablespoons), but that’s simply not enough to clean a medium-sized load. I know because I tried — and things came out smelling like they were not even washed. I’m actually using slightly more than I did before it became “more concentrated” just to get the same results.
I can’t speak to Liquid Tide, but I wanted to share my experience. I’m just so fed up with these companies screwing us over more and more.
Pure Leaf has always had both sizes — the larger one on the shelf, the smaller one in the cooler. And yes, with those two caps.