We continue this week spotlighting some of the various products that were reduced in size toward the end of last year.
| Krusteaz Buttermilk Pancake Mix |
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Gene B. found a great example of a product — Krusteaz pancake mix — that was substantially downsized by over 20% without any reduction in price. And the packages head-on look the same. Thanks also to David S. who spotted the change.
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Hungry Jack Syrup |
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Well, if you get fewer pancakes out of your pancake mix, you also need less syrup. So the makers of Hungry Jack put the old fellow on a diet it seems by reducing their large bottles by 13% — from 27.6 ounces down to 24.
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Post Premier Protein Cereal |
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The attack on breakfast products continues with several varieties of Post protein cereals recently shrinking. The 11-ounce boxes became just 9 ounces, but to look at them side-by-side, they look the same size. Thanks to Jeff W. for sending the picture of the chocolate variety.
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Flamingo Estate Shampoo |
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Gabriel C. found that a favorite and very expensive shampoo ($50 bottle) had downsized from almost 17 ounces to only 12 ounces. And almost unbelievably, the price stayed the same. Were they really not making enough profit that they had to shrink the $50 bottle???
*MOUSE PRINT:
| Hershey’s Snack Size Chocolate |
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Grant in Iowa discovered that Hershey’s snack size chocolate lost almost two ounces per bag, going from 19.8 ounces down to 18 ounces.
*MOUSE PRINT:
If you find a product that has recently been downsized, please take a picture of the old and new version side-by-side if possible and send it to: Edgar(at symbol)MousePrint.org . Thanks.
If you ask Hersheys about the change, I bet they say, “Oh, we didn’t downsize the Jumbo Bag size, what you’re looking at is the slightly smaller Jumbo Pack size.”
Does Krusteaz actually make fewer servings? Or is this like laundry detergent where they miraculously make less do more without changing the recipe?
I doubt the recipe says to add more milk to make it go further… (I do not have these products at home).
Cannot show a photo but Dominos Pizza has shrunk the medium size pizza by a considerable amount. They also changed the box design to a solid blue to disguise the shrinkage. Price stays the same.
Jim… I just looked at the nutrition guide for Domino’s Pizza from January 2026 compared to January 2025 compared to April 2024.
A medium NY style cheese pizza was 12″ then and now. And the amount of cheese, dough, sauce remained the same.
The Krusteaz photo was most telling, as it shows the unit pricing — going from 2.00 to 2.53/lb. Train yourself on these unit prices for the items you buy, then you don’t need to do the exhausting work of comparing , since scan price and package size don’t matter.
Think of how you buy gasoline, apples, chicken, etc. —the unit pricing on these makes your purchase decisions so easy. Now you can apply that to everything in your cart — no more time-wasting examinations to see that they’ve shaved a couple ounces off your can of coffee or whatever. And you save a boat load of time.
It would be interesting to see some of these items you highlighted over the years from past years as well. I bet many of them have been reduced before, some probably many times.
Dan… We have 20 years of archived stories in Mouse Print*. You can simply use the search field and enter, for example, Charmin … and you see all the previous stories we have done about it (along with pictures of packages and the size they were).
While most of these shrinked products are sold at the same price as the previous larger size we don’t really know how much they already went up in the past few years thanks to inflation before they shrank. I think if we were able to factor that and the shrinkage together the true price increase per ounce or pound would be staggering.
I wish there were a law or regulation that said when a product is downsized, the packaging must be downsized in proportion to the loss of product.
A bill in Congress actually proposed that!
What I hate seeing is when packages look to be the same size but once you open it, you see more air and space in the package.
we will all lose weight,