Downsizing / Shrinkflation

Here are products that have shrunken in size as a sneaky way for manufacturers to pass on a hidden price increase.

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Detergent and Cookies Downsized

The latest products to downsize have keep the same old package, but decided to put less product inside.

P&G has just downsized its largest containers of Cascade dishwasher detergent ActionPacs.

*MOUSE PRINT:

In surprisingly large print, the company decreased the number of loads you get from each container from 110 to 105. The trouble is that most consumers have not memorized the number of loads that each size container of Cascade provides, so they are not likely to recognize they are now getting less for the same price.

Also downsizing but keeping the package the same is Mrs. Freshley’s.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Here, instead of getting 12 Buddy Bars in each box (six packages of two), you now get only eight (four packages of two) — a decrease of one-third! Most people, including MrConsumer would not have noticed this because the boxes are the exact same size. Mrs. Freshley’s indicated that in fact they make both eight bar and 12 bar products, but that it is the retailer who decides which to carry. In this case, it was Dollar Tree which apparently decided it could make more money selling the eight pack for a dollar.

Thanks to Cathy B. for spotting the Mrs. Freshley’s change. She also notes that Mrs. Freshley’s Swiss Rolls are being cut similarly, but the box is smaller.

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Bucking the Trend, This Company Upsized its Products

Since Mouse Print* began in 2006, we have featured product after product that has been downsized. Manufacturers remove an ounce here and there, and for paper products, they shave off fractions of an inch in width or length, or reduce the number of sheets provided.

Now comes Ken’s Steak House salad dressing. Looking at the picture on the left, the bottle on the left appears bigger than the one on the right, and one might conclude that they too have just downsized. Surprise, the opposite is true.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Ken’s actually added an ounce of dressing to their traditional eight ounce bottle when they made the switch from glass to plastic bottles. This was a deliberate move by this family-run company to buck the downsizing trend.

Too bad they missed the opportunity to tout the fact on the bottle that they are now giving the consumer more at the same old price. (They had limited space, and couldn’t figure out how to best communicate that fact according to a spokesperson for the company.) In the comments below, feel free to offer your suggestions.

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Paper Products Downsized

With higher prices for oil and raw materials, paper products companies are downsizing their products, again. Here are two more examples:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Going from 216 to 200 tissues per box is a reduction of almost seven and half percent. The clever folks at P&G don’t put the count anywhere but on the perforated strip that you remove when opening the box, so you have no way of double-checking from purchase to purchase how many tissues were in your last box. (Thanks to Rodney G. for the tip about Puffs.)

*MOUSE PRINT:

While it is true that no one is likely to miss that extra 1/8th of an inch, the maker of Dixie plates must have thought the savings were significant enough to invest money in the retooling and repackaging. One-eight of an inch times millions of plates adds up.

It is curious, however, that while the plates’ diameter in inches has shrunk, the diameter in centimeters appears to have increased from 21-cm to 21.5-cm. Whoever said the metric system made more sense?

Few people are likely to have caught these changes because they were done so inconspicuously.