Food/Groceries – Page 84

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Here We Downsize Again 2015 (Part 4)

March 14, 2022December 21, 2015 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Note: The next new Mouse Print* story will appear on January 4th.

We end the year with our final installment of products that have undergone the shrink ray.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Thanks to our ever vigilant Richard G. for catching Gillette deodorant going from a full four ounces to 3.8. And you still can’t carry it on an airline.

*MOUSE PRINT:

We’ve seen the smaller boxes of Kleenex tissues get smaller over the years, but Albert L. found that they shrunk at Costco as well. In this case, each box in the 10-pack is now shy 30 tissues. Put another way, you are missing more than a whole box now from every 10-pack.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Frankie found and took a wonderful picture of Campbell’s Spaghetti, which went from 14-3/4 ounces to 14.2 ounces. Surprisingly, the can is noticeably smaller despite such a small decrease in contents.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Tim B. discovered that Walmart lopped off more than 12% from their Great Value mixed nuts, bringing cans down to an even pound from 18.25 ounces. The price also went up from a reported $7.98 to $8.84. Combined, that is the equivalent of a 26% price increase, making it not such a “Great Value.”

*MOUSE PRINT:

Finally, Richard G. found that Soda Stream, which makes flavor concentrates so you can make your own soda, changed their packaging and a lot more. The old bottle made 50 eight-ounce servings of soda and cost $7.99. The new version only makes 29 glasses, but the price dropped by $2. Fair deal? Not at all. The customer is now getting 40% fewer glasses of soda, but the price only went down by 25%.

If you spot a product that has been downsized, send MrConsumer an email at edgar(at symbol)mouseprint.org . And if you can take a sharp photograph of the old and new product labels, that would be great too.

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Holy Cow, How Wise is Milkwise?

December 14, 2015 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Have you checked out the dairy aisle lately? There are all these newfangled milk products on the shelf, all claiming in one way or another to be better than plain old milk.

One such product in New England stores is Hood (brand) Milkwise.

It’s got one-third the sugar, almost half the calories, and 50 percent more calcium than even reduced fat milk. How did they do that… put the cows on a low fat and low carb diet?

The answer is in the fine print.

*MOUSE PRINT:

They watered it down — water is now the first ingredient — plus they added calcium and sugar. That is why it is called a “milk beverage” instead of milk. This product is reminiscent of Trop50, the “orange juice beverage” that claimed 50% fewer calories because it is basically orange juice diluted with a lot of water.

But the Milkwise label makes it seem so healthy. How can this be? The trick is that they left out one key attribute of milk in the comparison — protein. We’ve taken the liberty of filling in the blanks.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Milkwise only has one-quarter the protein of regular milk. Expressed the other way, regular milk has four times the protein of Milkwise.

Maybe it should be called Milk-not-so-wise.

Thanks to Dr. W who was driving along the highway in Saugus, Massachusetts and saw a Milkwise billboard with a mother and child. She thought the ad was suggesting that this was a healthier milk product.

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Lime-A-Way: Money Back (Not) Guaranteed

November 2, 2015 by Edgar (aka MrConsumer)

Recently, MrConsumer needed to clean some pavers that had a cloudy white stain on them. At the supermarket, he was attracted to Lime-A-Way bottles because of a sticker promising a full price rebate just to try the product. He could not read the terms of the rebate because the sticker was really a plastic envelope and one would have to tear along the perforation lines to remove the sticker and reveal the details that were inside.

After coming home, MrConsumer broke the seal to discover the rebate had actually expired about two months earlier. Drats.

*MOUSE PRINT:

MrConsumer then checked the Lime-A-Way website, and right there on the homepage was a money back guarantee if you were not satisfied with the product’s performance.

Since in fact it did nothing to remove the cloudy white stain from the pavers, MrConsumer enclosed the receipt and the guarantee form from their website and sent it off to the company. A few weeks later, a surprise came in the mail:

It said “Return to Sender. Offer Expired. Box Closed.”

In fact, according to the form that was mailed in, the money back guarantee didn’t expire until December 31, 2015.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Two refund attempts… two failures. So we wrote to the PR folks at Reckitt Benckiser to ask why they didn’t put the expiration date of the “try me” rebate on the outside of the package so shoppers could see it in the store, and how is it that their P.O. box to accept refund requests through the end of the year was closed. Their UK headquarters forwarded our request to their US office, and no further response was received from the company. However, curiously, the Lime-A-Way website has been changed, and no longer has a money back guarantee.