Here's just the picture:
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Mildly Infuriating
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Damn those are some grippers
It had been at least 5 years since I bought myself a Snickers bar, I bought one about 2 months ago and I laughed my ass off at the shrinkflation size than that I remember, on the one hand you got Mars Inc. upping the price $.75c and shrinking it to whatever. On the OTHER hand, you actually got a reasonable portion to prevent over consuming empty calories/sugar.
Lose lose win win. Balance in the force.
I buy things in lbs or kgs so not much has changed beyond the price per weight of course.
I bet the ingredients are worse now too
It's a weird thing to think about, but in a ship-of-Theseus sort of way a lot of the products we grew up with don't really exist anymore. By that I mean, if it's half the size and made of different ingredients then the Mars Bar as it was introduced has effectively been discontinued. There's just some other, crappier knock-off being sold under the same name now.
Yep, really stretching the bounds of how far name recognition will get them. All of Christie, Mondelez and Nestle products are barely even edible anymore. Forget the shrinkage, it'd be slop if they doubled the size.
Mondelez used to be a champion of quality but quarterly earrings erode all scruples.
That's almost the worst part. Not only is the food ultra-processed now, but it's all engineered to extract every fraction of a penny in margins.
If this goes on, I might as well just inject palm oil straight to my veins.
Back in the dialup days when brands were first coming online I used to have quite a thing for a Toffee Crisp. When I got a bar that was noticeably smaller than the last, I emailed them expecting a reply about market forces or cost of ingredients, but maybe they'd also send a voucher for a free bar or something.
Instead they tried to gaslight me, telling me they'd always been that size and that I must be imagining it. I was so put out by it that, other than a very occasional multi-pack for picnics, I haven't bought a single-serve Toffee Crisp, Mars Bar, Snickers etc since.
When shrinkflation became a recognised term I felt so vindicated! I wish I still had that email so that I could shove it in their faces.
I saw a Curly Wurly in a shop the other day, and they're now a pale imitation of what they were.
This thing is plastic-wrapped, but the thing we can't easily compare is produce. I think it's likely that fruits and vegetables just don't have as much nutritional content as before thanks to aggressive agriculture and worsening environments.
When I was a kid, a pound of coffee was 16 ounces (US). Now it's down to 12. They do it in small steps, so no one realizes it's happening until you see something like this.
... posted a photo on social media of the 62.5g bar alongside one of today's Mars Bars, which is 40g.
"Over the last 35 years, we have made a number of updates to our bar sizes and pack formats to reflect consumer demand, alongside considering wider external factors such as manufacturing costs and the price of cocoa."
I'm sure your customers have been demanding smaller bars that cost more.
"We didn't only shrink the size, we also lowered the quality of ingredients to maximize profits!"
The only people who enjoy Mars bars are shareholders
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Factoring in 35 years of inflation. A $0.50 mars bar in 1991 is $1.21 today. The cost of a Mars bar today is at least $1.50 USD (after converting from UK pounds) and that's being generous.
Companies are greedier than ever and there seems to be no stopping it (meaning because of the oligarchy in the US, Congress will never do a damn thing about it, and certainly the spoiled man-baby's executive branch will do nothing about it), and no end in sight of it.
Fuck them all.
That's the official inflation numbers, which are lies. It's an open secret that in the 90s there was a political movement among the owners to artificially lower reported inflation (see: Boskin Commission for example) because it would boost the economy (on paper) while letting them absorb the gains.
Underreporting by 1-2% a year doesn't seem like much until you do it for several decades. Looking at actual inflation instead of the reported lie, that mars bar is closer to $2 today. Shrinkflation had to happen to keep the bigger con going. Most businesses will, of course, cheat the margins at every instance.
TLDR; shrinkflation is a symptom, not the disease
I would also be surprised if the cost of production, now using cheaper ingredients and far more automation, hadn't also decreased.
I visited a chocolate confection assembly plant. The only things humans do now is random tasks like flip the random bar that for some reason fell odd onto conveyor or shift the skewed box on the pallet, or open the door for a shipment.
The rest was automatic, from the pipes running chocolate throughout the plant to the final gluing and boxing.
The costs are materials, and the factory operation cost, labour is almost nothing. So to increase profit they really can only cheapen or lesson the materials
Oh absolutely. Productivity has increased drastically since the 90s but wages never kept up.
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Does infinite growth mean eternal shrinkflation? Will it ever plateau? Or collapse?
Shrinkflation implies a customer base that would either go elsewhere or without. I'm sure you've seen the efforts to eliminate all competition (establishing trusts, i.e. mega mergers) and weaseling into contracts like government that can't be avoided.
When your audience has no choice, you have no limits.
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so Shrinkflation is normal in most products then?
Food products, probably. In clothes or cars, for example, you can't just make things smaller. With clothes, it seems more like skimpflation - some items definitely had thinner-feeling fabric right after COVID, although it got better again. With cars, they just raise the price, so that's inflation.
If costs go up you have to do one of the three. You're probably not getting angry phone calls because your Mars bar went down in size by 1g, but might if it's more expensive or tastes like shit, so that's the advantage there.
I wish shrinkflation worked on cars and trucks, they just keep getting bigger and bigger.
This would be the perfect time for him to make “I Hate Mars Bars.”
Remember BJ Novak calling out Cadburys blatant advertising lie about the new eggs were not getting smaller. That you were getting bigger.
Start of CadburyGate segment:
https://youtu.be/TlXLCrzpToo?t=172
Fulls interview
IMO the size is irrelevant after how they ruined the filling. And I bet the chocolate shell is also not as good as it used to be. They used to be an automatic buy when i saw them in stores because they are so good. In their current form, I don't understand why people bother getting them at all.
Yep, one of my favourites before, after they changed they were so bad though; somebody working for them offered a store tray full and we just refused.
Ahead of his time on the call out. Now corporations just shrinkflate openly.
Even the font weight shrank
This explains why I only needed to eat 1 Mars bar to feels satisfied back in the days while I now have to eat 3-4 bars.
Not really. That bar was 62.5g while modern ones are 40g. So to offset shrinkflation you'd have to eat about 1.5 modern bars, not 3-4.
I took that as part of the joke.
No jokes, math here
I can eat many, but they never completely fill the void inside.
Also, recipe blogs are a great source of information on shrinkflation. Going to the store to look for a package size that no longer exists is fun.
I clearly remember they were 68 grams when I was a kid, which always weighed on my mind when I had to choose between a Mars bar and the 78 gram Oh Henry
They had a better font back then too.
I'm curious to see how different the ingredient lists are between the two.
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