More grocery shrinkage in the store aisles: Dawn advertises “2X More”… yet it dropped two ounces from the bottle.

I’ve covered the topic of grocery shrinkage off and on here on the blog — it’s when manufacturers downsize a product, keeping the price the same.

Earlier this week I was walking through Jewel and spotted a change in the large bottles of Dawn dish detergent on the shelf:

Check out the bottles of Dawn in the center. They’re slightly smaller than the old bottles to the left and right of them — two ounces smaller, in fact. Yet, both “new and improved” bottles have stickers on top deceptively proclaiming that they contain “2X More.”

The new bottles are 18 ounces, while the old were 20 ounces. The question is… does the Dawn in the 20-ounce bottle do the same thing? The bottle does not state that the formula has changed.

The shelf tags under the product already state “18 oz.,” not 20, so if you plan to buy this size Dawn, look for the older, larger bottles. Those bottles contain “10% More” than their newer counterparts.

UPDATE: Based on reader comments from people who wanted to wanted to see the text on the bottle labels (me too — they didn’t photograph well from a distance) I went back to Jewel to take better photos:

The label on the pink pomegranate bottle says it has “2X More” cleaning power “per drop based on cleaning ingredients vs. Non-Ultra Joy.” Note that it’s not comparing itself to a different version of Dawn — it’s comparing itself to a completely different P&G brand.

The label on the white shea butter bottle says it has “2X More” grease cleaning power “per drop based on cleaning ingredients vs. Non-Ultra Dawn.” With this one, at least it’s comparing itself to itself — except that there were no “regular” Dawn bottles on the shelf at all. I can’t remember the last time I saw a bottle of Dawn that wasn’t Ultra Dawn. (UPDATE: A reader notes in the comment that non-Ultra Dawn is available at dollar stores.)

I looked at the ingredients of the 20-ounce versions of each and compared them to the 18-ounce bottles — they’re the same. So, it’s basically a downsize with a little label misdirection to imply the smaller bottle is “2X” better…