Last month, it was the shrinking Suave deodorant.
Today, I stopped at Walgreens to pick up some Dawn Hand Renewal dishwashing liquid. It’s on sale for .99 this week, and with the .75 coupon from the 8/26 PG, it’s a bargain at .24.
But when I set it next to a new bottle that I had under the kitchen sink… the new Dawn is half an ounce smaller.
How much smaller can products get? It’s hard to complain when it’s a good deal, like the Dawn was this week, but still. A quarter’s not buying as much as it used to…
Consumerist.com calls this phenomenon the “Grocery Shrink Ray.”
Ukcouponer says
We are experiencing the exact same thing here, especially with P&G products. We don’t have dawn but we have fairy that is exactly the same. We even have the Fairy with Olay. All the sizes have shrunk in the past year. The P&G laundry products are the worst; with every product from their various UK brands shrinking by at least 2 washes worth. The latest casualty is the Ariel (aka Tide) stain remover powder, the 1kg package has shrunk to 920 or 940g but the price is the same. The same thing has not happened to the Unilever equivalent brands, which does make you wonder…
Frugal Skills says
What happens when they can’t shrink anymore?
1) They start downgrading the quality of the product. Example: Breyer’s has downgraded the quality of their ice cream with so many cheap ingredients that they are no longer legally allowed to call it ice cream. It’s “Frozen Dairy Product” now.
2) They raise the prices.
3) They downgrade the product AND raise prices.
moredhead says
i have several bottles of the reg. that i have had for several months and they are the same as some i just bought.
firegod97 says
I was at Meijer tonight, and a sign caught my eye that said, “New lower price” for the refrigerated Jell-O Pudding. Well, the reason for the lower price is that they are now 4-packs, instead of 6.
Another item that has been shrinking is Purina Dog Chow. Up until about 3 or 4 years ago, the largest bags were 50 pounds for about $16.00. They then shrunk to 44 pounds, and went up to $20.00. In the last month or two, those large bags are now 42 pounds…almost 20% less than 4 years ago, and the price per pound (not including coupon that I of course always use) has gone from $.32 to $.45 to $.47…almost a 50% increase!
CFOof5 says
A few weeks ago I had a free Pillsbury cake mix on my Dominicks Just For You. When I got home and went to put it away I noticed the box I already had in my pantry was 18.9 oz, but the new one is only 15.25 oz. Annoying!
Outlander says
Cereal is ever shrinking too.
But, you wanna laugh? Just the other day I was looking for something in my basement bathroom, which is almost never used, and I noticed one of the old Softsoap pump hand soap bottles there. I kept the old, empty one to refill as needed. Anyway, that was maybe 5,6 maybe even 7 years old. It is the same kind of pump that sells about a $1 or more, has like sea scene on it and it is 7.5 oz.
Well, the old one was 11.75 oz!!
rswehrle says
I remember many years back when Tampax decided to shrink the amount of tampons in a 40 carton box to, I believe it was, 36 per box. They had such a bad customer reaction to it that there was a drastic drop in sales, resulting in the company to once again put 40 tampons in a box.
We can call and email a company, and that might change the shrinkage, but hitting the company where it hurts the most, PROFITS, that is a sure fire way to get their attention and to regain what should have never disappeared in the first place.
In my opinion, the only way to fight the shrinkage is to not purchase the product.
mburke221 says
I am annoyed by all of the shrinkage in our grocery products, but the shrinkage of cake and brownie mixes has really made me angry! I love to bake, and most of my recipes use cake mixes or brownie mixes as a starting point. But I refuse to use these new shrunk products. I decided that I’m moving to scratch recipes from now on. I recently baked a batch of Betty Crocker brownies without realizing that the box size had shrunk. But I figured it out when the brownies came out very thin and as hard as a rock when I baked them as usual in a 9×13 pan. You might notice now that brownie mixes don’t even include instructions for baking in a 9×13 pan any longer. I tried writing a very critical note to Betty Crocker, and the message I received in response was that they would pass my comments along to the appropriate group — like that will really happen! How can we get these companies to understand that consumers don’t want them to shrink their products? Writing to them doesn’t seem to make a difference. If the ingredients truly cost more to the manufacturer, then raise the price. I can understand that. But it’s also becoming very noticeable that companies are not only shrinking their products, but they are also making changes to cheapen the product at the same time that they shrink them — the Breyer’s story is a great example of that (I read the Consumerist too — love that site!).
susieqs2 says
The last time CVS had the spend $30 get $10 ECB deal on tide, the Tide HE versions were smaller in size. Me and my mom were together and she had picked up one of the regular Tide bottles by accident. She said it feels heavier than the ones in her cart, and sure enough the Tide HE bottles were around 40 ounces and the regular ones were around 50 ounces.
splingy says
I was just at my Jewel and Dean’s half and half in the plastic pint/chug has shrunk from 16 ounces to 14 ounces.