The Shrink-O-Tron Strikes Again: Campbell's Homestyle Soups

Welp, it's back! As if our country's rampant inflation wasn't already bad enough, it seems the dreaded Shrink-O-Tron has struck the soup aisle.

I've been buying various types of Campbell's Homestyle soups for years and years now, and never had cause to complain about them. Until now.

On a recent trip to the grocery, I noticed the entire Homestyle line apparently got a makeover, as the labels had all been updated with a new design.

I also noticed the cans seemed physically different as well, but couldn't quite put my finger on what changed.

When I got home I compared the new cans to the old ones, and saw they've magically gone from 18.6 ounces down to a meager 16.1! Holy crap! It may not seem like it on paper, but that's a huge difference.

Of course as always happens when the Shrink-O-Tron strikes, the price didn't undergo a similar reduction.

When is this crap going to end? When will companies stop with this sneaky underhanded tactic and just raise the prices of their goddamned items? Why can't they just level with us and say, "Look guys, we're very sorry but due to increased production costs we're going to have to raise the price of the cereal by a few cents. We'll try not to do it again for a year or so." If they did that then consumers nationwide would understand and say, "Well that sounds just fine."

But no. Instead they keep the price the same but give us less product. And they surreptitiously put it in a smaller container, hoping we're all too busy worrying about The Marvels' shockingly low box office numbers to notice.

Screw you, Campbell's!

The Shrink-O-Tron Strikes Again: Pringles

So a few days ago I'm lying on the couch snacking, which these days is pretty much my favorite activity. I was eating Cheddar Cheese Pringles potato chips, er, I mean potato crisps, and noticed something odd.

After just a couple handfuls of delicious crisps, the can was already half empty! What gives?

I took a long, hard look at the orangish can, and something about it didn't seem quite right to my eyes...

I dug the previous can of crisps out of the trash and compared it to the new one. Sure enough, my instincts were right— the dreaded Shink-O-Tron has struck my beloved Pringles Cheddar Cheese (and presumably all their other flavors as well!) potato crisps! The new can is a good one half to three quarters of an inch shorter than the old one!

Further investigation revealed that not only has the size of the can shrunk, but so have the contents— from 5.96 ounces down to 5.5. 

Now I will admit that mathematically the loss of .46 ounces may not seem like a huge amount, but remember Pringles are really, really light. It takes quite a few of them to make up an ounce! I wouldn't be surprised to find out there were twenty fewer chips in these new smaller cans.

Naturally even though the bastards at Pringles used the Shrink-O-Tron on the contents of the can, the price remains firmly the same. Hey, who doesn't love paying the same price for less?

Pringles currently sells this comically small, novelty-sized 2.5 ounce "snack size" can of crisps. At the rate they're going, it won't be long before this becomes the regular size for their entire snack line!

When is this crap going to end? When will companies stop with this sneaky, underhanded tactic and just raise the price of the goddamned can? Why can't they just level with us and say, "Look guys, we're very sorry but due to increased production costs we're going to have to raise the price of our potato crisps by a few cents. We'll try not to do it again for a year or so." If they did that then consumers nationwide would understand and say, "Well that sounds just fine."

But no. Instead of raising the price like normal human beings, they surreptitiously roll out a smaller box that holds less product, and then they hope we're all too horrified by the antics of our new "president" that we'll be too rattled to notice. It's sneaky, sleazy and underhanded. It's something Communists would do. Are you all Commies, Pringles Corporation?

As I was writing this post, I remembered something similar happening a few years ago involving Kellogg's and their Crunchy Nut Golden Honey Nut Flakes cereal. In 2013, Kellogg's sneakily reduced the contents of Crunchy Nut cereal from 14.1 ounces down to 13.2, and of course left the price unchanged.

Hmmm... I did a little googling just now, and guess who owns Pringles brand potato crisps? You guessed it, our old friends up in Battle Creek, none other than Kellogg's themselves! I should have known! They just can't stop themselves from shrinking their products, but not their prices.

Well screw you, Kellogg's. Screw you and the horse your batch*t insane, enema-loving founder rode in on!

This Week In Odd Supermarket Sightings

A couple of years ago I went on one of my patented, crowd-pleasing rants about Big Cereal's insidious new practice of surreptitiously shrinking their product boxes while keeping the price the same.

I specifically called out Kellogg's for aiming their Shrink-O-Tron ray at their Crunchy Nut cereal, reducing it by almost a full ounce while leaving the price at an inflated $3.99 or whatever it cost.

Wiseacre that I am, I quipped that if left unchecked, we'd eventually see ridiculously thin boxes of cereal like the one on the right here.

Looks like my little joke was frighteningly prescient. Take a look at this suspiciously narrow box of cereal I spotted in the wild on my latest expedition to the grocery. It's a good two inches narrower than its neighbors on either side. If it gets any narrower it's gonna be hard for it to stand upright without assistance.

I have no doubt that this svelte new box holds significantly less than the previous version did, while costing exactly the same (if not more).

I was right about the boxes getting thinner in the future— I was just wrong about the direction.

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I also recently spotted this at my local grocery— yes, we now live in a world in which it's possible to buy muffin tops, sans the boring, less delicious and disposable bottoms. Just like in the 1997 The Muffin Tops episode of Seinfeld.

All will hail and pay homage to our new prophet and seer, Elaine Benes!

The Incredible Shrinking News

 

Take a look at yesterday's Family Circus comic. Notice anything unusual about it? Besides the fact that for once in its life it's actually kind of funny?

No, it's not Daddy's look of horrified realization at the fact that his own son considers him hopelessly square. Nor is it Little Billy's patented Alex P. Keaton brand sweater set.

It's the newspaper Daddy's reading. Look at it! Just look at the size of that thing! It's easily three times the width of Daddy's head!

I don't know how it is elsewhere in our great Republic, but here in Evansville our newspaper hasn't looked like that for a long time. Ours is positively diminutive. Fun-sized, even. 

It all started back around 2006 or so. Back then we had a normal-sized paper, around 18" x 24" or so. As readership and ad revenue began decreasing, management decided to save money on printing costs by steadily whittling down the size of the newspaper.   

By the time I left my job at the paper... er, I mean shortly after management eliminated the entire graphic design staff, the dimensions of the newspaper were down to a ridiculous looking Hobbit-sized 10.5" x 22". No, that's not a typo-- it's barely 10" wide. Not a whole lot bigger than a comic book!

Note that the price didn't decrease along with the size. Instead it went from the fifty cents it cost when I worked there to the whopping one dollar it costs now. Less for more!

So what's up with that impressively wide anachronistic Family Circus newspaper? At first I thought maybe this was a recycled strip from the 1970s, but a quick look at the signature shows that it's from Jeff Keane, the current writer and artist. So it was drawn recently. 

I can only think of three reasons why Daddy's newspaper is so wide. A: Mommy found a yellowed, vintage newspaper lining a drawer and set it next to the trash and Daddy's so addled with worry about his job that he picked it up and started reading it, not noticing it was thirty years old. B: The newspapers in Pleasanton or Blandville or wherever the hell Family Circus takes place still have a robust readership and haven't yet been forced to shrink, or C: Despite the fact that Jeff Keane has his own daily comic strip, he hasn't seen an actual newspaper for going on ten years now.

The Shrink-O-Tron Strikes Again: Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Cereal

So I stagger bleary-eyed into the kitchen early this morning and start fixing my breakfast. And of course by "fixing my breakfast" I mean "pouring cereal into a bowl" as I sit and shovel it into my mouth while trying to figure out where the hell I am and why I'm up and eating at 6 am.

My favorite cereal this week (it changes on a regular basis) is Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Golden Honey Nut Flakes. There're nuts in every bite, if you can believe the box.

The bad news is that there wasn't quite enough cereal in the old box to fill the bowl. The good news is that I had another box all ready and waiting in the bullpen.

As I poured cereal from the newly opened box, I noticed something... different about it. Something didn't feel quite right.

I immediately dug the old box out of the trash and compared the two. Even at the ungodly hour of 6 am, my instincts were right-- the dreaded Shrink-O-Tron has struck my beloved Crunchy Nut Golden Honey Nut Flakes!

Those brigands at Kellogg's have reduced the contents from 14.1 ounces down to 13.2. Almost an entire ounce less! Son of a...

Naturally Kellogg's only used the Shrink-O-Tron on the contents of the box. They didn't use it on the price of course, which remains firmly the same.

Not only did they reduce the amount of cereal inside, they shrank the box as well. That's the new box on the left in the photo above. It's now visibly narrower than it was just a couple of weeks ago.

It would not surprise me if the box looked like this in a couple of months. 

When is this crap going to end? When will companies stop with this sneaky underhanded tactic and just raise the price of the goddamned box? Why can't they just level with us and say, "Look guys, we're very sorry but due to increased production costs we're going to have to raise the price of the cereal by a few cents. We'll try not to do it again for a year or so." If they did that then consumers nationwide would understand and say, "Well that sounds just fine."

But no. Instead of raising the price they keep it the same and give us less product. And they surreptitiously put it in a smaller box, hoping we're all too enamored with the Royal Baby to notice. It's sneaky, sleazy and underhanded. It's something Communists would do. Are you all Commies up there in Battle Creek, Kellogg's? 

Well screw you, Kellogg's. Screw you and the horse your batch*t insane, enema-loving founder rode in on!