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.
It‘s sugary garbage, the less the better.
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.
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
They had a better font back then too.
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
I always had the feeling that they were 56% bigger when I was a kid.
You were just smaller then.
Even the design looks better!!! Why!?
I’m curious to see how different the ingredient lists are between the two.
Even the font got skinnier!
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.
In 1991 those were closer to 30 cents.
I was 12, so I didn’t have 3 cents to rub together, let alone 30. I assumed it was similar to candy bars when I was in high school, which were about $0.50 at the time.
I was only like 9, but I remember that shit. Lol.
Least those were the prices here in the Midwest. Thirtyish cent candy bars, 25 cent bags of small chips, 35 cent cans of coca cola, 59 cents for a 20 ounce. If hamburger was a dollar a pound, it’s because it wasn’t on sale that week.
We’ve had the technology to stop this since 1791. Arguments about maturity could be made that put an industrial version as late as 1917.
That’s still over a century ago.
I would also be surprised if the cost of production, now using cheaper ingredients and far more automation, hadn’t also decreased.
Oh absolutely. Productivity has increased drastically since the 90s but wages never kept up.
Don’t say it in cop voice. Say:
workers engineers and scientists made everything drastically more productive and the pedophiles stole all the gains. We keep letting them.
We’re saying the same thing. The productivity surplus is getting stolen by the Epstein class. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything.
I know. You were trained to say it in a way that contains linguistic ‘outs’ for boot lickers and disattributes the harm. Read back my post and look at the formatting.
The chocolate was thicker too. Easier to peel off and eat separately.
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.
Enshittification is the word of the decade. Century?
If its the word of the millenium Im very curious where it goes…
And using it to describe everything is the enshitification of the word enshitification
enshittification is the new woke
woke and sheeple
Not when literally everything is enshittifiying.
I’d sign for enshittification being the worst thing that happens this century. Considering there are years 73 ahead of us in the century, it might only be the precursor of what will actually be the word of the century.
Probably something like “Omnicide”, the way things are going.
Global warming is by far the worst thing but it leads to the same evil root of corporate greed.
I think fascism is worse. I think Russia invading Ukraine is worse. I think the genocide by Israel of the Palestinians is worse. I think wealth inequality is worse. I think the lack of social safety nets in the US, especially universal heatlh case, is worse.
Enshittification is bad, but I really don’t think it’s the worst thing.
I could be wrong, but I believe the person to whom you replied was indicating that they would be okay with “enshittification” being the word of the century, because there are SO MANY worse things on the horizon or actively festering and spiraling out of control that, if “enshittification” is the worst thing to happen this century, that would be an acceptable outcome. I believe they were using “sign for” as in “to accept, as of a package or parcel”
enshittification is the symptom of the underlying issue
I mean the wealth inequality is sorta what drives it all.
I’ve never actually had one. They haven’t sold these in the US in years.
Mars bars are sold in the US under the name Milky Way. Not to be confused with what’s globally known as Milky Way, which is called 3 Musketeers in the US.
um. the us had mars bars and they were nothing like milky ways. they were closer to snickers but with almonds.
Yeah but Milky Ways are sold under the name Mars in other countries. Whereas Milky Way doesn’t have any of the caramel in other countries.
Yeah those are called Snickers Almond in the US now. Either way, whether they want a UK Mars bar like in the article or they want a pre-2003 US Mars bar, you can just buy the same thing with a different name in the US.
Like soccer vs football 🤣
No mars bars at all?
