Dairy Milk bars shrink in size

by Donna Ferguson | 02 February 2011 | 20 comments

Chocolate bars are shrinking. Find out why!

If you’ve gone out to buy a Dairy Milk chocolate bar today, and noticed that it seems smaller, the good news is you don’t need glasses.

The bad news is, the bar really has got smaller. It’s now a couple of chunks shorter, so your 99p buys you 120g of chocolate instead of the 140g it did before. That’s right, despite the drop in size, the price has stayed exactly the same.

It’s a phenomenon known in the US as ‘grocery shrink ray’. It’s so common over there that consumerist.com has an entire page devoted to examples of products which have been shrunk in this way.

Of course, Cadbury is hardly the first chocolate producer to do this in the UK. In fact, next time you go to the supermarket, play a game to try to figure out which confectionary products have been shrunk since you last bought them.

Here are some examples where sizes have shrunk - and prices haven’t!

Maltesers

The lighter way to enjoy chocolate? A box of Maltesers has dropped in size from 140g to 120g.

Mars

Another way to make your day, um, worse. As we reported on our sister site lovemoney.com, the size of a Mars barshrank from 62.5g to 58g.

Snickers

Handles your hunger... badly. Like Mars, Snickers bars have shrunk by 7.2%.

Toblerone

Tantalising slender triangles – just fewer of them. Toblerone is one triangle shorter than it used to be nowadays at Poundland. And guess what? They’re still selling it for £1.

Yorkie

It’s not for girls... who like being ripped off. Once 70g, Yorkie bars are now a lean 64.5g. And guess what? The price went up by 3p last year.

Why are they doing this?

The chocolate companies say the increase in VAT this year and the rising cost of cocoa – which recently hit a 33-year high - is to blame. Either prices went up, or the chocolate had to shrink.

But Cadburys and Nestle have already increased the prices of Kit Kat, Yorkie, Wispa and Dairy Milk by 7%. That’s twice the rate of inflation.

At least a rise in price is straightforward. You know what you are getting, and can make an informed decision about whether you want to pay more for the same piece of chocolate, or buy something smaller at a cheaper price.

Shrinking the size of a chocolate bar or taking the most expensive chocolates from tubs of Heroes – as Bourneville did a couple of years ago – is a lot more sneaky.

You are far less likely to notice this. A fact borne out by the way that, when companies increase the sizes of their products, they know they need to make it really obvious: “New! Bigger pack!” they scream at you on the packaging, hoping you’ll buy it because it’s better value for money.

Ever seen a “Sorry! Smaller pack!” splashed across anything? No? Well you can bet you won’t see one on Dairy Milk bars either.

In their defence, the size of the bar is published on the label. But can you imagine the queues at the newsagents if every time anyone bought a bar of chocolate, they checked the label carefully to make sure it was the same size as last week? Who memorises the sizes of bars anyway?

Even if I had the time or the inclination, I’m sure I would forget and get sucked into their trap.

But more than anything, what really makes me mad is the fact that, as well as shrinking their Dairy Milk chocolate bars, Cadbury has actually put prices up. The price of a Dairy Milk bar today is 30% more than it cost three years ago, following massive price hikes year after year.

What do you think?

Here at lovefood.com, we want to know what you think. Is this move by Cadbury a massive rip-off or fair play in this economic climate and you just need to keep your wits about you? Have you noticed any examples of grocery shrink ray that we have left out? Let us know using the comments box below!