The Incredible Shrinking Peanut Butter Jar

Posted by Alex in Food & Drinks, Money & Finance on November 11, 2008 at 3:20 am


In these difficult times, manufacturers don’t want to raise prices but at the same time they face rising costs, so they elect to shrink the product. But they do so sneakily … behold the incredible shrinking peanut butter jar:

… a careful look at the jars of Skippy on the shelves may reveal a surprise. The prices are about the same, but the jars are getting smaller.

They don’t look different in size or shape. But recently, the jars developed a dimple in the bottom that slices the contents to 16.3 ounces from 18 ounces — about 10% less peanut butter.

The only way to know you are buying less is to look at the weight on the label and recognize it’s lighter than before Unilever, owner of the Skippy brand, switched out containers.

Across the supermarket, manufacturers are trimming packages, nipping a half-ounce off that bar of soap, narrowing the width of toilet paper and shrinking the size of ice cream containers.

Often the changes are so subtle that they create "the illusion that you are buying the same amount," explained Frank Luby, a pricing consultant with Simon-Kucher & Partners of Cambridge, Mass.

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(Photo: Steven Senne/AP)


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COMMENT

35 comments to "The Incredible Shrinking Peanut Butter Jar"

  1. Sniperman
    November 11th, 2008 at 3:27 am

    funny how you used to see containers tell you that they “now have 15% more!”, but now with less product they don’t feel we care enough for them to show that.

  2. CelticCatEyes
    November 11th, 2008 at 4:32 am

    That is a clever peanut-butter saving technique! But truthfully, I’ve noticed products getting smaller and have started calculating price-per-unit when it is not provided. What I’ve also learned is that bulk doesn’t always mean cheaper! Check with your calculator before purchasing the bigger package.

  3. darlzwik
    November 11th, 2008 at 5:34 am

    Victory peanut butter!

  4. ted
    November 11th, 2008 at 7:24 am

    They always put the price per unit on items in the stores around here. A little comparison does do wonders.

  5. Rocky Rook
    November 11th, 2008 at 7:31 am

    My brother-in-law works for Kimberly-Clark and he was telling us how the TP industry makes “more” TP by reducing the plys or something similiar so they can save money. Then they hype it up and up the sale price.

  6. Notorious M.O.L.
    November 11th, 2008 at 7:59 am

    I noticed cups of yogurt have gotten a LOT smaller since the summer. Where I shop the price has gone down slightly, but it’s still pretty close to what it was before the downsize.

  7. Scott-O
    November 11th, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Check out the Breyer’s ice cream containers too. I have also seen a few items that have reduced the serving size so that we can get more servings out of a bag of chips in a “Christ with loaves and fishes” kind of way. The good news is the American servings are coming down to the rest of the world’s serving size. Another potential good thing out of this mess is the potential for a reduction in obesity. If you can’t afford the food, ten you won’t eat it. Then again, McDonald’s happy meal sales are up close to 10% so maybe we will just get fatter. This will be interesting.

  8. daileb
    November 11th, 2008 at 8:17 am

    “Price per unit” is my budget’s friend. Always has been. I first noticed this with coffee several years ago.

  9. HemlockEcho
    November 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am

    TheConsumerist has been following this “Grocery Shrink Ray” for a while. They’ve got a good gallery and plenty of examples.

  10. Sannhp
    November 11th, 2008 at 8:50 am

    That is pretty sneaky. It’s like the Poland Spring water jugs. They have a false bottom that goes so deep you can almost unscrew the cap from it.

  11. John Giotta
    November 11th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    Can’t this be viewed as false advertising? Psychologically, they know that consumers don’t read fine print. I’d rather see honest salesmanship rather than dishonest.

  12. Paul in Boca
    November 11th, 2008 at 9:55 am

    How about the “sold by weight, not volume”, so when you open the box it’s only 2/3 full.

  13. MENLOHEAVYWEIGHT
    November 11th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    scandalous, I am going to boycott peanutbutter until they put the old jars back in play, yup from now on nothing but jelly snadwiches for me.

  14. Jeremy
    November 11th, 2008 at 10:39 am

    This is really the only way they can do it, people are so insanely price sensitive.

  15. sigh
    November 11th, 2008 at 10:52 am

    OMG! We Americans might have to eat a bit less! Noooooo!

  16. AJ
    November 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Heh, I wrote about this. Skippy is smaller, but Jif is still at 18 ounces and the price hasn’t gone up anymore than its competition.

    http://www.thingamababy.com/baby/2008/09/foodprices.html

    It pays to compare volume labels now. At one store, I’m almost certain they’re exploiting price jumps by hiking them higher than needed. Case in point, a taco sauce bottle that was 72 cents a year ago jumped to 98 cents in a few months, then 1.42 last month, then a week later to a “sale” price of 1.78. People flat out stopped buying it at 1.78, then 2 weeks later it is back down to 1.42. Me? I stockpiled at 72 cents and am still happy. It has a long shelf life.

  17. nihil
    November 11th, 2008 at 11:48 am

    Oh great now the “Grocery Shrink Ray” blog virus has hit Neatorama too. Shrinking packaging has been the topic on Consumerist for MONTHS now. This isn’t “new” news by any means.

  18. noahstrickland
    November 11th, 2008 at 11:49 am

    mmmmmmmmmmm…………peanut butter…..mmmmmmmmmmmm

  19. edvard
    November 11th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    There’s more label fine-print shenanigans at mouseprint.org

    I also noticed the half-gallon of ice cream I bought yesterday was shy a few ounces.
    Grr…

  20. SenorMysterioso
    November 11th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    i agree with noahstrickland, mmmmmmmmmm

  21. JeffB
    November 11th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Pretty soon we won’t need packaging: you can just go to the store and buy a spoonful (bring your own spoon!) for the same price as you used to pay for 18 oz.

  22. unohav_1
    November 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    The biggest problem I have with all of this is the amount of recipes out there that call for a “can of this” or “package of that” after at least 10 years of shrinking, and a trend that’s likely to continue indefinitely, at some point the recipes will be all but useless the volumes will be off so much.

    I caught Charmin at the time they shrank their toilet paper. They weren’t too sneaky about it at all. Hacked off nearly a quarter inch. There were still larger packages on the shelves next to the shorter ones. Man I’d prefer they shorten the sheets amount than the actual sheet size this forces you to use more. A double cheat! Grrr…

  23. Gauldar
    November 11th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    I would rather then use smaller jars then make it more difficult for me to get the last of the peanut butter out of the bottom.

  24. AJ
    November 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Ignore nihil’s whine. Last I checked, there wasn’t an approved reading list to gain entry to any blog. I stopped reading Consumerist when I decided it was a little too much like John Stossel’s version of reporting.

  25. mallory
    November 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    At first this made me sort of mad, but when I thought about it, I’d rather have the same quality product and just less of it than have Jif or Skippy or whoever use ingredients that will alter the product.

  26. Average Jane
    November 11th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    And that’s part of the reason I make my own peanut butter!

  27. seekshelter
    November 11th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    anyone know anything about hotpockets? a long time ago, they started putting stuff on the package about them containing ‘more filling’ or whatever… but the product size remained the same…it still seemed like the same amount of bread…hmmmmm

  28. seekshelter
    November 11th, 2008 at 6:10 pm

    and… if anyone is actually coming to this site for ‘late breaking news’ is on the wrong site… c’mon.. a few posts above this is the history or route 66…

  29. Zo
    November 11th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    Speaking of packaging…THAT’S really the reason zephyrhills water uses less plastic and makes their bottles smaller, claiming that they’re more “eco-friendly”. I mean, they are, but they’re just using that as an excuse to spend less.

  30. earl
    November 11th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    During the 1960’s, if memory serves, the 1 pound can of coffee turned into 13 oz.(A “pound” of decaf is 11.5 oz.) Shortly thereafter a quart jar of spaghetti sauce became 30 oz.,then 28 oz., and now its only 26 oz. Lately this trend has turned into an epidemic.

  31. DOJ
    November 11th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    As long as the weight or volume printed on the label is accurate, this kind of thing doesn’t bother me too much.
    But changing the serving size on the nutrition label doesn’t change the serving size people eat. So it bothers me when companies change it just to appear lo-fat/lo-cal without any reduction in their customers fat/calorie intake.

  32. Sofar
    November 12th, 2008 at 5:54 am

    I’d rather just pay more.

  33. Scott-O
    November 12th, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Zo- how are the smaller water bottles “more eco friendly” when you are using more plastic to bottle up a gallon of water. For example, a single one gallon bottle of water would use less packaging (i.e. plastic) than would eight, 16 ounce bottles of water. I don’t see how this is “more eco-friendly” unless you are talking of the gas savings I would have by lugging around a thinner wallet.

  34. Brammi
    November 12th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    I like to pretend that there’s fewer Cheetos to a package, and that I’m saving a whopping 100 calories per snarfed-in-a-moment-of-weakness bag.

    Please don’t ask me to prove this. Let me live out my little fantasy.

    (I AM peeved that cans of tuna look mysteriously under-filled, however. And more “tuna-looking”. It’s much more difficult to make into tuna sammiches with their “fresh-looking chunks” as opposed to “pre-cooked fish mush”. BRING BACK THE MUSH!)

  35. anonymous commenter
    November 15th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    I’m convinced fast food places are doing this too. The burgers get smaller and the prices stay the same (or go up).


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