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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

I wish I had some frozen in time from the 80s/90s. How much did they really get worse vs how much are my kid rose tinted glasses clouding my judgement?

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Your comment reminded of the time 10+ years ago when avid Cadbury Egg enthusiast B.J. Novak was on Conan and talked about how he thought Cadbury Eggs were shrinking and proved it by bringing out a Cadbury Cream egg he had around his house from years prior.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlXLCrzpToo

The biggest reason why Cadbury Eggs suck in the US is because the brand Cadbury is owned by Hersey and they make terrible chocolate. Get some in the UK the next time you're there.

(Yes, the eggs have shrunk)

Hate to break it to you, but since 2010 Cadbury UK has been owned by Mondelez International. The quality of Cadbury in Europe is declining, IMHO. (I never liked US Cadbury)

There is still a massive difference between the chocolates. (Hersey vs now Mondelez) Herseys tastes like wax that's gone bad.

There's a specific reason for that. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hersheys-chocolate-tastes-lik...

My favorite part was the gaslighting done by Cadbury. “It hasn’t gotten smaller, you’ve gotten bigger”

Planet Money did a good episode on shrinkflation: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/07/06/1012409112/bew...

Cancerous MBAs extracting as much profit as possible out of everything. They've perfected the art of re-examining everything and trimming as much fat as their customers can tolerate...and then they do it again.

If you're reading this as an Ivy League business school student, I hope you outlive your kids.

Exactly. I hate the fact that products get cheaper every year and businesses have to compete for me as a customer.

Damn you MBAs!!! <shakes fist at air>

Lol, they are not getting cheaper. For decades, products are getting made with increasingly shittier parts. Big box items like fridges/washers/etc are nowhere near as reliable as our grandparent's were. They break just outside of manufacturer warranties. Selling a washer that lasts for years and years doesn't help YoY growth. Prices stay the same all the while they bilk you right under your nose (https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180510-the-food-you-b...).

But if you want to go ahead and be a ignorant lemming like these companies want you to be, by all means do so; It doesn't change reality.

Well, my grandparents couldn't afford neither a fridge nor a washing machine at all and now you can get one with a week of minimum wage work. The problem is that as a consumer I can't distinguish between a washing machine that is expensive because it's built to last and a washing machine that's expensive because somebody liked a higher profit margin, so the market naturally converges to things that last exactly as long as they have to to avoid lawsuits.

In Japan, Country Ma’am cookies are infamous for magically getting smaller over the years. Shrinkflation is a real thing.

/edit to include cookie name

Pic: https://twitter.com/cicada3301_kig/status/131419416269930905...

Now you made me curious

https://www.reddit.com/r/shrinkflation

I want the specific name of the cookie and name of the country

A college roommate said that his family received a box of Pop Tarts as part of a marketing test before they went on the market. After the first breakfast, they never ate more. That would have been about the time they came out, maybe 1965.

I did eat them, but at an age that I'd eat pretty much anything.

I have to imagine there has been reformulations on many items since the 80s based on cultural trends and food science.

We went through the "Low Fat" period where "fat" was removed and replaced with sugar. Probably less animal fats and more palm oil along the way or fried in peanut oil, etc...

There is a lot of foods that I had as a kid that I don't consume now nor even offer my kids.

I have had them once or twice a year for the last 10 years as a junk food treat on wilderness backpacking trips. Other than the availability of certain flavors I haven’t noticed any change at all since I was a kid.

It must be a recent thing. A little over 3 years ago I had to eat a poptart dinner in a hotel while prepping for a demo. They were exactly what I remembered.

Why have facts when you can use feelings? /s

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