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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

The wikipedia article says that this was specifically the price of a 6.5oz Coke.

The obvious way to raise the price by 50% is to cut the amount by a third, selling 4.33oz Cokes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/coca... suggests that Coca-Cola was comfortable producing bottles in several different sizes.

Now, a 4 1/3 oz Coke is obviously too small to be worth bothering with. But that's also true of a 6 1/2 oz Coke. These sizes seem more like something you dispense with an eyedropper than something you drink. A normal can is 12 oz! Who'd want to buy a six-ounce beverage?

You can address both problems at once by doubling the price and increasing the volume all the way up to 8.67 oz.

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When I was a kid, most sodas had a short can size of 8oz available, good for "lunches" and similar.

Funny story, Coca Cola just announced thin 7.5oz cans last month, to be available in January.

Shrinkflation is often done by phasing out an old size, often by jacking up the price first to aid the sales of the "family size" version on its way out, and then introducing a "New" size that's just a bit smaller.

When I was a kid, there already weren't 8oz cans.

But even if there had been, an 8oz can is 23% bigger than a 6.5oz bottle. 6.5oz is ludicrously small. How did that become a commercial size in the first place?

As far as I can tell, a juice box today is 6.75oz, but you buy them in bulk and they're not actually large enough to be good for a small child's lunch.

Well sugary beverages are a treat, not exactly something you should be encouraging a child to drink a lot of or drink often. That's why that dumb logan paul lunchables ripoff is awful for coming with that large drink.

But not everybody agrees with that kind of statement so here's a better one: Small soft drink cans are really good for single serve cocktails.

A single "cup" of coffee is also 6oz, so it's not exactly an abnormal drink size.

As a glass bottle is strange though. But it tends to feel more "Premium" to people

Soft drink companies cater to literally everyone. They eagerly want to sell to both my friend who drinks several liters a day and my grandma who treats half a can of coke as a nice treat and people like me who used to like soda but now mostly use it for mixing drinks and the occasional treat. That's why they sell multiple different formulas of "Coke without sugar" and why there's so much diversity in just the "Citrus flavored" sub category. I miss Vault and Sierra Mist.

I think it's a generational thing. I used to mow the lawn for an elderly distant cousin, in the hot Florida summer weather. She would invite me in afterward for a snack and a 6.5oz Coca-Cola. I would guzzle mine in a couple of seconds. She would pour half of hers into a glass, over ice, and put the bottle back into the refrigerator.

Wine glasses have also gotten bigger over the years.

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