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Are you annoyed by the shrinking of Terry’s Chocolate Orange?

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Terry's Chocolate Orange
Profile photo of Lauren Deitz Lauren Deitz Conversation Editor
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Do you recall the shrinking Creme Egg debacle? Well, Mondelez has been meddling once again. This time with the Terry’s Chocolate Orange, which has shrunk by 10% – and fans are outraged.

The 20-segment orange-shaped ball apparently ‘slimmed down’ in May, shrinking from 175g to 157g, but it’s only now that the British public has woken up to the ‘news’.

In fact, people took to social media in their droves to vent about it:

Mondelez, which makes Terry’s Chocolate Orange, explained that the decision to shrink its products was due to rising costs of ingredients.

Shrinking treats

Supposedly shrinking a product will prevent a price rise, but I still can’t help feeling short changed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m outraged by the meddling, but I understand why some people are.

Adrian Blake, the current Guinness World Record holder for the fastest time to eat a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, pointed out that with each shrunken segment it doesn’t only change the eating experience, but it also makes future challenges to his World Record a bit unfair.

Of course, this won’t be of much irritation for some of you… maybe even many of you. In fact, I hadn’t realised how divided people are over this orange-oil infused treat – a quick poll around my team found that a Terry’s Chocolate Orange may be a bit of a Marmite love/hate thing.

But still, it wouldn’t be the first time a manufacturer has meddled with an ol’ favourite.

So, I’m intrigued, are you annoyed by the shrinking Terry’s Chocolate Orange? Or has one of your favourite food products been meddled with?


Comments
75
Guest
HM says:
22 October 2016

Anything that makes us eat less sugar is a good thing

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gothic17 says:
22 October 2016

You either pay more for the same product — inflation — or you pay the same for a smaller product – it’s been called shrinkflation (a term coined by Dr Pippa Malmgren). If people are more angered by shrinkflation it’s because psychologically they feel that keeping the price the same for a smaller product is a con. However, what really matters is value for moeny. If you are proportioally getting as much (in weight) for your pounds and pence with a shrunken product as you would be with a raised price then it makes no difference from a value point of view.

For example if a 100g chocolate bar rises from 50p to 60p, the chcolate now costs 0.6p/gramme instead of 0.5p. But if shrunk to 90 grammes but still at a cost of 50p, it now costs 0.55p/gramme, which is obviously better value than the 60p bar.

So you need to do some maths to work out if you are really being conned financially. I suspect it’s mostly people feeling angry that they have been duped, because we are conditioned to rising prices as a fact of life but not shrinking sizes. It’s a marketing ploy developed for times of austerity. When it comes to unhealthy products (containing added sugar) we will at least be eating less of them!

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Michael P says:
23 October 2016

Ahem, is that what the marketeers think? Isn’t 50p for 90g 50/90 = 0.67p/g? Thank goodness my mobile phone has a calculator.

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malcolm r says:
23 October 2016

60p per 100g for the first. (100/90)*50 = 55.6p for the second. However, things don’t get cheaper in this way, the unit cost gets bigger.

I would have thought the opposite of “inflation” was “deflation” as in a balloon. Your example was deflation. But in real life the cost will go up, so I’m happy to describe it as “inflation” still; no need to invent precocious new words 🙂

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Tim Kyle says:
23 October 2016

KP salted peanuts is another example – their 300 gram packet has been reduced to 270 grams but they charge the same price of £1.99 .

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Fiona C says:
23 October 2016

To answer people’s comments on smaller products helping the obesity crisis, I’d like to point out that it does the opposite. The problem is one of no longer being able to accurately obtain or gauge a sensible portion, which is one of the most important things in aiding weight loss.

As an example, take a chocolate orange. A sensible sized one with satisfyingly large segments and a core provided something that could be shared amongst five or six people and leave all feeling like they’d had a fair sized treat. Now, the smaller pieces, lighter weight and lack of core make it feel mean to split one between five or six people. There might be a call to open a second orange or another type of treat, due to feeling less sated owing to the lighter weight and smaller pieces. However, this might result in consuming more than if the chocolate orange had been left its original size.

This is why the changes in size of foods is unhelpful in weight loss. A person who remembers feeling sated by a particular food item can no longer purchase it. They have to choose between doubling or sizing up, or add something else to the plate to compensate. This is as true of craft butchers’ sausages as it is of chocolate bars.

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John Ward says:
29 October 2016

What has become of cube sugar? I have looked in Tesco and Sainsbury’s to no avail.

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wavechange says:
29 October 2016

I’m sure my local Tesco has the traditional white cubes. Perhaps they also have the non-cubular sugar pieces beloved by restaurants too.

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John Ward says:
29 October 2016

Perhaps I didn’t search extensively enough, but everything I saw was granular.

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wavechange says:
24 October 2017

I had heard that McVities had cut the number of Jaffa Cakes in a packet from 12 to 10. A few weeks ago, Morrisons were selling off the old 12 packs at a discounted price compared with the new packs of 10.

We live in a mad world.

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