The new Cadbury Creme Egg pack size – what a yolk

I fully approve of the recycling of yokes, Alex. We need a bit of humour to keep us cheerful during the short days of January. No doubt there will be some hard-boiled contributors who will not approve.

Yes. Non-milk fat does not sound appealing, does it?

And if you look carefully Tesco are even claiming they’re on offer, which is odd as they’ve only been available since the start of the year and not the standard 28 days prior to going on offer.

A box of 5 is “only £2.00” and these boxes of 5 (40g eggs) are listed as being 197g. Hmmm

Suffolk and Surrey Trading standards have tweeted that they will not be investigating the recipe change. Nice of Tesco to do the wrong thing, as Trading Standards can instead investigate them.

Do they deep fry creme eggs in Scotland? (This might kill any confection infection).

Very good Malcolm. And it was you that was questioning the need for the new body Food Standards Scotland. Nutrition is within its remit.

Good point, Dave — but surely the price should be reduced along with the quantity?

Likewise the Walnut Whip.

I believe Kraft said they would keep Cadbury jobs in Britain. So much for business ethics. However, I am not a fan of the sweet chocolate they make – there are much nicer bars of chocolate around, and much better assorted chocolates. The only thing I miss from years ago is their roasted almond plain chocolate bar.

Further investigation has located a page about Creme Eggs on the Cadbury website: https://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/Creme-Egg-2392?p=2392

I don’t know why it does not appear in the products section. Perhaps an investeggation is needed.

I was amused by your comment about how much you would have to shell out for gym membership. 🙂

John, “I find when buying anything that comes in a multi-pack that it pays to check the unit price and do a little multiplication”. Where we shop most product shelf price labels show the cost per unit (e.g. 100g) including products on multibuy. You can easily check whether the deal is beneficial – assuming you can make use of a multibuy, of course! As you say it is worth checking.

We’ve all seen instances where a mutibuy is more expensive – by mistake or deception. Whilst the creme egg issue seems a trivial eggzample to use in tackling the shrinking products issue, I did point out earlier that it was cheaper to buy 6 x 2 at Waitrose than a pack of 12 by around £1 (according to their website)

You’re right Malcolm – it is fairly easy to check whether a multi-buy offer is a good one or not. I was trying to draw attention to multi-packs versus separate units. On the shelf label a multi-pack of five packets of Walkers Crisps, for example, is shown as one unit. You have to look at the individual packet -always on a different shelf – and multiply that by five to see how the prices compare but first you have to check that the individual packs and the multi-pack packs contain the same weight of product. If the price per 100 gms is shown in both cases the comparison speaks for itself but this is not always done correctly or at all in some cases. As for the creme eggs, well I’m eggshausted [its thirty miles to Waitrose and back and my feet are killing me].

A good example of the crisps multipak rip-off is at Home Bargains. They used to do a Walkers multipak of 5 x 25g for 99p. I noticed recently that the multipak has now shrunk to 4 x 25g bags, but the price remains the same at 99p.

I think the casing is goo-ier than the filling now – I think they must have reduced the cocolate content in the couverture. I won’t try any more – I’m feeling a bit sick and I should eggsplode.

I think you might be shell-shocked when you discover what you have been missing.

The mechanical properties of chocolate bars and chocolate digestives have been subjected to testing on Instron machines, but sadly I cannot find any published information relating to the coating of Creme Eggs.

I suspect that if the Creme Eggs are stored in a refrigerator prior to attack by human incisors, the process could be less mess but less flavour. Alternatively, you could eat them in the bath.

I hope Mondelez are not ashamed of Cadbury’s history. The creme egg first entered the market as a Fry’s product from the Somerdale factory [at Keynsham] in the early 1920’s when the boss of that subsidiary was one Egbert Cadbury. The Somerdale plant was promptly closed down by Kraft immediately after its take-over of Cadbury.

Perhaps the history could be tweaked to refer to Eggbert Cadbury. 🙂

Were the Somerdale creme eggs ready to eat or did they have to be Fryed?

Kenneth – Dextrose is just another name for glucose. Glucose occurs naturally in plants and we all have it circulating in our blood. What you regard as the real thing – sucrose or table sugar – is much sweeter than glucose.

I think the sugar they put in the Cabury product is deggstrose.

Well done. A pun that probably hasn’t been used hundreds of times before.

On the other hand, we have people being conditioned into chocolat snobbery, which is quite profitable for manufacturers. 🙂

Cadbury’s did recognise that some people are prepared to pay more for chocolate and acquired Green & Black’s, ten years ago.

I enjoy chocolate – mainly plain – with a coffee or chocolate drink. I eat far less of a good quality bar than I would of, say, a sweet milk such as Cadbury or Toblerone. The strong flavour is the attraction, not the sugar.

So do I, but I object to the inflated price. I know that cocoa butter is more expensive than vegetable fat and sugar is cheap, but I can see no reason why better quality chocolate is as expensive as it is.

Coffee beans and ground coffee are not that much more expensive than instant coffees but we are now being encouraged to spend more money by buying expensive coffee pods. In contrast, it is possible to buy top quality beer for little more or even the same price as the mass produced tasteless stuff. That could all change if the public is persuaded to spend more for ‘craft beer’.

We fall for gadgets – either to dress our kitchen (not thinking of the space they take up) or receive as gifts. Coffee capsule machines are exactly that and, like inkjet printers, a means to lock you in to expensive consumables. We buy ground coffee in bags and make it in a cafetiere. Far cheaper than capsules and satisfies our taste. I did have a cheap espresso macine once that frothed the milk but got so fed up keeping it cleaned and descaled reverted to the easy method.

Incidentally, i’ve never understood why we elevate the status of someone who serves coffee with the pretentious name of “barista”. It comes from the Italian for “bartender” – much more appropriate.

I think some people imagine they have a law degree and have spent seven years in chambers doing their articles. The gormless twits who do the job round here just like making a lot of noise with their Gaggias and then try to talk to you over the racket.

I respect a good barista because good coffee is an important tradition, like Creme Eggs. Nestle seems determined to undermine any respect by giving a ‘Barista’s Tip’ on cans of Nescafe Azera INSTANT coffee, a mediocre product compared with their other offerings.

Maybe then tea ladies should be termed brewmasters (or mashmistresses).

There are many things we can blame Kraft for, but I believe it was Mondelez that tinkered with the recipe for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Maybe an eggspert can advise.

Thanks Malcolm. I was happier when TTIP was just a useful reagent in synthetic organic chemistry.

Chocolate has many enthusiasts worldwide so there could be a lot of opposition to this change. Maybe those with an intolerance of cocoa will welcome blends of vegetable fat, sugars, synthetic flavours and synthetic colours. 🙁

Please don’t get me started on the subject of greedy businesses.

I personally think we’d have more success if manufacturers were forced to announce new smaller size across the front of each product they’ve shrunk. And retailers were forced to display the old size and average price over the previous 6 months on the same label in the same size font

It would be obvious what they’ve up to then.

william, a bit like the regulations affecting sale goods. Pack unit price was..(£1.00 / 100g)….. Pack unit price is now..(£1.20 / 100g)…. Good idea.

Perhaps the answer is to show the unit price in larger numbers than the selling price. If we start to pay more attention to unit prices then it does not matter what games the companies play.

But first we need unit prices on everything including the multi-buys.

Trouble is, I forget what the unit prices were on all the products I bought last week. William’s suggestion of including the unit price over a previous period helps overcome that. A bit like showing last year’s insurance premium on your renewal letter.

The suggestions made by you and William would certainly be helpful to shoppers.

I started focusing on unit price a few years ago when I realised the games that supermarkets were playing. I look at the unit price of ground coffee because the pack size varies but at the actual price of instant coffee because that’s sold in 100g jars.

Given that the pictures show Spar products I don’t think Tesco should be cited as responsible. So far as I am aware Tesco operate all their Express and Local format shops directly and not as franchises. I can only assume these meat packs were bought in a local Spar convenience store. Spar does operate as a wholesaler to franchised and independent shops under their branding.

The official requirements for packaged goods are:

Three Packers Rules
These set out 3 rules that packers and importers must comply with:

They provide protection for consumers on short measure.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/packaged-goods-weights-and-measures-regulations

I am opposed to the ‘tolerable negative error’. That had a place when weighing machines were less accurate and could easily become inaccurate. That’s history and modern equipment is much better. The sold weight or volume should represent the minimum contents.

As John says, there’s no point in berating Tesco for underweight Spar products.