Shrinking products certainly gets people whisked up. So when it emerged that one of the nation’s favourites, the Cadbury Creme Egg, had shrunk, it was no surprise people scrambled to complain.
You may remember our investigations into shrinking products. We’ve previously discovered products reducing in size, even though the price stayed the same or went up.
In our 2013 investigation, we found that the size of a Walkers Cheese & Onion crisp packet had shrunk 6% from 34.5g to 32.5g, while the price remained the same at 49p. But the worst offender was Thorntons Mini Caramel Shortcakes. These were £1.40 in Waitrose when the pack contained 12 shortcakes and £1.50 when it shrank to 10.
And now it seems the same is happening to my favourite egg, the Cadbury Creme Egg.
I’m not seeing the sunny side
It’s worth remembering that this isn’t the first time we’ve been subject to change from Cadbury. Four years ago the Cadbury Dairy Milk shrank from 140g to 120g, but still cost 99p.
Now Kraft, the American owner of Cadbury, has taken the eggsecutive decision to reduce the size of a Cadbury Creme Egg pack from six to five eggs. I understand they aren’t real eggs, but when was the last time you saw a box of five eggs?
First #creameggs and now this!! #cremeegggate pic.twitter.com/7ylSgvpyl7
— Steve Higgins (@Higgypop) January 13, 2015
And it seems I wasn’t the only one who got a bit eggsterical about it. Waves of Creme Egg fans cracked and took to social media to raise their concerns, using the Twitter hashtag #cremeegggate. But there’s one saving grace; there’s been a slight reduction in the price of a box from £3.05 to £2.85. Although, that’s still an increase of 7p per egg.
At least they still taste the same, right?
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. It seems as though it’s out with the old and in with the new – there’s been a change in the recipe too. The iconic Dairy Milk shell has been thrown out and replaced with a ‘standard cocoa mix chocolate’ after testing with consumers. A Kraft spokesperson added:
‘The Creme Egg had never been called Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Creme Egg. We have never played on the fact that Dairy Milk was used.’
The good news (well at least for me) is that the new shell apparently gives a sweeter taste, so I’m not going to judge it until I’ve had a taste.
Are you a Creme Egg fan? What do you think about the pack size shrinking? Do you think it’s an underhand way to increase prices? We want simpler pricing so you can easily compare products to see which is the cheapest.
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