OT: Tuna fish

The soft packs seem to go for a premium. My cynical mind (marketers made me that way, politicians too) wonders which process cost more and by how much. Sorta like text messaging where they fill empty message frame with your text and charge you for it.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

7 cup "half gallons" of ice cream have (as I expected when we spotted them starting the short packaging with the 7 cup crap a couple of years ago) shrunk further to 6 cups this year. And that counts the air they whip in.

A pound-size can of coffee now has 11 oz in it. A 3 lb-size can has 33 ounces. They have clearly put some effort into fluffing the product.

3/4 plywood is closer to 5/8. 2x4's are now shrinking below 1.5x3.5

etc...

George, don't wait for the government to fix this. They have been doing this for years with your money!

The working person has to pay taxes out of each and every pay check. Then once a year, after April 15, the Government will send some back to the worker, but is it now worth less than when he paid it.

I guess those of us who live long enough to draw SSA get the reverse of the situation, if we live long enough and get enough COLA increases.

Paul On SSA, but still paying!

On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:34:50 -0400, the infamous John Husvar scrawled the following:

True for all. The machinery, the 4-color printed box, filling, and case boxing all costs far more than the cereal.

One buddy of mine automates small factories and is paid well for it. Another repairs restaurant kitchen appliances and confirmed the cheap Coke/Pepsi/7-Up syrups. I make (let's see...) about 50 12oz cups of coffee out of a $6.99 pound of beans. At a buck a cup, that would bring me a $43 profit; $86 at $2/cup.

-- The doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines. --FLW

don't know about that, we used to get oil by the litre up here in Canada, now is 946ml

I think the only product not going this way is the quart of motor oil. I buy a case of 6 gallons at Costco and they also seem to be the same old gallons.

Paul

I don't know about cereal, but back in the early to mid 1960s, I worked at a camera department, and one of the things that I noticed about the pricing was for boxes of "Kodak Acid Fixer". They came in quart, half gallon, and gallon, priced respectively at $0.35, $0.37, and $0.39.

From the early 1970's I've been using the largest size tissues that Kleenex produces. Back then, it was 60 count of 12" x 12" 3-ply. These were called "Man Sized" or "Queen Sized", depending on the print decoration on the outside of the box. 144 square inches.

Sometime later, it went to 11.5" by 10.9", and the product name shifted to "Extra Large". 125.35 square inches -12.95% size change

Even later, it went to 11.0" by 10.9", still with the same count and plys. 119.9 Square inches. Only -4.34% size change, or a total of

-16.73% size change from the first to the last.

And none of this is marked on the *box*. it is all on the tear-out strip which you are expected to discard when you open it, so once it is open, you lose track of the size.

Well -- those tear-out strips are easy to save, and I have examples of all three sizes. (I tend to use them as bookmarks, and to take notes on them, so I get some use out of them aside from keeping track of what is happening in the sizes.

I suspect that it is about time for another magic shrinkage,

I don't know about those, but they could hardly be worse than the Cokes in the bus terminal in New York City in the early 1960s. They were about the size of a jigger, but once you have emptied it, you discover that the interior is a cone, so you get about 1/3 of what you expected. I wonder what those glasses cost them?

Enjoy, DoN.

Then you're not making it right.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America used to define proper coffee as 55 grams of grounds to a liter of water... but they're giving more leeway now:

7-9 grams for a 5 oz. cup. That gives a range of 21 to 27 (12 oz.) cups per lb.

Only if you had $0 overhead, $0 labor, and anyone was actually willing to buy your half-strength coffee. ;-)

Positive proof that entropy is expanding at an increasing rate!

On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:02:11 -0600, the infamous Steve Ackman scrawled the following:

I'm in serious need of a math refresher course so I got out my Everyday Math Demystified book I recently bought for trig, which I'd forgotten from my most recent school days. ;) I get 4 (not 8) mugs from my 3/4 pots. There, that wasn't very hard.

I make strong coffee, so I must be making it right.

-- The doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines. --FLW

No, it's the equivalent of forcing us to buy multiple containers, *if* the old size was just right. Vendors probably would have preferred to simply raise the price, and they only resort to subterfuge because of irrational consumer backlash. It seems that vendors have determined that the backlash will be less with smaller package sizes. Regardless, a smart consumer knows that it's the price per unit that's important, not the package size. Teach people that simple truism, and get them to practice it, and everybody will be better off.

Good grief! Mandatory package sizes? What if the old package was too big for one's preference? Do we need a second mandate to keep the newer smaller sizes for those who prefer them?

Let's imagine that some grandstanding politician believed he could get ahead by championing your cause, and was able to follow through. What we'd get is either an additional bureaucracy, or current bureaucrats wasting their time on new laws even though they have better things to do. We'd also get higher costs due to the vendors fighting the new rules and/or complying with them. But worst of all, we'd have consumers being encouraged yet again to be pansies by protecting them from even the smallest need to think. Should we really be doing anything that discourages people from using their brains?

Few will agree with me, and I know we're already a long way down a bad road. This short video has a funny take on where we are now.

this occasionally funny movie has a concept that describes where we're going to end up. Wayne

I don't know about now. When I took an advertising class (in the dark ages), the value of material in a dollar's worth of laundry detergent was 23 cents. The packaging was 56 cents. The rest was distribution cost. (Figures ignored both wholesale and retail profits.)

-- Ed Huntress

"Leon Fisk" wrote

Here are a few links to the new Kellogg promo:

Sad to say most people don't "get it" (from reading the comments). They think it is okay, still has the same amount in it. What they don't seem to realize is that Kellogg's has been downsizing the content for sometime already and the box became unwieldy/unstable being only partially filled. Kellogg needed a new idea to short the customer some more...

I quit buying all Kellogg products around 15 years ago. When the CEO publicly stated that they were really the only cereal maker out there and that they could charge customers whatever they wished for a box of cereal...

Several of the companies that they bought to diversify their product line have since failed or been sold off at a loss.

Just noticed today that M&M's are now 12.6 oz (was 16 oz for many years, then 14 oz and now 12.6 oz) for the plain and peanut variety. They are one of my favorites, but I won't be buying them anymore unless I can find them at clearance pricing. Sale price of $2.50 for 12.6 oz doesn't fly. Fuel prices are down, sugar prices are down, milk, eggs... not the time to be raising prices in the eye of consumers.

Sure. How'd you like to be handed that job, as a copy/concept guy in the ad biz? It's not much fun, IMO.

I'm a Quaker Oats guy, myself.

Fortunately for me, I can't eat that stuff. The desire goes away after a few years.

I'll be OK with this downsized packaging if it doesn't start happening with fish. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

You are being cheated. They are selling you illegal US quarts, and very slightly shortchanged at that. You should get 946.3529 ml to a US quart.

Enjoy, DoN.

I think you are. I just looked at a can of Sunkist Tuna on our shelves. 4.5 oz. (I don't eat the stuff myself.)

Eh... that'd be Starkist, and it's sitting on top of a couple of 12 oz. cans, next to a couple of 7.1 oz. Chicken of the Sea pouches.

When Canada went Metric, companies took full advantage of our lack of familiarity. Prices went up, and packaging soon became smaller.

Steve R.

>

Just about everything Kellogg sells is unhealthy junk. The smaller the better.

>>

I friend of mine worked for Kellogg in the summer, when we were both going to college at Mich State. He used to say, "give me some cardboard and control of the malt valve, and I'll make the best corn flakes you ever ate."

-- Ed Huntress