If it’s pasta (which it usually is), you can also check the weight instead of how full it is as some shapes/cuts of the dough are longer and don’t take up that much space horizontally. The average box is 1 pound
Chip bags require a certain amount of air in them for pressure. If they filled them up to the top you'd have a lot more crushed chips and stale chips. They're not just being cheap. Other things like pasta boxes there's no excuse other than maybe a serving requirement but here in Canada I've never seen a package of pasta that's less than 75% filled.
@@AIHumanEquality They only require 20% air, though. They just put a lot more than they need to save money. Which, ironically results in more broken chips. We did an experiment in middle school about it and after 25% air by volume the chips broke more than with only 10% air.
@@pjwhite6829 I haven't noticed many chip bags with a lot of air in them but I also have started buying the round cylinders cause they're cheaper for the same amount as a bag and can be recycled. I'm in Canada not America too.
It's the dishonesty that bothers me the most. They aren't going to fool anyone more then once. It's just taking up more shelf space and wasting packaging. In the long run, if they would just make smaller packages, we would save gas from having less Trucks deliver stuff. It's bad for the environment, and bad for everyone. These businesses are behaving like children trying to get away with mischief.
New laws: - If you reduce the size, weight, or volume of a product, you must also reduce the price of said product proportionally to the reduction in size/ weight/volume - You must clearly and honestly indicate any and all changes in normal size/weight/volume on your packaging
This... wouldn't work because Capitalism is built on the premise that both the producer and the customer decide the price of the product. The seller can overprice the product as long as they can get away with it because people are buying it, that's their freedom, and the customer is free to not buy the product, hence denying the seller profits. Shrinking the size while keeping the same price of something is basically just selling the same amount but chainging the price so that it's higher. That's not only legal, but a completely normal part of our society and would be almost impossible to lawfully dictate without introducing socialism. It's not on the companies not to do stuff like this, it's on US, the CUSTOMERS to keep stuff like this from happening with our voice and decisions. I don't know if the US has any customer protection laws, they should, because here in Europe most people like this would get punished for predatory marketing.
In Germany, and I think the entire EU, it's illegal to make your product worse. As in, you can increase the price and pretend it's inflation but you can't replace an item with a smaller one for the same price
But you're allowed to hide worsening the products if you put "improved/new recipe" on the package. Every time is see that damn writing I know I'm going to hate it. 😅 Only thing that's ever improving is the profit margin.
and what i find funny. he is saying big americans while he is showing a picture of a normale dr oetkers pizza salami. You can easily tell the difference in the crust. so why is he lying lol
and no you can definitely make your product worse. you dont even have to say it on the packaging. i have seen multiple items go down in size without you being told so. cough hagelslag, choco pasta, cheese, store bought fries, choco milk powder. (Netherlands) but i agree new recipe means most of the time it is not as good as it used to be. looking at you dr oetkers tonno pizza. the onion ruins it :(
You can't pretend it's inflation in the EU if it's not actually inflation. That's false marketing and is a regulation breach. You can raise the price and just not say anything. That is allowed. You don't need a reason to raise your prices but lying about the reason is a regulation violation. Just to be clear. That is a general international standard. Not many places don't have that kind of marketing law for very obvious reasons.
@@majkenagerbo2952 No it's not. I'm Danish. Shrinkflation is not a thing here bruh. Denmark operates on a very regulated free market system. All of Scandinavia does. If you tried to pull shrinkflation you'd lose business fast in Scandinavia because of how the market is structured.
5:39 I work as a grocery store cashier, and yesterday I had a customer buying one of those goldfish boxes. As I was scanning it and watching it go toward the bagging area, I thought ‘huh, that looks a little smaller than what I’m used to eating’. I just thought I was going crazy. Thank you, Emkay, for helping me realize that I’m not insane.
I work at an Arby’s and I can confirm that the wagyu burger is not 100% wagyu beef. I don’t remember the exact specifics but it’s more like around the 40-60% actually wagyu beef. While the rest is just straight regular ground beef. I always hated the wagyu burgers because 1) it’s straight up false advertising. 2) the prep for it was disgusting because the burgers are boiled in bags to cook them. 3) you had to fry it to basically finish the cooking process, which only made them extremely greasy.
This, antiwork and that distopia subreddit, are just so depressing. i can only imagine how it must be for Boobin to narrate them. Warm hugs to you, our birb. 💙
If it makes you feel better, Robin said last time he covered ABoringDystopia that he wants that subreddit to stop being chosen. Not necessarily because of his opinion on it, but because he doesn't want people following and viewing a subreddit like it.
Yes? If your wondering if I'm american, I'm not. I just think america has become such a cesspool of degeneracy (Sure there are still good people there) That it will inevitably fall. @@echothefreak9396
Seeing people's faces on the internet after being faceless makes me realize I suck at guessing what people ACTUALLY look like in relation to their voices.
Not really faceless cause he's actually had a youtube channel where he actively shows his face lol. Its called "xycron" Me finding robin origin story: I actually found out about it because i looked up xycron on youtube instead of twitter. Then i quickly found out this guy was not only a voice actor. But the voice of foxy in many youtube videos amd actively does voices on piemations channel. They are friends, and i think roommates? Found him about a year ago i think.
I'm poor but I'm more mad about products shrinking than getting more expensive TEMPORARY because you can always adjust prices, it's a lil harder to adjust packages. When I see a smaller package I just KNOW that i will never get the same value as before, they'll just keep making it pricier. Fuck wars and fuck inflation. Oh, and fuck big corporations. Without lube.
Many grocery stores operate on a 'trust' system in which they trust that the shoppers will pay for their food. But since they've introduced the self-checkout isles, it's almost as if you could walk out with some additional items. They're expecting us to be the cashier, which technically they would have to train their staff, but since they've not trained us' we can simply claim oh I forgot, oh I didn't know. If they want us to not notice things going smaller, we're just not going to notice some items sometimes slip by.
At my grocery store, a staff member stands there in the self-checkout aisle and watches everyone. They say they're there in case people need help. They're actually there to make sure people aren't stealing. @@purpl3grape
If they want us to not notice food items getting smaller, we're just not going to notice some items sometimes slip by when we take the self-checkout counter. Oh yea, imagine that self-checkout is a norm wtf. But to be fair, we weren't 'trained' to be a cashier, so we sometimes we don't know how duplicate items suddenly end up in our bag. They want us not to pay attention to these small things? Fine for them especially it goes both ways.
Turkish people: *laughs in sadness* For those that dont know turkey(türkiye) has so much infilation sometimes prices change daily Example: Choclate:5tl 1 month later Choclate:6tl ):
Well, you can DEFINITELY stop them with a little information and some materials. If someone had, for example, the addresses of the factory, the CEO, and maybe some of the shareholders, and then that individual showed up at said addresses to donate a few bags of fertilizer, some bottles of a few specific household chemicals, some DIY electrical switch kits, and a couple of prepaid Walmart cellphones, the heads of the parent corporation would probably be so grateful that they'd start listening to their customers quite quickly thereafter! Of course, that's just one purely theoretical example proposed merely as a topic of discussion.
8:12 By the way, someone crunched the numbers and Spurlock actually lied about how much McDonald's food he was ordering, based on how many calories he was consuming. He didn't follow the rules he laid out at the start of the video and ordered more food than he said he would. There's a response to the movie called Fat Head which runs the numbers.
"Fat Head" is an amazing documentary, and highly educational (and funny). also, unlike spurlock, he actually cited his sources and put up his meal plans and such.
Tip with paper towels: There’s usually a less expensive brand that compares itself to bounty. It’s the same thing without the bounty designs on the paper towels. As long as you get the “deluxe” (or whatever they call it, sometimes premium) it’s all paying for the brand name.
store brands are often just as good. depends on the product. and in many cases, i actually think they use the brand manufacturer and license out the product. for ex: Albertsons store brand cola tastes EXACTLY like pepsi. I am 100% convinced it actually IS pepsi, just repackaged.
lol Five Guys is crazy expensive since most things are made fresh... For a hotdog it ranges from about $5-$7 alone... you can go to Costco and get like a $2 gigantic hot dog for that (granted I understand they're sold at a loss intentionally), or literally buy a pack of 10 hot dogs at the store for less. Outside of maybe McDonalds fast food is really an awful value.
1:09 Oreo was LITERALLY SUED for their double stuff oreos not being actually double the stuffing, so they had to rename them "mega stuff" instead so as not to be false advertising. And now they're just... ignoring that? Can someone do the research, and possibly sue them again?
Here's another reason I heard this is happening. Everybody asks 'why don't they make the packages smaller?' Well, companies pay grocery chains for shelf space. So if the box is still big it's taking up the same ammount of space as before but it's less product inside it they have to produce. And the larger the size they can reasonably get on the shelves the more they can limit customers other buying options. They litterally keep the big boxes to push out the competition and get the same ammount of money for less product. Mark my words if this keeps up one day wer'll have just a handful of brands with massive boxes and barely anything inside. We need to stop this @$$-hole practice ASAP.
It's the dishonesty that bothers me. You aren't going to fool anyone more then once. Just raise the price for a FULL tube of Pringles, OR make smaller tubes. Don't waste all that extra packaging, much of which is bad for the environment, and then charge us extra to cover the cost of your extra waste.
if i knew how to read and speak japanese i would of moved to japan years ago and it’s not because of anime do you know how cheap yet diverse and healthy the food is compared to food in america it’s absolutely insane i been watching this channel japaneats this one video the man got this pre made bento box for not even 2 dollars and it had more food then any individual meal i have found in all of america
I haven't wanted to move to Japan because of anime since I was like 10, the place just genuinely seems amazing.. even though they definitely have a _lot_ of flaws. but that's just every country, really. even the most amazing places don't have the best laws and government.
The irony is that I'd only move there if I was rich or could work on my own schedule because the work culture over there is absolutely not compatible with the one over here (Germany).
With the laughing cow one, maybe they made the box bigger and didn't shrink the cheese? I remember having trouble getting the cheese out without having to spill everything out or smash the cheese, it can be an important change that design to solve a problem
I remember years ago when our favorite toilet paper brand decided to make the rolls 1/4" narrower, our holders are built into the cabinets and only have small protrusions to hold it, well the narrower rolls would not stay in the holder. Switched TP brands to solve it but in a few years all the brands did the same thing, made millions of TP holders worthless since they would not hold the rolls anymore. About 5 years go by and many of the top brands did it again but this time offered a free adapter so you could use it on the old holders.
Keep in mind that box store choose their package size from the manufacturers. The store chooses what size to offer to hit the price point that they would like to maintain. Walmart and the Dollar General are big culprits for ordering the smaller size containers of things and offer them at the same price as other stores do for the larger ones. It's how they can make it look like they are charging less. Also, you can't do the price match guarantee that they have because they only accept same size items for comparison. The Pure Leaf example they gave is one of those. They sell the small bottles in stores but the bigger bottles in gas stations and vending machines.
This is either CEOs going "I want more money, how do I do that?" Or what happened with Tobblerone where they were actually worried people would care if they have to raise their prices. Everyone knows about inflation, if a company needs to raise prices it's a lot better than lowering quality.
The reason for why the shrinkflation is so common in the UK now is because: Us gents across the pond here in Great Britain are in rather a spot of bother. Our country is sailing down the river in quite the jiffy. And so so.
I lived in Denmark and Canada and I've never seen packages that leave one spot empty in anything. Is that a thing that really happens? Also the reason there's so much air in chip bags is for pressure not because they're being cheap. The chips last longer with sealed air in them and get crushed less. It would cost less than an extra penny to fill 100 bags up to the top so it's not about saving costs.
11:04 i took a HACCP course (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) and the woman teaching us used McDonald's as an example when she talked about cleaning the workplace. Apparently here (Portugal) they take cleaning the restaurants and the kitchens REALY good. Also you can see the kitchen in the McDonald's restaurants and the people working there, dont know if its the same everywhere.
You better be sure on that Cadbury drink that they raised the price for more than 50 grams. It calls price carousel. Lowering the content down in tiny little steps (selling you less product for your money) before they return to the old regular size but when put 12,5 % more in it they will raise the price for 20 % or something. Before you know you're paying an additional 30 % more in like 5 years, it's bonkers.
I'm waiting for the day when companies are charging $80 for empty packaging. I mean there's literally no other trajectory...whats their alternate plan for the next 50 years if they're already shrinking things by this much this quickly
Here in Brazil whenever a company reduces the size of a product they are required to clearly state the original size and the amount of reduction on the package. It makes a lot easier to understand the impact of inflation. You guys should be fighting for similar laws.
The Rexona deodorant didn't change quantity, just its packaging. Both are 50ml; if anything the new packaging just shows there was too much air in the old packaging.
The real reason companies shrink their products rather than raise their prices is actually pretty simple. You notice how pretty much every single item in these videos are items you buy often, like food or cleaning supplies? Because if you raise the price, sure you get a little more, but people buy the same amount. If you shrink it, then people who are used to the normal amount are more likely to buy two to satisfy that gap. Therefore, instead of a slight increase, they make almost twice as much. That's why you never see appliances or cars or tvs in these videos
I was thinking this. The biggest reason they take this aproach is because its less noticable then a price increase so they can earn more money and most customers are none the wiser. Its also the same reason why most products are priced with .99 at the end, because it looks cheaper then a full dollar/euro even tough it gets rounded upwards anyway. I actually learned about that trick in a marketing class at school. Another way shops trick customers is putting something "on sale" without actually changing the price. Customers think its cheaper but nope its actually the same price as before the sale, but the shop wont tell you that
4:26 Coles and Woolworths have recently been increasing prices of a lot of prices and even with specials it wouldn't reach its former price. For Example, A 10-pack of Lemonade used to cost $5.50. last year, they doubled it to around $11. As far as I know, they haven't discounted it to more than 40% off other than in 2-for-1 deals. What is maddening is that they abandoned their slogan "Down, Down", meaning prices were down. To combat the anger they made their own brands which are 80% of the price but don't feel the same as the other brands, like they are copying the brands for profit. This year they made a big profit off of this. Doesn't help that "convenience stores", places where things are supposed to be cheap and accessible, are more expensive than items in supermarkets.
I like seeing Robin's face, hearing his voice, but I hear him so differently when I see his face. I'm not surprised, as thats what its like for others, guess I can fit in. Still love ya stuff Robin :)
The reason this won’t change anytime soon is; companies are only leaving violence as an answer. And they know we won’t hunt them down and set them on fire in front of their families like we used to. Because now we got too many comforts that we’d lose
Bigger reason is that companies in America have become a corporate oligarchy where they agree to work together to screw people over rather than compete. There's plenty of Americans who do not live in comfort. Almost half the country is struggling if not more than that.
Here's an example of shrinkflation I've never seen anyone discuss before: Entenmann's Little Bites. When I was a kid, there were 5 in the bag. Now there are only 4
0:15 Wow I remember these kinds of cheese, us Vietnamese people call them "Con Bò Cười" (which is "Laughing Cow" in Vietnamese) and I used to eat these things A LOT!
I live in Canada and I've never once been to a fast food place that gives you less fries than the container/package overflowing and spilling fries out. Is that not how they do it everywhere?
1:40 I was confused at first but I think the justication for those extra 50g is because there's now significantly less effort on the box art, and it's not just the wording
7:24 you are supposed to add boiling water to it, and then it mixes with the powder and boils the pasta and it becomes much bigger, like 70% of the cup
I suspect the Ikea candles with concave base burn up nearly all of the wax, while with the traditional shape you always end up with a few percent sitting at the bottom after the wick is consumed.
i still say seeing his face and then hearing robin's voice is such a trip because you so don't imagine him like that, which is not an insult bro doing good for his age
at 4:27, not only is it one less bar, the bars are also smaller. Old pack: 132g, 6 bars, 132/6 = 22g per bar New pack: 100g, 5 bars, 100/5 = 20g per bar Double shrinkflation
The annoying thing to me isn't even the fact taht they shrink it its that they tried to hide it or trick you into thinking its same amount. If you have to cut production costs I'd rather you be upfront with me about the drop in size or the increase in price rather than trying to be some magician who make your audience not notice the drop in size.
13:41 It's been proven people are more likely to pay the same price for less, than to pay more for the same amount as before. Partly because sometimes they don't notice it, sometimes they have a set amount to spend on a specific thing.(even if that specific thing is now less for the same price) Otherwise companies wouldn't bother with shrinkflation and would just put the price of things up, keeping the amount the same.
The unfortunate reality is that technically, many (but not all) instances of shrinkflation, even in this video, actually DO have you paying less for less product. The number doesn't change, but the value does. For example, for each US dollar something cost to purchase pre-pandemic, you would need to spend $1.18, so something that cost $5 now costs closer to $6. Or to invert it, if a company wants something to cost $5 now, they'd have to give no more than $4.22 worth of pre-pandemic product. Large companies take advantage of this to make every excuse to cut costs further, but many businesses simply try to match inflation. If they had to advertise their unit price more boldly, this might fix some of the issues, as then people would more easily be able to see how much they're actually paying per unit. Also, in regards to packaging, due to how package manufacturing works, it can cost a LOT of money to rework packaging production, so it's cheaper to have a bit of extra packaging rather than change the factories every time their product amount is less than the package's maximum capacity. Again, not an excuse for large companies leaving insane excess space, but it's just how the cost works. If factories were fined based on hitting a certain product:packaging ratio, it would completely eliminate this issue. For clarity, things like the wake-up wrap, the croissants, and the "BIG" pasta and sauce cup in this video are absolutely unforgivable amounts of shrinkflation. Sorry for the rant. Knowing some of what goes into back-end processing and pricing makes some of these examples (i.e. everything that changed at the same rate as inflation) annoy me. And the ones where companies go overboard annoys me for an entirely different reason.
There should be laws about the percentage of a container that should be filled with usable product. For obvious reasons it can't be 100%, but maybe 80-90 would be reasonable.
as far as i know a lot of places have those. the EU has laws about it. i'm not able to find one at the moment that's specific about food products but i was able to find one about packages in general, and in the EU a packages may contain at most 40% emptiness/filler. the rest has to be product. and i think at least some parts of the US have a max amount of empty space that is allowed
Omg. I was literally eating double stuff oreos last night and thinking the exact same thing. I'm convinced that the whole "thins" craze was a marketing scheme to surreptitiously shrink the size of the regular cookies. Everything is becoming smaller and more expensive. It would be hilarious if it wasn't freaking real!
I've said it before. But in Italy you can get a bag of mixed lettuce already washed ready to garnish for what? 1-2 euros for about 200 grams? That's Italy baby! And you can find the cheaper prices also in more expensive supermarkets.
I've only seen one company to my memory that has done this right In NZ we have a chocolate company called Whittakers. They had a block of chocolate with macadamias in it. It has been discontinued at present time. When they discontinued it they put out a press statement to explain what was going on 1) the cost of the nuts had increased massively 2) if they were to keep the bar at the same size with the same amount of nuts they would have to drastically increase the price, which they didn't think was fair. This left them with few options. reduce the amount of nuts reduce the size of the bar discontinue the bar. They reasoned that reducing the amount of nuts to keep the price in line would result in so few nuts it would seem disingenuous to call it the macadamia block If they reduced the size, it would be shrinkflation, and they didn't see an end to the price increase of the nuts, so they didn't want to charge a block price for a small bar. This left discontinuing it as the most sensible option. They did add that if people thought it was a bad idea, they were open to being contacted, but they wanted to be honest about what was happening. I miss that block, but also worked directly with macadamias, and the price of those went up further and plateaued higher. I can't see that block being reintroduced any time soon.
17:38 You used to be able to buy a full bottle of laundry detergent at the dollar store for $1, now you get to buy what looks like a sampler bottle for $1.25. the cap is so small that you have to pour about 5 capfuls in order to equal to one capful of the old laundry detergent. Everything is tiny, especially the food. and now tv dinners are $3 each and they are super small and not so healthy with all the sodium and pasta cause they all have pasta!
Kroger store brand instant oatmeal was 10 packs per box for both regular and less sugar varieties, same price. Some months ago the picture on the packaging changed. Now the boxes are the same size and price, but regular is still 10 per box and less sugar is 8 per box. The picture change makes the quantity less noticeable.
4:24 did anyone else notice with the LCM's choc chip it's not just a whole bar less, but the bars also got smaller? 100 grams divided by 5 bars is 20 grams a bar. So if it had 6 bars of 20 grams the total weight was 120 grams. But in the 6 pack it was 132 grams total. I know that's just like 2 grams per bar, but still
I really like how you are constantly poking fun of yourself, i'm not sure if you seriously lack confidence or you just have that kind of humor, but either way you seem like a fun dude to me
On Bounty paper towels, I've noticed that they don't dry things well anymore... and they often leave "dog ears" (corners of the towels) on when you tear one off now too, like the cheapo paper towels do.
It wasn't just a disembodied voice the whole time. I want to give the man a hug. Because god dammit, Robin looks so huggable that it is frustrating.
Ikr, he looks like a big teddy bear!
He looks like a normal adult, and I like his haircut.
@@MatthewConnellan-xc3oj yeah but the personality thepart really adds to the likability :3 have a good day ❤
It’s the hoodie that’s making him huggable. I hope when I get mine, I’ll be equally huggable.
You should see his other photos because he either looks like he wants to murder me or kidnap my firstborn son, and I'm not even married
Optimist: "The cup is half-full"
Pessimist: "The cup is half-empty"
Engineer: "That container is twice as large as required"
Pissimist: "The cup is piss"
A normal ass person: the answer depends on if it was emptied to that point or filled. If filled then its half full, if emptied then half empty.
mathematician: the cup is 50% full
Physicist: the cup is completely full
Company: "The cup is advertised as completely full so we can scam customers"
I give props to Robin for that merch ad 🫡
B O O B I N
Same
Cool profile pic
boobin da bestie ❤
@@stuffie5175 mine or?-
Protip: Always always ALWAYS turn pasta boxes, chip bags, etc with windows sideways so you can see how filled it ACTUALLY is.
If it’s pasta (which it usually is), you can also check the weight instead of how full it is as some shapes/cuts of the dough are longer and don’t take up that much space horizontally. The average box is 1 pound
Chip bags require a certain amount of air in them for pressure. If they filled them up to the top you'd have a lot more crushed chips and stale chips. They're not just being cheap.
Other things like pasta boxes there's no excuse other than maybe a serving requirement but here in Canada I've never seen a package of pasta that's less than 75% filled.
@@AIHumanEquality They only require 20% air, though. They just put a lot more than they need to save money. Which, ironically results in more broken chips. We did an experiment in middle school about it and after 25% air by volume the chips broke more than with only 10% air.
@@pjwhite6829 I haven't noticed many chip bags with a lot of air in them but I also have started buying the round cylinders cause they're cheaper for the same amount as a bag and can be recycled. I'm in Canada not America too.
It's the dishonesty that bothers me the most. They aren't going to fool anyone more then once. It's just taking up more shelf space and wasting packaging. In the long run, if they would just make smaller packages, we would save gas from having less Trucks deliver stuff. It's bad for the environment, and bad for everyone. These businesses are behaving like children trying to get away with mischief.
New laws:
- If you reduce the size, weight, or volume of a
product, you must also reduce the price of said
product proportionally to the reduction in size/
weight/volume
- You must clearly and honestly indicate any and
all changes in normal size/weight/volume on
your packaging
But that would never get through, think of all the billionaires that will STARVE by losing an extra 2 dollars per sale
This... wouldn't work because Capitalism is built on the premise that both the producer and the customer decide the price of the product. The seller can overprice the product as long as they can get away with it because people are buying it, that's their freedom, and the customer is free to not buy the product, hence denying the seller profits. Shrinking the size while keeping the same price of something is basically just selling the same amount but chainging the price so that it's higher. That's not only legal, but a completely normal part of our society and would be almost impossible to lawfully dictate without introducing socialism.
It's not on the companies not to do stuff like this, it's on US, the CUSTOMERS to keep stuff like this from happening with our voice and decisions. I don't know if the US has any customer protection laws, they should, because here in Europe most people like this would get punished for predatory marketing.
@@TytheGhostikr we gotta think about the billionaires. They're people too you know
@@d4n737 I don't care, introduce socialism.
The part of the candle that is missing always seemed to never get burned anyways
In Germany, and I think the entire EU, it's illegal to make your product worse. As in, you can increase the price and pretend it's inflation but you can't replace an item with a smaller one for the same price
But you're allowed to hide worsening the products if you put "improved/new recipe" on the package.
Every time is see that damn writing I know I'm going to hate it. 😅
Only thing that's ever improving is the profit margin.
and what i find funny. he is saying big americans while he is showing a picture of a normale dr oetkers pizza salami. You can easily tell the difference in the crust. so why is he lying lol
and no you can definitely make your product worse. you dont even have to say it on the packaging. i have seen multiple items go down in size without you being told so. cough hagelslag, choco pasta, cheese, store bought fries, choco milk powder. (Netherlands) but i agree new recipe means most of the time it is not as good as it used to be. looking at you dr oetkers tonno pizza. the onion ruins it :(
You can't pretend it's inflation in the EU if it's not actually inflation. That's false marketing and is a regulation breach. You can raise the price and just not say anything. That is allowed. You don't need a reason to raise your prices but lying about the reason is a regulation violation. Just to be clear. That is a general international standard. Not many places don't have that kind of marketing law for very obvious reasons.
@@majkenagerbo2952 No it's not. I'm Danish. Shrinkflation is not a thing here bruh. Denmark operates on a very regulated free market system. All of Scandinavia does. If you tried to pull shrinkflation you'd lose business fast in Scandinavia because of how the market is structured.
5:39
I work as a grocery store cashier, and yesterday I had a customer buying one of those goldfish boxes. As I was scanning it and watching it go toward the bagging area, I thought ‘huh, that looks a little smaller than what I’m used to eating’. I just thought I was going crazy. Thank you, Emkay, for helping me realize that I’m not insane.
I work at an Arby’s and I can confirm that the wagyu burger is not 100% wagyu beef. I don’t remember the exact specifics but it’s more like around the 40-60% actually wagyu beef. While the rest is just straight regular ground beef. I always hated the wagyu burgers because 1) it’s straight up false advertising. 2) the prep for it was disgusting because the burgers are boiled in bags to cook them. 3) you had to fry it to basically finish the cooking process, which only made them extremely greasy.
According to a add I saw for them they are 51% wagyu and 49% generic ground beef so yeah it's nothing but a marketing stunt.
The ad has the percentage on it.
@@stanleyhape8427 yes the ad I saw had the percentages in the fine print at the bottom
I think cooking meat in bags is actually a way to cook meat
Fellow Arby's worker here! I can confirm the burgers are awful. I hope they never come back
This, antiwork and that distopia subreddit, are just so depressing. i can only imagine how it must be for Boobin to narrate them. Warm hugs to you, our birb. 💙
Poor breast implant ❤
If it makes you feel better, Robin said last time he covered ABoringDystopia that he wants that subreddit to stop being chosen. Not necessarily because of his opinion on it, but because he doesn't want people following and viewing a subreddit like it.
America is screwed and I am all for it.
@@thearchmanofgreenfield?
Yes? If your wondering if I'm american, I'm not. I just think america has become such a cesspool of degeneracy (Sure there are still good people there) That it will inevitably fall. @@echothefreak9396
Seeing people's faces on the internet after being faceless makes me realize I suck at guessing what people ACTUALLY look like in relation to their voices.
I watched him talking, and it doesn't match the mental image I have at all. I don't think that's him. Somebody lip-synced his lines.
Not really faceless cause he's actually had a youtube channel where he actively shows his face lol. Its called "xycron"
Me finding robin origin story:
I actually found out about it because i looked up xycron on youtube instead of twitter. Then i quickly found out this guy was not only a voice actor. But the voice of foxy in many youtube videos amd actively does voices on piemations channel. They are friends, and i think roommates? Found him about a year ago i think.
@@frostbitedragon9 Yep, he was a few voices in Suction Cup Man.
Pls let robin do a wholesome subreddit soon I think hes gonna go crazy soon
right? Robin either gets the infuriating subreads or strange ones, let him get wholesome ones more often.
I'd go crazy too if I had to live as a non rich person in America.
@@AIHumanEqualityalready there, friend. Already there...
I'm poor but I'm more mad about products shrinking than getting more expensive TEMPORARY because you can always adjust prices, it's a lil harder to adjust packages. When I see a smaller package I just KNOW that i will never get the same value as before, they'll just keep making it pricier. Fuck wars and fuck inflation. Oh, and fuck big corporations. Without lube.
Many grocery stores operate on a 'trust' system in which they trust that the shoppers will pay for their food. But since they've introduced the self-checkout isles, it's almost as if you could walk out with some additional items. They're expecting us to be the cashier, which technically they would have to train their staff, but since they've not trained us' we can simply claim oh I forgot, oh I didn't know. If they want us to not notice things going smaller, we're just not going to notice some items sometimes slip by.
At my grocery store, a staff member stands there in the self-checkout aisle and watches everyone. They say they're there in case people need help. They're actually there to make sure people aren't stealing. @@purpl3grape
With all this shrinkflation I am being left quite hungry. Maybe I'll have to eat something else. I'm seeing a lot of rich people.
heard they taste like pork.
Pro tip: Such rich meat is hard to cut because it's so soft.
Use a Guillotine for good, clean slices.
If they want us to not notice food items getting smaller, we're just not going to notice some items sometimes slip by when we take the self-checkout counter. Oh yea, imagine that self-checkout is a norm wtf. But to be fair, we weren't 'trained' to be a cashier, so we sometimes we don't know how duplicate items suddenly end up in our bag. They want us not to pay attention to these small things? Fine for them especially it goes both ways.
Turkish people: *laughs in sadness*
For those that dont know turkey(türkiye) has so much infilation sometimes prices change daily
Example:
Choclate:5tl
1 month later
Choclate:6tl
):
Never forget that it costs the company more to change their packaging setup to accommodate smaller containers than it does to just put less in it.
Its so horrible that they know we know what they are doing and we can do nothing to stop it.
Well, you can DEFINITELY stop them with a little information and some materials. If someone had, for example, the addresses of the factory, the CEO, and maybe some of the shareholders, and then that individual showed up at said addresses to donate a few bags of fertilizer, some bottles of a few specific household chemicals, some DIY electrical switch kits, and a couple of prepaid Walmart cellphones, the heads of the parent corporation would probably be so grateful that they'd start listening to their customers quite quickly thereafter!
Of course, that's just one purely theoretical example proposed merely as a topic of discussion.
I feel powerless, but Im not!
I can just not buy the products!
I mean, almost all the products here are food related...
So I guess I'll starve.
13:00 That's corporate for "We're just greedy and you know it so here's some irrelevant jargon to placate you"
I want to see the narrators faces more. It was a pleasant surprise.
Considering Robin has said things like that he is weird lookin, he dont look weird to me
I don't think Lexi shows her face, but if you wanted to see her face then she has a youtube channel where she shows it.
8:12 By the way, someone crunched the numbers and Spurlock actually lied about how much McDonald's food he was ordering, based on how many calories he was consuming. He didn't follow the rules he laid out at the start of the video and ordered more food than he said he would. There's a response to the movie called Fat Head which runs the numbers.
"Fat Head" is an amazing documentary, and highly educational (and funny). also, unlike spurlock, he actually cited his sources and put up his meal plans and such.
Tip with paper towels: There’s usually a less expensive brand that compares itself to bounty. It’s the same thing without the bounty designs on the paper towels. As long as you get the “deluxe” (or whatever they call it, sometimes premium) it’s all paying for the brand name.
store brands are often just as good. depends on the product. and in many cases, i actually think they use the brand manufacturer and license out the product. for ex: Albertsons store brand cola tastes EXACTLY like pepsi. I am 100% convinced it actually IS pepsi, just repackaged.
Not so fun fact, the “extra” fries that five guys puts in your bag are actually accounted for in the pricing, it’s not laziness, it’s intentional
lol Five Guys is crazy expensive since most things are made fresh... For a hotdog it ranges from about $5-$7 alone... you can go to Costco and get like a $2 gigantic hot dog for that (granted I understand they're sold at a loss intentionally), or literally buy a pack of 10 hot dogs at the store for less. Outside of maybe McDonalds fast food is really an awful value.
1:09 Oreo was LITERALLY SUED for their double stuff oreos not being actually double the stuffing, so they had to rename them "mega stuff" instead so as not to be false advertising.
And now they're just... ignoring that? Can someone do the research, and possibly sue them again?
Most people can't afford to sue mega corporations that's why government regulation should be enforced like in many other countries.
I think these companies' brains may have also shrunk when they decided to make these stupid packaging ideas.
But their wallets sure have swelled a lot.
@@noseboop4354That's generally what rich Americans think with.
There not stupid, there mildly evil.
@@BisexualPlagueDoctor They're* and both of those can be true.
@@BisexualPlagueDoctor Mildly? I think an extra word sneaked into your comment, these corporations and their CEOs are pure evil.
Here's another reason I heard this is happening. Everybody asks 'why don't they make the packages smaller?' Well, companies pay grocery chains for shelf space. So if the box is still big it's taking up the same ammount of space as before but it's less product inside it they have to produce. And the larger the size they can reasonably get on the shelves the more they can limit customers other buying options. They litterally keep the big boxes to push out the competition and get the same ammount of money for less product. Mark my words if this keeps up one day wer'll have just a handful of brands with massive boxes and barely anything inside. We need to stop this @$$-hole practice ASAP.
It's the dishonesty that bothers me. You aren't going to fool anyone more then once. Just raise the price for a FULL tube of Pringles, OR make smaller tubes. Don't waste all that extra packaging, much of which is bad for the environment, and then charge us extra to cover the cost of your extra waste.
if i knew how to read and speak japanese i would of moved to japan years ago and it’s not because of anime do you know how cheap yet diverse and healthy the food is compared to food in america it’s absolutely insane i been watching this channel japaneats this one video the man got this pre made bento box for not even 2 dollars and it had more food then any individual meal i have found in all of america
moving to Japan because you're a weeb:🤓
Moving to Japan because its cheaper:🗿
I haven't wanted to move to Japan because of anime since I was like 10, the place just genuinely seems amazing.. even though they definitely have a _lot_ of flaws. but that's just every country, really. even the most amazing places don't have the best laws and government.
The irony is that I'd only move there if I was rich or could work on my own schedule because the work culture over there is absolutely not compatible with the one over here (Germany).
Bro said "would of"
@@justarandomguy983go to Philippines for cheap
With the laughing cow one, maybe they made the box bigger and didn't shrink the cheese? I remember having trouble getting the cheese out without having to spill everything out or smash the cheese, it can be an important change that design to solve a problem
I'd rather pay a little more than pretend the packaging isn't trying to trick me
I remember years ago when our favorite toilet paper brand decided to make the rolls 1/4" narrower, our holders are built into the cabinets and only have small protrusions to hold it, well the narrower rolls would not stay in the holder. Switched TP brands to solve it but in a few years all the brands did the same thing, made millions of TP holders worthless since they would not hold the rolls anymore. About 5 years go by and many of the top brands did it again but this time offered a free adapter so you could use it on the old holders.
Keep in mind that box store choose their package size from the manufacturers. The store chooses what size to offer to hit the price point that they would like to maintain. Walmart and the Dollar General are big culprits for ordering the smaller size containers of things and offer them at the same price as other stores do for the larger ones. It's how they can make it look like they are charging less. Also, you can't do the price match guarantee that they have because they only accept same size items for comparison. The Pure Leaf example they gave is one of those. They sell the small bottles in stores but the bigger bottles in gas stations and vending machines.
This is either CEOs going "I want more money, how do I do that?" Or what happened with Tobblerone where they were actually worried people would care if they have to raise their prices. Everyone knows about inflation, if a company needs to raise prices it's a lot better than lowering quality.
15:14 16.9 oz is actually a fairly common size even in the US because it's an even 500mL. I see it pretty commonly on bottled water.
The reason for why the shrinkflation is so common in the UK now is because:
Us gents across the pond here in Great Britain are in rather a spot of bother. Our country is sailing down the river in quite the jiffy. And so so.
Too right, this island is fucked
pl
American translation: Our country is going to shit.
2:22 oh crap! I thought I was watching FNAF for a second- but no joke Robin, you look amazing!
I lived in Denmark and Canada and I've never seen packages that leave one spot empty in anything. Is that a thing that really happens? Also the reason there's so much air in chip bags is for pressure not because they're being cheap. The chips last longer with sealed air in them and get crushed less. It would cost less than an extra penny to fill 100 bags up to the top so it's not about saving costs.
Canadian here.
Lays still has half full bags.
11:04 i took a HACCP course (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) and the woman teaching us used McDonald's as an example when she talked about cleaning the workplace. Apparently here (Portugal) they take cleaning the restaurants and the kitchens REALY good. Also you can see the kitchen in the McDonald's restaurants and the people working there, dont know if its the same everywhere.
You better be sure on that Cadbury drink that they raised the price for more than 50 grams.
It calls price carousel.
Lowering the content down in tiny little steps (selling you less product for your money) before they return to the old regular size but when put 12,5 % more in it they will raise the price for 20 % or something.
Before you know you're paying an additional 30 % more in like 5 years, it's bonkers.
I'm waiting for the day when companies are charging $80 for empty packaging.
I mean there's literally no other trajectory...whats their alternate plan for the next 50 years if they're already shrinking things by this much this quickly
0:47 Robin discovers a chocolate drink brand
Milo moment
Gotta give Kudos to Cadbury for that anti-inflation
Here in Brazil whenever a company reduces the size of a product they are required to clearly state the original size and the amount of reduction on the package. It makes a lot easier to understand the impact of inflation. You guys should be fighting for similar laws.
The Rexona deodorant didn't change quantity, just its packaging. Both are 50ml; if anything the new packaging just shows there was too much air in the old packaging.
A sky captain poster, guitar hero guitars, a pony plush, a full recording booth... damn man, mad respect all around.
The real reason companies shrink their products rather than raise their prices is actually pretty simple. You notice how pretty much every single item in these videos are items you buy often, like food or cleaning supplies? Because if you raise the price, sure you get a little more, but people buy the same amount. If you shrink it, then people who are used to the normal amount are more likely to buy two to satisfy that gap. Therefore, instead of a slight increase, they make almost twice as much. That's why you never see appliances or cars or tvs in these videos
I was thinking this. The biggest reason they take this aproach is because its less noticable then a price increase so they can earn more money and most customers are none the wiser. Its also the same reason why most products are priced with .99 at the end, because it looks cheaper then a full dollar/euro even tough it gets rounded upwards anyway. I actually learned about that trick in a marketing class at school. Another way shops trick customers is putting something "on sale" without actually changing the price. Customers think its cheaper but nope its actually the same price as before the sale, but the shop wont tell you that
That has to be one of the best ads I think I've ever seen! Definitely gonna go buy a hoodie now!
2:18 that knock scared the living crap out of me because I thought it was MY door and it was really loud
4:34 Also notice the packing changed to make it look like more, especially it being "Plus".
4:26 Coles and Woolworths have recently been increasing prices of a lot of prices and even with specials it wouldn't reach its former price. For Example, A 10-pack of Lemonade used to cost $5.50. last year, they doubled it to around $11. As far as I know, they haven't discounted it to more than 40% off other than in 2-for-1 deals.
What is maddening is that they abandoned their slogan "Down, Down", meaning prices were down. To combat the anger they made their own brands which are 80% of the price but don't feel the same as the other brands, like they are copying the brands for profit. This year they made a big profit off of this.
Doesn't help that "convenience stores", places where things are supposed to be cheap and accessible, are more expensive than items in supermarkets.
I like seeing Robin's face, hearing his voice, but I hear him so differently when I see his face. I'm not surprised, as thats what its like for others, guess I can fit in.
Still love ya stuff Robin :)
The reason this won’t change anytime soon is; companies are only leaving violence as an answer. And they know we won’t hunt them down and set them on fire in front of their families like we used to. Because now we got too many comforts that we’d lose
Bigger reason is that companies in America have become a corporate oligarchy where they agree to work together to screw people over rather than compete.
There's plenty of Americans who do not live in comfort. Almost half the country is struggling if not more than that.
@@AIHumanEquality that’s the same thing I said but with softer neoliberal language
@@makhina8839 What I said was very socialist not neoliberal if you want to put a title on it.
Yeah, Until someone who just doesn't give a fuck get involved.
Here's an example of shrinkflation I've never seen anyone discuss before: Entenmann's Little Bites. When I was a kid, there were 5 in the bag. Now there are only 4
Fun fact, 16.9 oz is the equivalent to 500 ML. An international standard so they don't have to make two different size bottles
0:15 Wow I remember these kinds of cheese, us Vietnamese people call them "Con Bò Cười" (which is "Laughing Cow" in Vietnamese) and I used to eat these things A LOT!
1:48 NGL Robin's room looks pretty cool and omg the walk he did.
1:23 I noticed this too, and regular oreos look like they have less filling than they did 20 years ago
5:26 On The Border brand tortilla chips are really good. They're usually filled to about the fullest, so I'd say this one is a massive outlier
I live in Canada and I've never once been to a fast food place that gives you less fries than the container/package overflowing and spilling fries out. Is that not how they do it everywhere?
"Dont often show my face here" - Forgets he frequently has SCPesque photos on the channel
1:40 I was confused at first but I think the justication for those extra 50g is because there's now significantly less effort on the box art, and it's not just the wording
7:24 you are supposed to add boiling water to it, and then it mixes with the powder and boils the pasta and it becomes much bigger, like 70% of the cup
What do you call when you got a raise at your job but it is a small amount?
DEFLATION.
Robin's room is so cool wth????
I like seeing Robin being more confident and out there
Robin is always perfect for dystopia subs like this ❤
"5 guys about your fries" translation: order a small and get a pound of potato in fry form. More bag fries than cup fries.
I suspect the Ikea candles with concave base burn up nearly all of the wax, while with the traditional shape you always end up with a few percent sitting at the bottom after the wick is consumed.
The year is 2024. One must spend 100 dollars for a single corn chip.
always a treat to see our narrators’ faces 🫶
i still say seeing his face and then hearing robin's voice is such a trip because you so don't imagine him like that, which is not an insult bro doing good for his age
It is like that prank where you shift their stuff left inch by inch until they notice
Ever notice that dent in the bottom of peanut butter jars?
*_Shrinkflation_*
They do it in small increments so you don't notice notice
6:05 turn those packages on their side to see how much is missing before you buy.
Thank you for making this. I know this is a known thing that they do but sometimes I feel like my brain is playing tricks
at 4:27, not only is it one less bar, the bars are also smaller.
Old pack: 132g, 6 bars, 132/6 = 22g per bar
New pack: 100g, 5 bars, 100/5 = 20g per bar
Double shrinkflation
The annoying thing to me isn't even the fact taht they shrink it its that they tried to hide it or trick you into thinking its same amount. If you have to cut production costs I'd rather you be upfront with me about the drop in size or the increase in price rather than trying to be some magician who make your audience not notice the drop in size.
13:41 It's been proven people are more likely to pay the same price for less, than to pay more for the same amount as before. Partly because sometimes they don't notice it, sometimes they have a set amount to spend on a specific thing.(even if that specific thing is now less for the same price) Otherwise companies wouldn't bother with shrinkflation and would just put the price of things up, keeping the amount the same.
Love Mkay. Love the narrators. Will happily subscribe to all of your channels to support you good people
The unfortunate reality is that technically, many (but not all) instances of shrinkflation, even in this video, actually DO have you paying less for less product. The number doesn't change, but the value does. For example, for each US dollar something cost to purchase pre-pandemic, you would need to spend $1.18, so something that cost $5 now costs closer to $6. Or to invert it, if a company wants something to cost $5 now, they'd have to give no more than $4.22 worth of pre-pandemic product. Large companies take advantage of this to make every excuse to cut costs further, but many businesses simply try to match inflation. If they had to advertise their unit price more boldly, this might fix some of the issues, as then people would more easily be able to see how much they're actually paying per unit. Also, in regards to packaging, due to how package manufacturing works, it can cost a LOT of money to rework packaging production, so it's cheaper to have a bit of extra packaging rather than change the factories every time their product amount is less than the package's maximum capacity. Again, not an excuse for large companies leaving insane excess space, but it's just how the cost works. If factories were fined based on hitting a certain product:packaging ratio, it would completely eliminate this issue.
For clarity, things like the wake-up wrap, the croissants, and the "BIG" pasta and sauce cup in this video are absolutely unforgivable amounts of shrinkflation.
Sorry for the rant. Knowing some of what goes into back-end processing and pricing makes some of these examples (i.e. everything that changed at the same rate as inflation) annoy me. And the ones where companies go overboard annoys me for an entirely different reason.
Milo is a chocolate flavoured malted milk drink. Found in South Africa, UK and I think some parts of Asia. I don't know if the US has an equivalent.
There should be laws about the percentage of a container that should be filled with usable product.
For obvious reasons it can't be 100%, but maybe 80-90 would be reasonable.
as far as i know a lot of places have those.
the EU has laws about it. i'm not able to find one at the moment that's specific about food products but i was able to find one about packages in general, and in the EU a packages may contain at most 40% emptiness/filler. the rest has to be product.
and i think at least some parts of the US have a max amount of empty space that is allowed
3:57 Dr Oetker is legit one of the best frozen pizza brands there is. And they're not even that expensive.
2:01 is that a pony in the background
Yes it is 😂
Omg. I was literally eating double stuff oreos last night and thinking the exact same thing. I'm convinced that the whole "thins" craze was a marketing scheme to surreptitiously shrink the size of the regular cookies. Everything is becoming smaller and more expensive. It would be hilarious if it wasn't freaking real!
Oddly enough, lumpia here having less "meats and vegetables" filling and more wrapper. like almost 3-5 layers of wrapper and that thin filling.
I've said it before. But in Italy you can get a bag of mixed lettuce already washed ready to garnish for what? 1-2 euros for about 200 grams? That's Italy baby! And you can find the cheaper prices also in more expensive supermarkets.
2:39 oh lego
NO LEGO
1:54 No worries, Robin, you look as handsome as ever :)
That ad is why Robin is a walking W
"I normally don't show my face"
Robin, that one power stance is burned into my memory because of you
me: *eating arbys*
Robin: *insults Arbys*
Me: *stares at motz stick before slightly agreeing and continuing to eat*
I've only seen one company to my memory that has done this right
In NZ we have a chocolate company called Whittakers. They had a block of chocolate with macadamias in it. It has been discontinued at present time.
When they discontinued it they put out a press statement to explain what was going on
1) the cost of the nuts had increased massively
2) if they were to keep the bar at the same size with the same amount of nuts they would have to drastically increase the price, which they didn't think was fair. This left them with few options.
reduce the amount of nuts
reduce the size of the bar
discontinue the bar.
They reasoned that reducing the amount of nuts to keep the price in line would result in so few nuts it would seem disingenuous to call it the macadamia block
If they reduced the size, it would be shrinkflation, and they didn't see an end to the price increase of the nuts, so they didn't want to charge a block price for a small bar.
This left discontinuing it as the most sensible option. They did add that if people thought it was a bad idea, they were open to being contacted, but they wanted to be honest about what was happening.
I miss that block, but also worked directly with macadamias, and the price of those went up further and plateaued higher. I can't see that block being reintroduced any time soon.
17:38 You used to be able to buy a full bottle of laundry detergent at the dollar store for $1, now you get to buy what looks like a sampler bottle for $1.25. the cap is so small that you have to pour about 5 capfuls in order to equal to one capful of the old laundry detergent. Everything is tiny, especially the food. and now tv dinners are $3 each and they are super small and not so healthy with all the sodium and pasta cause they all have pasta!
5:24 that is an outlier. I’ve bought several of that brand of chips and never seen it that empty
Kroger store brand instant oatmeal was 10 packs per box for both regular and less sugar varieties, same price. Some months ago the picture on the packaging changed. Now the boxes are the same size and price, but regular is still 10 per box and less sugar is 8 per box. The picture change makes the quantity less noticeable.
4:11 my mum has an issue with the name too, she says it’s too “clinical” for food so she’ll never buy ristorante pizzas ever
Binging emkay vids is basically a daily routine for me
and they wonder why retail theft is worse than it's ever been LOL
Those bars at 4:20 not only went from 6 to 5 in a box but 132g to 100g too.
4:24 did anyone else notice with the LCM's choc chip it's not just a whole bar less, but the bars also got smaller? 100 grams divided by 5 bars is 20 grams a bar. So if it had 6 bars of 20 grams the total weight was 120 grams. But in the 6 pack it was 132 grams total. I know that's just like 2 grams per bar, but still
I really like how you are constantly poking fun of yourself, i'm not sure if you seriously lack confidence or you just have that kind of humor, but either way you seem like a fun dude to me
On Bounty paper towels, I've noticed that they don't dry things well anymore... and they often leave "dog ears" (corners of the towels) on when you tear one off now too, like the cheapo paper towels do.