Monday, July 14, 2008

Ice Cream "Melts" from 1/2 Gallon to 1.5 Quarts

At some point as an adult, you realize that the things you remember as being really BIG as a child are actually kind of normal or even small. For instance, the walk from the schoolyard through the back field to my yard at home seemed like a mile easy, when in fact it was about 200 yards. I think that Twinkies have shrunk as well, they used to be a sunny yellow color and clock in about the size of my forearm, when now they're this brownish greasy cake that i can eat in two bites. I wasn't sure if I just grew up a whole lot, or they shrunk the cakes and didn't tell anyone.

So...the other day my husband stared in disbelief when he discovered that he got only one bowl of the Breyers Dulce de Leche ice cream. I found that hard to believe, when my mother and I each had 2 very small bowls. Breyers is always good for a party, feeding umpteen people small servings. Then I was informed that Breyers shrunk their half gallon ice cream to 1.75 quarts and now to 1.5 quarts, which made me promptly head to the freezer. I pulled out the replacement ice cream (Breyers cherry vanilla) and in fact it WAS 1.5 quarts, and over $4 to boot. Same price, less ice cream?

I went online and found this great posting on Consumerist about the Breyers shrinkage. I gather it's a cost of goods issue, rather than a decrease in the popularity of the half gallon. Now I will have to pay $4.29 a gallon to drive to the store 2x a week instead of once to refill my ice cream stash. I guess it's time to go on a diet!

In which other cases has the recent economy affected other foods?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Breyers is not the only one. Eddy's as well. It's a conspiracy to get me to eat less ice cream! (and you too!). I'd prefer an honest price increase to such tomfoolery.

cmartervoice said...

I agree with Sean! I would rather pay more for more than the same for less--make sense? Blue Bunny is in 1.75 quart size--until I find a brand that still makes the true 1/2-gallon size, BB gets my business. When my family visits, they "expect" me to have ice cream on hand and quite frankly, I'm not interested in buying 1.5 quarts even if it is on sale 3 for $10! If Blue Bunny goes down in size, it's no more ice cream..."Let them eat cake!"

LenaO said...

I was at Walgreen's yesterday to buy ice cream. I usually buy pints of premium ice cream but was shocked that they were priced at 2 for $9, on sale. Whoa! So I went for the half gallon and immediately noticed they looked small, Dreyer's 1.50 qts and Walgreen's brand 1.75 qts both for $3.99. When did this happen? I pointed this out to my 18-year-old daughter but she didn't get it. To her, it was the shape of a half gallon, so it must be a half gallon. I guess that's what IC makers are hoping, people just won't notice.

Unknown said...

Well folks its sad that the ice cream people and potato chip people have decided to reduce the size and jack up the prices of their products. AS consumers we can only ban together by not buying any of their stuff. The same is true of many other products. Those on fixed incomes can not treat themselves to these goodies as they once could.

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