<start of rant>
When I was a kid WagonWheel treats were huge. Now, my hands may have grown a bit since then but not that bloody much, so I must conclude that WagonWheels have shrunk. I understand this. Rising costs, competition and all that. The shrinkage is noticable and so somehow doesn't offend me.
What does offend me though is when corporate spin doctors find new and interesting ways to cheap out on their product and screw their customers while attempting to convince us that not only do the changes make the product better, we should all pay more for the privilage of getting not just screwed, but screwed cunninglynguistically.
I think it all began with soft ice cream...

<picture gets all rippley, flashback ensues>

"Cletus you idjit you left the ice cream churner on all night! It's all whipped full of air now and spilling all over the floor...waitaminute, there's like twice as much ice cream here. I know, we'll call it soft ice cream and charge the rubes more while only selling them air. We's gonna be stinkin rich Cletus! Get the shovel."

<rippley fade-in>

See when 'they' started selling us water I wondered how much longer before 'they' figured out a way to sell us air but it had already begun. Now it has become a rampant contagion and it is not limited to the food industry either, even the adhesives I use for wall tile are whipped full of air so that if you remove the seal by opening the lid and leave it alone you can watch the glue shrink in size. Food examples of this are Peanut Butter and Cheese Whiz. Open a new jar of Cheeze whiz and see just how disproportionate the whiz to cheese ratio really is.

It's everywhere!

-Kraft dinner noodles are a quarter of the size they once were, only taking up a tiny portion of the same sized box they once filled, yet they somehow plump up to make the same volume of pasta when cooked.
-Potato chip bags are filled with air, they say to protect them during shipping, yet we all know it is so that you can't see how few chips there are compared to before.
-Pringles used to fill the entire diameter of the container, but now you can stuff your finger and thumb down either side of the stack of chips, which no longer reach the top of the tube anymore.
Ever wonder why the ketchup bottles are opaque now? It's so you don't get to see the shrinkage.
The list goes on and on.

The latest, and by far the most ear-coitusingly blatant, ad campain targeting kids is the newest Rice Krispies commercial.
"The Krispies are bigger mommy."
"That's so they could put more goodness in there sweety."

What a crock of shit!
They've made them in a partial vacuum or something so that you pay maore money for less grains of rice!

Am I the only one who sees this crap!?
<end of rant, beginning of actual idea>

Something needs to be done to help screw proof the general public so that we can boycot these products and send a clear message to manufacturers that if they don't remove their peckers from our heinies post haste we have it in our power to bankrupt them.
To that end I propose a consumer watchdog website specifically targeting crooked advertising campains and shrinking products with life sized photos of things like the Devolution of the WagonWheel, and exposes just how the freaking Krispies got bigger.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 29 2010

for [mouseposture] http://upload.wikim...-pound-monopoly.jpg
[pocmloc, May 29 2010]

I think this is just a rant and off-topic for the halfbakery. The "invention" is a website that documents in detail the thing that bugs you - that's not much of a novelty.

How do you do "life-sized photos" online anyway?
-- jutta, May 29 2010


Actually, that is an interesting question.

Is there some application which will recognise the size of the monitor and allow images to be displayed at the correct (or at least a constant) size?

And while we're on the topic, laptops and mobiles today are wayyy smaller than they were 50 years ago.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 29 2010


And just what is life-sized anyway? Certainly there are upper and lower extremes for what can possibly be considered alive, but perhaps even these provide only thresholds over which meanings change. Certainly an ant of enormity in science fiction can not be considered life sized due to various physiological constraints placed on ants by the very nature of the workings of their biological mechanisms that give life. The same expectations can be applied to single cells, that they cannot exceed certain size constraints to become a menacing blob that terrorizes a small town of good natured-country folk, absorbing them as a cell would various molecules by mechanisms that are contingent on size alone. However, some eggs, such as those of large flightless bipedal birds and of large dinosaurs respectively are certainly single cellular, but rather exemplify the crossing of the aforementioned threshold. At the greatest extreme there is the conception of the planet Earth as a life form, which makes 'life-sized' quite a general proposition.
-- rcarty, May 29 2010


Thanks for the category change jutta, I didn't see that one.
It would not document in detail the things that bug me. It would help educate the public about how large companies pull the wool over their eyes.

Hmmm, I just assumed that computers could show real sized images. I don't know what I was thinking.
How about shown next to a common object. A coin or something.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 29 2010


//A coin or something//
Real specie, or one of these adulterated, modern coins containing a quantity of metal not worth their face value?
-- mouseposture, May 29 2010


This might seem somewhat less intuitive, but why not just chart reductions in Net Weight as opposed to MSRP? Not only would it be much easier to quantify, but you could research all the numbers online.
-- victory, May 29 2010


It's called "product improvement". You get a smaller can at only a slightly higher price. So you benefit twice:

1. You get to hold less in your hand, and eat less garbage that kills you slowly (and now also softly).

2. You don't have to pay for the full planned price rise, while still compensating the producer for even more than they wanted.
-- pashute, May 31 2010


//Something needs to be done to help screw proof the general public // I would suggest an Extinction Level Event. Those that survive will not be suckered into any puffed rice promises. Besides almost complete extinction, I do not think there is a way to "screw-proof" humans...
-- 4whom, May 31 2010


This has been happening since, well, the invention of something or other. Glad you took notice.

My personal favorite addition of 'perceived value add' is the 'whipped butter,' which is probably 30% air.
-- RayfordSteele, May 31 2010



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