Sorry to tell you , but if you ’ve bought a jar of peanut vine butter since 2008 , you ’ve been make out . It ’s not like the peanut butter company come to your house , rang your buzzer , punched you in the face , steal your TV , pet your dog-iron in a really belligerent way , and then ran off . But it chouse you out of your severely - garner money without you even knowing about it , and that might be worse . Here ’s the partitioning .
The peanut butter game changed in 2008
In ablockbuster story from theLA Timesin the late naught , journalist Jerry Hirsch report that Skippy peanut butter changed its jar . Buckle your seat belts , boys and missy : the shock changed ! It ’s slow , correct ? Well , that ’s kind of what Skippy was numerate on – to not get your attention with the move . Because you could n’t actually see any difference when you saw it on the shelf .
See , Skippy bestow a " dimple " to the bottom of the jolt , which means that or else of having a flat bottom like a plastic jounce should , it ’s concave – it goes inward , like Jennifer Garner ’s cheeks . And the weight of the jar , which was previously 18 oz , became 16.3 oz . The price did not change . I ’ll echo : the price stayed the same , and you got 9.44 % less peanut butter .
As for the other peanut butter brands , Jif struck back by keep its jar the same , and even enlarging the font on the jar , to letchoosy mammy see that it was still 18 oz , or else of the 16.3 oz Skippy offered . That did n’t last , as you ’ll soon find out .
Cole Saladino/Thrillist
If you ’re thinking , " So what ? " you belike mark poorly on maths trial in high schoolhouse . Suffice it to say , 10 % less goober pea butter in one jolt means you ’re going to hunt out sooner than common , and buy it more frequently throughout the year without ever screw why .
How food manufacturers get away with changes like this
In his bookPriceless : The Hidden psychological science of Value , William Poundstone write that consumers might tack peanut butter brands if the cost goes up . But if the price stays the same and the jar invisibly wince ? No hurt , no foul . That ’s why in 2008 , Poundstone notes that Kellogg ’s also made thinner grain box of Cocoa Krispies , Froot Loops , and Apple Jacks , but maintain the width , height , and price the same … and no one noticed .
No one is looking at the label of a cereal boxwood or a peanut vine butter shock to see how much food is in there . You commit your eyes and the price you ’ve seen over and over again . That ’s how companies can get away with this .
But those changes were in 2008 . What ’s going on in the peanut butter game today ?
Cole Saladino/Thrillist
Peanut butter companies don’t want to talk about this
I reached out to Hormel , which has owned Skippy since 2013 . Back in 2008 , when the jar change were made , Unilever owned it . I asked why the peanut butter jar has a dimple , and if the pattern has changed recently . Hormel did n’t respond to my dubiousness , but a spokesperson did say that , " We have not changed the jarful since we acquired the brand in 2013 . "
Peter Pan did n’t get back to me . Neither did Jif . But I do n’t ask them to do some ace reporting ! Here ’s what I found from doing some in - profoundness peanut butter research at my local Kroger :
Peter Pan:$2.50 for 16.3 oz ( 15 cents p / ounce)Jif:$2.69 for 16 oz ( 16 cent atomic number 15 / ounce)Skippy:$2.99 for 16.3 oz ( 18 penny atomic number 15 / ounce )
Cole Saladino/Thrillist
All of these jar have dimples , Skippy ’s being the largest – weirdly , it also has the big wrap - around label , though it looks similar in size to the Jif and Peter Pan jar . And strangely , while Skippy ’s dimple sure looks the biggest , the jar did n’t shrink as much as the Jif one did . Why the hell is the Skippy dimple so big then?That ’s because this is a vast groundnut butter cabal .
There are no 18 oz jars like there used to be . After all , there ’s no point in giving people more peanut butter for their money if they never knew the jounce shrunk in the first berth . Again , it ’s avast peanut butter … really , this is just about company endeavor to make as much money as possible . Nothing eldritch about that .
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