35-year-old Mars Bar found in UK house clearance sparks shrinkflation debate
A 1991 chocolate bar measuring 62.5g dwarfs today's 40g version, reigniting discussion about product downsizing.
Conversation activity · last 38 hours peak 7/hr
Summary, timeline and people extracted by Claude from 44 items across 5 sources · 23h ago. Quotes are verbatim.
A Mars Bar with a 1991 best-before date was discovered during a house clearance in Scunthorpe by Victoria Gordon, a cleaning service operator. The vintage bar weighs 62.5g compared to today's 40g Mars Bars, prompting viral social media discussion about shrinkflation and its environmental impact.
- A Mars Bar from 1991 weighs 62.5g, compared to 40g today—a 36% reduction in size over 35 years.
- The discovery by a UK cleaning service operator went viral on social media and Hacker News, generating 199 comments.
- The find reignited debate about shrinkflation and its ecological implications, with users citing environmental concerns.
How it unfolded
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Victoria Gordon's account of the discovery gains wider circulation on Mastodon, with high engagement as users learn she found the bar while running a cleaning service and noticed its unusually large size.
“It was nearly as big as my hand, which was kind of why I noticed it.”
Victoria Gordon -
The article gains traction on Hacker News with 166 points and 199 comments, expanding discussion to tech-focused audience.
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Users begin commenting on the discovery via Bluesky and other platforms, discussing shrinkflation as an ecological concern.
“die shrinkflation ist richtig zach. ein ökologischer wahnsinn.”
preger.bsky.social -
The BBC article distributes to multiple news aggregators and social platforms including Mastodon, Google News, and RSS feeds.
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BBC News publishes initial story about the 1991 Mars Bar found during house clearance in Scunthorpe, highlighting the 20g size difference between the vintage and current versions.
What people are saying verbatim
“It was nearly as big as my hand, which was kind of why I noticed it.”
Victoria Gordon, Cleaning service operator · BBC News / Mastodon · Aug 9
“die shrinkflation ist richtig zach. ein ökologischer wahnsinn.”
preger.bsky.social, Bluesky user · Bluesky · Aug 10, 9:40 AM
Voices from the web unedited
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"A 35-year-old Mars Bar has been found during a house clearance – and the discovery has gone viral amid claims it highlights the effect of 'shrinkflation'. The chocolate bar with a best-before date of 1991 was found during a clear-out of a house in Scunthorpe. Victoria Gordon, who runs the cleaning service, posted a photo on social media of the…
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die shrinkflation ist richtig zach. ein ökologischer wahnsinn.
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Which is why I say people claiming that inflation is at least 2x undercounted relative to lived experience are right. Everything diminishes, all across the board. Materials get cheaper. Service quality gets lower - and when it doesn't, all the incidentals around it get worse.My go-to example: your local hairdresser may keep the same prices…
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# BBC # News Mars Bar from 1991 found - and it's 20g bigger than one from today
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Just my personal anecdata, it took my a while to put a finger on it, but it seemed like something started to change in products in the 90s. Bag of chips started to fill up with more air and less chips, candy bars got smaller, airlines started reducing seat sizes. Super huge discount? retail stores opened, that you usually needed a membership card…
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important news from da uk today https://www. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1j1kj y7gewo
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I'm not sure why this is surprising.In the US we try to maintain inflation at a target rate of 2%. For commodities where the costs aren't able to keep pace with inflation you'd either expect prices to double every 35 years or for the product to be half-ish the size (assuming labor costs scale by size). It's a 99 cent candy bar so...I think…
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Companies hate raising prices, or more specifically customers hate it when prices are raised so companies don't like to do it. especially in foods. As such the go-to dance to keep up with inflation is to reduce the size while keeping the price the same as long as possible, when this becomes too noticeable the size is returned to original the price…
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We're tracking prices and packaging for food since 2012 at Open Food Facts, and we have a food archeology project: https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Project:Archeology https://world.openfoodfacts.org/open-food-facts-mobile-appFeel free to add what you have in your attic ;-)
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I was surprised to learn the Mars bar familiar from my childhood wasn't a product of the original American corporation Mars Inc.Frank Mars founded the American company. His son Forrest invented Milky Way, but then eventually quarreled with his dad and was removed from the business. Forrest moved to England, founded his own company, and the Mars…