Not even an Iowa icon is immune from the Law of Shrinking Products. The week’s previous post referencing the trend was written around two weeks ago, but a tour of the Hy-Vee frozen section has merited a second entry along that line.
A month ago, Wells Dairy, headquartered in Le Mars, unveiled a new Blue Bunny ice cream logo and packaging. Both the Sioux City Journal and KTIV had stories. The ice cream containers are now transparent. But hidden in plain sight is a decline in how much you’re getting. Instead of 1.75 quarts it’s now labeled as 48 ounces, or 1.5 quarts. Some of the specialty ice cream is down to 46 ounces. The default supermarket size used to be a half-gallon — 13 years ago, because that’s when I mentioned the change starting to happen in an Iowa State Daily column.
To Blue Bunny’s credit, the change is acknowledged in a website FAQ and a response to irate Facebook commenters. Taking away eight ounces of ice cream should not be a tradeoff for transparent packaging, and yet, that’s pretty much what happened. Of course, the price isn’t dropping by a corresponding amount.
Wells Blue Bunny could be the last major-label ice cream manufacturer to drop from 1.75 to 1.5 quarts, so I wouldn’t be surprised if store brands followed suit in the next year or so. For what it’s worth (less than it used to be!), the Consumer Price Index does account for continually shrinking sizes of consumer goods.