Downsize Syndrome!

OH, SURE, we’ve all read stories over the past few years, probably, about product downsizing.

It started with, what, ice cream, right? It came in half-gallons from our birth to about seven years ago, downsized to 1.75 quarts, and now to 1.5 quarts. Then yogurt, or as you like to spell it, yoghurt, from eight ounces to six ounces (or if you’re an idiot who buys those Yoplait Whips, four ounces, three of which are air).*

And now canned tuna, potato chips, toilet paper(!), peanut butter – and the list goes on, probably. And the thing is, like you, I’d be willing to pay a few pennies more for the old size! We’re not unreasonable, you and I! We understand prices go up!

But Big Grocery has decided to emasculate us by literally shrinking the size of our package, laughing at us, and acting like it’s the same old amount while charging the same price…and then eventually raising the price anyway! Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining! How would that fool me anyway? Look, I’m no meteorologist, but I seriously doubt the existence of a type of storm cloud so low-lying that its precipitation hits my leg and nothing higher. If you’re going to piss on me and tell me it’s raining, you need to stand on a stepladder and urinate on my head, and blindfold me so I don’t see you doing it. But I’m not into that anymore – not since that whole hepatitis scare last year. My God, the people I had to track down and call.

Anyway, it’s bad enough they shrink our jars of mayonnaise, our bags of ginger snaps, our cartons of orange juice, our packages of Kraft American cheese – but for God’s sake, man, leave our eye care products alone!

You heard me, Big Eye Care! Stay the hell away from our rewetting drops!

Look at this!

My old bottle of rewetting drops is on the right. Yes, I should have put it on the left when I took the photo, but I wasn’t thinking. I was too angry!

My new bottle is on the left! Notice any difference? Oh ho ho, brother, you bet you do!

It went from 2/3 ounces – 20 generous milliliters…to a stingy, niggardly, penurious, gee-can-you-spare-it 0.27 ounces! A measly 8 milliliters!

Also, it seems I stopped buying them at CVS and began buying them at Target.

But according to CVS’s website, they’ve shrunk their size, too. Not as drastically – now you get half an ounce, or 15 milliliters. It’s still downsizing. And for the record, the last bottle I bought before this bottle at Target was the same size as the CVS bottle! Are you following all this?

My point is, Jesus, we’re talking about a trace amount of liquid to begin with. I tinkle in my pants more than 20 milliliters when I laugh watching “Reba” on Lifetime – and that’s not nearly enough to really soak through and be visible (or obvious) nor smell (unless I’ve just had asparagus).

So the eye people, they’ve looked at that tiny amount of eye solution – 20 milliliters – and decided “Oh, that’s too much. These rubes will pay the same price for less than half that amount – you watch! And most of them are probably so goddamn blind to begin with they can’t read the tiny print on the bottle anyway! They’ll never know.”

They’ll know now, brother. They’ll know.

Oh, and on top of that, the new, tiny bottle is made of the same thickness of plastic as the old, bigger bottle, but of course it’s now shorter, squatter, more compact and that much harder to squeeze. 

So because of the size of these minuscule vials, the money I’m throwing away on rewetting drops – anywhere from $3.50 to $4.75 each time! – is starting to add up a lot faster: I’m now buying them once every ten months rather than once every two years. Frankly, it’s beginning to make more economical sense for me to just get laser eye surgery and kiss my contact lenses goodbye once and for all. And then Target Brands, and CVS Brands, and all the major eye care companies are going to be happy that they downsized.

Because then, ladies and gentlemen…?  Then I’m going to tell them all they can stick their little bottles up their ass!

*By the way, Yoplait people: Christ almighty, those Yoplait Whips are good! How about you send me a big wad of free coupons for them, especially for chocolate mousse and orange creme? Nothing’s written in stone on this blog, if you know what I mean.

Posted by Ted on October 3, 2011, 9:00 AM.