memes @lemmy.world

1y ago

Trickflation

188 comments

Stupid shape for a can too, tips over In a vehicles cup holder
- Uses more aluminum to store the same amount of liquid too.
  
  You sure about that?
  Cylinders of the same volume will have the same area, so it should be the same amount of aluminum?
  Maybe less, even, since the lid and bottom are thicker than the sides and on the taller can there's less of that thick top/bottom
  
  I thought the cand were extruded from discs... Maybe they use a larger disc, but I think the taller cans have thinner walls.
  Source: https://youtu.be/V4TVDSWuR5E
- Shady backdoor deal with bounty I bet
- Also more surface area, so it will warm up sooner (I think?)

...do people think the tall can is bigger? If anything, I've always assumed that they were smaller 🤷‍♂️
- (I don't know why this image is transparent)
  
  Oh hey we watched that video in my psych class. Funny phenomenon. Kids are dumb
  
  In my highschool psych class we actually went to an elementary school and did this experiment with the kiddos. It was a while ago but if I recall correctly, 9/10 times they thought tall = bigger. I bet some people never grow out of that mindset or at least at first glance our less smart brain goes “tall is big!”
  
  This exact image is what I had in mind when I saw this post. Lol
- They do have a larger surface area for the same volume...
- Area is just hard to discern. Manipulating the radius a little bit will alter area quite significantly (because its quadratic) but you won't be able to perceive it. By comparison, height is much easier to see. So you can decrease the radius a bit and add height some and you can fool people.
- Same. They look like the small 25 cl energy drink cans, so even if they're still 33 cl, they look smaller.

The great thing is you don't need it.
- Better off without it

That's a 2.24x price increase. That's even beyond Argentina-hyperinflation levels of increase. Are we sure this is an apples-to-apples comparison? Like, was there a sale or bulk discount that made the shorter can relatively cheaper? I'm struggling to believe a retailer would engage in such a brazen markup in a single week. (Not to say it's not possible, but it's extreme enough that I'm not taking the word of some random hand-written graphic on the Internet.)
- I mean... I'll regularly go to the grocery store and see soda prices vary by 200-300% week-to-week. Sure, it's all based around "sale" value, but it amounts to the same thing. If it's $9 for 2 12-packs one week and then $11 for a 12-pack the next week, it isn't an invalid markup because you had to buy 2 to get the first price.
- I'm more inclined to blame the manufacturer for the price increase (in this case Coke) as opposed to the retailer. Especially in this case, I kinda doubt a company as large as Coke would allow retailers to stray from the price they want by more that a few cents.
- It probably costs more to distribute the new can shape since our entire civilization’s can infrastructure is built around a standard can.
- It's not an apples to apples comparison. This was a reddit post made by someone who went out of their way to buy things for different amounts to make ragebait.
  It's a dumb post and it is safe to ignore it. Sadly someone reposted it here.

Always purchase by volume/weight, not container
- It's not always an available option. If an ink maker deprecates old containers and starts selling smaller ones for almost the same price you can't just buy something else if you need consistency. Coca-Cola probably thinks that you can't just replace Coca-Cola®™© with substitutes and I know some people would agree
  
  Well, I meant within brands. Drug packages are the worst. I've seen two boxes of the same drug side by side and the smaller box had more tablets. That is to say, containers can be deceptive. Look at the volume and weight of the product.
- do other countries not have comparative price? here in sweden that's listed right under the absolute price, e.g. a bottle of soda might cost 2 bucks and the comparative cost is 1.8$ per liter.
  my dad drives me mad because he utterly ignores that and instead manually tries to estimate the comparative price, it's baffling
  
  I'm in the US where it's not mandatory. It's up to the consumer to do the math, just like sales tax.

Several years ago mountain dew had the following prices
20 oz - $2
1 liter - $2
2 liter - $2
1.5 liter - $1
It wasn't a sale, they had these prices on several stores for over a year.
- Honestly kinda based
  Soda costs pennies, the plastic container is the bulk of the cost, and not much changes in plastic quantity between container sizes
  
  And the marketing, the ceo's bonus, logistics..
  
  Prices are, and should be, based on value not cost.
- These units hurt me. For others with the same pain 20 oz is a bit over 1/2 a liter
- 20oz are more expensive per volume because they sell faster. There's less of a demand for larger sizes typically go flat too fast for people unless they're having a party or something, and even in that case they don't have the convenience of being able to drink from the bottle.
  
  Do you leave your soda uncapped or something? I buy almost exclusively 2 liter bottles and they very rarely go flat on me. I'll drink one over the course of about 4 days.
- The 1.5 liter for 2 bucks got me through college lmao
  
  When I was in college a gas station a block from me would do incredible deals on soda 12 packs abouth once a month. Like buy one get two free. We'd stock a full month's worth every time and basically have a soda mountain for people to rummage through
- A 12oz can was around $0.28 (when you buy a case). Today you're lucky if you can pay $0.45.
  
  I've had the best luck with Dollar General for affordable drinks. You have to wait for a decent sale and stock up though, and use coupons when available.
  For example: recently for Dr Pepper they had two 12-packs for $14, but you could buy three for $15 and there was a coupon for $2 off when buying three, making it $13 for three 12-packs. So you would pay a dollar less for 36 cans than you would for 24. Comes out to about $0.36 per can.

Fuck corporations but I don't believe this for a second. People are just making this shit up now. Some dude scribbles some prices on a piece of paper and this whole website loses its mind.
- I was going to say... who the fuck was paying $1.06/can for Coke to begin with? Hell, I saw one of those 32oz Big Gulp cups selling for $4 less than a week ago.
  This all just looks made up and hysterical, because Americans cannot handle not having their sugary treats.
  
  500 mL,1 L, and 2 L of Coke all cost $3 here.
  
  Not from the US, Coke was always around 1.05 - 1.20 USD where I lived in the early 2010s. Haven't been drinking too much of it since then so IDK. But Coke is irrationally cheap in the US apparently. Or it's just the old before/after taxes shenanigans again?
- This is testable. Go to the grocery store. Buy staple goods. Keep receipt. Buy the same products the next week.
  
  Why not post with the receipts instead of marker?

if you're buying coke in america, you should get the 12 packs at grocery stores instead. it's anywhere between $5.99 to $8.99, which is less than a dollar per can
- That’s fucking crazy. I stopped buying soda pre-covid, but I regularly got 4 12packs for $2.99 each up until at least 2019.
- most people are getting cans like that in a pinch tho, if you want a lot of cola, regular 2 liter plastic bottles (or even better, 6-packs of 1.5/2l) are a much better deal
  
  Water.
- Or get the 2L bottles, which are usually around the same price as the 500 mL bottles (for some reason).
  
  And if you think you can dodge microplastics by opting for aluminum instead of bottles, I have some bad news for you.
  https://youtu.be/f9vAi1OJspA
  
  Because if you drink 500ml of a 2L bottle and put the cap back on, the rest goes flat.
- Not on sale? Where I am, I only see the $7 price when it's on sale and you have to buy 3. So it's 2 for $10 and get one free. Without that the normal price is about $10. The best sales that come around during big holidays only are buy 2 get 2 free, which brings it down to $5.

I saw one of those thin cans the other day and thought, "that's a weird can shape, I don't know why someone would buy that."
Now it makes sense.
Edit: Also, I forgot about this- https://moneynotmoney.com/historical-price-of-coca-cola-in-united-states/
- The biggest absolute price decrease in the price of 2 liters of coca-cola was in 2015, when the price dropped by $-1.79, or -100%.
  Coke was free in 2015? Or is there a script filing is these paragraphs and it's counting missed data points as zero?
  
  It dropped by -1.79 which means it became 1.79 more expensive.
  AI is amazing lol
  
  Lmfao I think it's AI garbage
- One advantage of the tall narrow 12oz cans is they take up less horizontal space in the refrigerator
  
  One disadvantage is that they're harder to stack
- Worked for Virginia Slims and other brands.
  Remember the connotation was slim cigarette, slim figure. I imagine the same psychological trick is at play with the slim can.
- They don't fit in my mini fridge like normal cans do either
- Interesting website.

Drinking a Coke in 5 years:

Maybe you want to have a cup of tea instead? Way more cheap and healthy. Or buy some off-brand soda. It is just as much garbage as coca cola but at least it's cheap.
- Coca cola is a little below 3€ a bottle (1.5l if i'm not mistaken) house brand is what the price should be at most: 0.89€.
- I agree soda dependence isn't a good thing, but there's not much evidence diet soda is any less healthy than tea.
  
  Diet soda contains sweeteners that are suspected to cause cancer. Granted, you'd have to drink a couple of liters of diet soda a day before you need to be seriously concerned, but tea has one big advantage: It contains as much sugar or sweeteners as you add to it, so there's that.

Soda is such a fucking profitable scam because it's mostly water and that resource is mostly free. The syrup and carbonation should be pennies compared to what it actually sells for.
- Water is far from “mostly free”, especially at the amounts used by soda makers
  
  Here in Germany they can extract millions of liters for a symbolic euro, that is basically free and also far from a third world country. Coke has enough power to get through with this.
  
  Don't know the situation in america so what you say may be true, but on some countries (developing ones where the power of the state is diminished) water is not free for everybody else, but multinational corporations get almost unlimited use concessions for their bottlers for a laughably low fee if any, drying out the area and sometimes literally leaving towns or regions with no public water left for other uses, forcing the people to have to pay for other sources. I don't live in a place in that situation yet, but some other regions in my country are going exactly through that. In some cases, those beverages are for the american market.

Reason 500,000 to not buy any Coca Cola corp products

As long as I stay mad at "those damn libs" then companies can raise prices with impunity. If nobody boycotts these innocent companies then stock prices will be able to surge.
Honestly though, I wish people understood that by blaming only inflation they're effectively giving companies a blank check to keep raising prices. Sigh.

It's usually very small, but here, prices must also show how much 100g/100ml of something costs
- Then you get shops like M&S where all the expensive varieties of (for example) tomato are £/kg and the cheap ones are £/unit so you can't see the big price gap.
  
  Nah, in places where you're obliged to put the price/kg on display that would be illegal. But writing a price per unit in LARGE font and adding a really _small price per kilo would be a legal, albeit shitty, move
- Where is “here” approximately?
  In the U.S. retailers are notorious for having the “unit” price of similar items being listed as (for example) $1.57/oz in one case and $2.23/count in another.
  
  EU has a directive about it. Prices must be shown in the proper unit, including all taxes and any "before" price if it's on "sale".
  
  Not sure where that commenter is from, but it's the case for Germany. Pretty useful to compare
  
  At least in California in grocery stores they always have a per weight tag too. Problem is that it's not always the same weight...
  
  Exactly this, they will put $/oz next to $/unit next to $/lb. It's infuriating but I still take the time to do the math.
  
  Well, since my instance is local I can just as well say that it's Switzerland. Apparently it's mandatory to label proces in a specific way. So far, I've never encountered the case that I wasn't able to compare those prices between products of the same category.

Y'all, remember this is sugar water and even at $1.06 there's a significant profit margin.
- Is not even sugar water, it's corn tea with artificial flavors and colors.
  
  Depends on the country. Corn syrup in everything is a distinctly American phenomenon
- Yeah, it certainly doesn't seem like their production costs would increase much from inflation...
  
  They don't increase from inflation. The price increase is inflation and I think it's an important distinction to make.

They “proved” the trick works by a couple years back, releasing some different flavors in that shape can. Too many of us paid the premium to get the different flavor, even knowing it’s just manufactured scarcity. I still miss the blueberry-acai Diet Coke. Maybe they came away with “weirdly shaped cans sell at bigger profit”

If it's tall and slim, it worth more. This is true for both cans and people.

What are you doing step inflation!?

We've had those bottles for years now here in Sweden.
The reason for the change to the taller thinner can is because the amount of aluminium used in the top and bottom is less. The top and bottom in an aluminum can is the thickest parts.
The price increase has nothing to do with it though..
- While the chapter can statement us true, they definitely took the chance to up the price if the dates match. Capitalism at it's best.
- How is the top smaller though? It looks identical. There must be another reason.
  
  Search on YouTube to see how aluminium cans are made and you'll understand why the "lid" and bottom is where the aluminium is thicker (as compared to the "walls").

This must be that soft landing 3% inflation I've been hearing all about.

They'll switch back to the normal can soon enough...with the raised price, so they can do it again...

Consuming that utterly unhealthy drink is the real trickflation.

Yea pepsi did something similar with pepsi "diet"
- Dumbflation.
  
  Evilflation

For some reason, those taller cans even feel like less. Maybe because they are so thin. We have them for several years here in Germany.

We've had these types of cans for years and years and years where I'm from, but they were expensive before the switch too.

At least it's still original taste ...

188 comments