Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pretty damned pissed off now. (Any person of weak reading constitution or one easily put off by vulgarity ought to just skip th rest of this now.)
Allow him to explain.
Your Maximum Leader loves his ice cream. He is something of an ice cream snob. He wants lots of flavor. Creaminess. A good aroma (yes, ice cream has aroma). Good natural ingredients. There are a few brands that he likes and buys with regularity. Among those “premium” brands is Edy’s Ice Cream.
Since “premium” ice creams are a little pricey, your Maximum Leader (being a frugal fellow) buys a bunch of of half-gallons at a time when they are on sale. (A local grocery chain - Giant - often runs a 2-for-1 deal on Tuesdays.)
Now… Here comes the anger.
Your Maximum Leader goes through phases. Sometimes he eats lots of ice cream. Then he’ll go weeks (months) and never touch it. He has recently entered a phase where he finds himself eating more ice cream. He had a few half-gallon containers that were in the deep freeze from a recent sale. Yesterday he saw that Edy’s was on sale at Giant, so he went and bought a few more containers for the freezer. When he returned to the Villainschloss and put the ice cream into the freezer he noticed something…
The new containers seemed to be smaller than the old containers.
At first he thought it was some sort of visual trick becuase the colors of the container had changed. So he picked up the last of the “old containers” and put it side by side to a “new” container. The “new” container still seemed smaller.
Then he looked at the packaging to find out how much ice cream was in each one.
The “old” container - 1.75 quarts.
The “new container - 1.5 quarts.
What the hell is going on here? Your Maximum Leader just spent $4.00 for 3 quarts of ice cream. About a six weeks ago he spent $4.00 for 3.5 quarts of ice cream. What the fuck? First off… He thought he was buying a fucking half-gallon of ice cream in the first place. That is two (2, dos, deux, 1+1) quarts of ice cream. Your Maximum Leader is pretty damned put out in learning that he probably hasn’t been buying a true half gallon of ice cream for over a year. Now he’s learned that he is paying the same fucking price for 25% less ice cream. Frankly… He’s paying 2 quart prices for 1.5 quart containers.
He is pretty fucking upset right now. He doesn’t normally bandy about the f-word. But this is quite offensive. Your Maximum Leader understands market forces and how dairy prices have increased and that profit margins are tight. But he doesn’t think that screwing the customer out of a half-a-friggin quart of ice cream is going to make things better. Your Maximum Leader wouldn’t be complaining about Edy’s raising the price of a half-gallon of ice cream to cover their increased costs and need to make a profit. But holding the price steady and shrinking the size of the package to squeeze out a little cost savings seems damned underhanded. Your Maximum Leader knows milk costs money. He knows that sugar costs money. He knows vanilla costs money. He knows it costs more to ship ice cream to stores. He gets that. He would understand the cost of ice cream going up. But he doesn’t want to pay the same amount and get less (and probably have to buy more) just so the company can boast that they aren’t raising prices.
What did Edy’s (or Dreyer’s, or Nestle or whoever owns Edy’s) have to spend to retool equipment and redesign the packaging to camouflage this heinous change? How much of did they save on that? Damn this is angering.
Your Maximum Leader is seriously considering finding another ice cream to buy. He’ll have to try looking at the Turkey Hill stuff to see what they are doing now. (FYI - Your Maximum Leader doesn’t like Bryers. Its texture is too “grandular” on the tounge.)
Damned dirty ice cream makers… Going and fucking with your Maximum Leader’s ice cream. Now they’ve gone and ruined a perfectly good day with their tricks and deceptions…
Rat bastards…
Carry on.