The beloved “Sesame Street” character Cookie Monster has a message for our government: “Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller.” Cookie Monster wrote the message in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday and has received quite the attention, from cookie lovers and politicians.
“Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller” was punctuated with a sad face emoji, then the blue cookie monster wrote in a follow-up post, “Guess me going to have to eat double da cookies!”
The Cookie Monster’s post to his 626,000 followers garnered the attention of the White House which reposted the message and added: “C is for consumers getting ripped off. President Biden is calling on companies to put a stop to shrinkflation.”
Democrat U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, re-posted Cookie Monster’s comments, adding, “Me too, Cookie Monster… People in my state of Ohio are fed up — They should get all the cookie they pay for.”
Steve Reed, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, explained to ABC News
the term “shrinkflation” is “used to describe implicitly increasing the price of an item by slightly decreasing the amount or quantity in a package.”
Cookie Monster is not the only one fighting to maintain cookie sizes: a recent report issued by the office of Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, cited the fact that the size of some packages of OREO cookies, for example, has decreased by 6% since 2019, and a family size box of Wheat Thins has decreased 12% in weight, according to government data.
Casey introduced a bill just last week which would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general the authority to crack down on shrinkflation. “Corporations are trying to pull the wool over our eyes by shrinking their products without reducing their prices — anyone on a tight budget sees it every time they go to the grocery store,” he said in a statement on Feb. 28.
“Pennsylvania families are sick and tired of digging deeper into their wallets for their weekly grocery runs while corporate CEOs laugh all the way to the bank. I’m fighting to crack down on shrinkflation and hold corporations accountable for these deceptive practices” added Casey.
ABC News reports that “shrinking sizes have also been spotted in other products from cleaning supplies and coffee to frozen food…Data also showed that some toilet paper rolls such as Charmin Ultra Soft now have approximately 20 fewer sheets than before.”
President Joe Biden recently addressed the notion in a video posted on X on Feb. 11, ahead of the Super Bowl: “Give me a break. The American public is tired of being played for suckers…I’m calling on companies to put a stop to this. Let’s make sure businesses do the right thing now.”