Speaking Of Worthless Pieces Of Chocolate, Why Do Companies Lie To Us?

While researching the previous post about chocolate, I came across this bit of good news about movie theater Raisinets. 

Yippee! Paying $5 for candy isn’t so discouraging because Raisinets come in a LARGER SIZE. Even bad candy is better when you get more of it. And, now there are no artificial ingredients.

This is exciting news.

Until you see the photo of the old Raisinets box.

New box: NET WT 1.1 OZ (31 g)

Old box: NET WT 1.1 OZ (31 g)

I’m no mathematician, but those are pretty much the same. Some shyster in some corporate boardroom somewhere made a conscious decision to dupe innocent movie goers – like us – thinking we just don’t know any better. And he was right.

If the box says Larger Size, then that’s good enough. If it says there aren’t artificial ingredients, then it is healthier, even though there weren’t artificial ingredients before.

If my corn flakes say, “This package is sold by weight, not volume. Some settling of contents may occur during shipping,” and it doesn’t bother me, then I will keep buying a 40-ounce box with 14 ounces of cereal.

If my shampoo has instructions that say “Lather. Rinse. Repeat” and I’m dumb enough to wash my hair the second time, whose fault is that?

We can’t really blame corporate America for taking advantage of us. Don’t we deserve what we get when all too often we just don’t pay enough attention? Or worse, when we notice we are getting swindled and we don’t say, “Um, excuse me, but you’re not doing this to me anymore.”