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Halloween candy is playing a trick with its treats.
This year, mini-sized candies are getting even smaller, and parents filling their bowls on October 31 may be getting less bang for their buck.
The shrink-flation — or “shriek-flation,” in honor of spooky season — that’s already come for fast food and soda is also hitting candy companies like Mars Wrigley and Hershey, leaving some of their most popular bags of sweets looking a little skinnier.
The internet is choc-a-block with Reddit posts tracing the ever-shrinking sugar highs, with photos of a 1991 Mars bar that tipped the scales at 65 grams, compared to just 51 grams today.
Or take a 61.2-gram 1980s Snickers bar, which looks positively prehistoric compared to its 52.7-gram present-day counterpart.
More recent examples abound, too: This past summer, a retail worker reported that Hershey’s removed over 5 ounces of candy from its party-size bag of dark chocolate snacks.
The shrinkage comes as Halloween candy costs have climbed 71% since 2021 — nearly triple the national inflation rate during that period, according to a recent FinanceBuzz study.
Shrinkflation expert and ConsumerWorld.org contributor Edgar Dworsky, who has noticed this product weight loss since his teens, blamed the downsizing offense on various factors.
“Part of it has to do just with the increased costs that manufacturers face,” Dworsky, a former Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General who has been a consumer advocate for nearly 50 years, told The Post. “They have higher shipping costs, higher raw material costs.”
Indeed, the cost of producing confections soared 87.6% between 2019 and 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Dworsky didn’t discount corporate sleight of hand either, noting that customers are more sensitive to price increases than size changes.
“They’re not going to remember, ‘Oh, did this package have 160 little fun-size bars in there or did it have 205?’” he remarked.
But which confections have experienced the most “shriek-flation”? Here’s how several Halloween classics have slimmed down over the years:
Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Assortment
Taking the downsizing hall of fame is a classic: Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Assortment party pack. An anonymous retail worker cited by Dworsky noted the chocolate bag of bites went from 29 ounces in 2019 to just 23.9 ounces today.
That’s over 17% less candy, even though both packages carry the same $19.99 price tag.
The consumer champion claimed food companies make shrinkage harder to spot by naming their products things like ‘super-size’ or ‘big bag,’ even when the product doesn’t measure up.
“If a wife says to her husband, ‘Go get the family-size Cheerios when you’re in the store,’ you’re not paying attention to the net weight,” he said.
Rolo Party Pack
Rolo’s chocolate-covered caramels haven’t escaped shrinkflation, either.
The Party Pack receded from 40 ounces in 2019 for $8.98 to $14.84 for 35.6 ounces today based on current Walmart pickup options — more than 5 ounces gone from the bag.
In 2025, Rolo’s parent company, Hershey, told retailers it was hiking prices by double digits to reflect a higher list price, as well as changes to the weight and number of candies in a package, Bloomberg reported.
In other words, it proved that high prices can come in ever-smaller packages.
Andrew Archambault, president of U.S. confection at Hershey, said the increase was due to the soaring costs of cocoa, which shot up by 143.9% from 2019 to 2024, per BLS.
Reese’s Miniatures Party Pack
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have also taken a bite out of their portions.
Six years ago, they clocked in around 40 ounces for $8.98. Today, they’ve lost nearly 11% of their cup size, weighing in around 35.6 ounces.
Still, a bag of the popular treats can cost upwards of $13 depending on the retailer.
Reese’s was recently blown to pieces by its online customers because of the change.
“Maybe it’s just me, and this is a very mundane post to get existential on, but what are we supposed to do in the future?” griped one user in a Reddit thread about the brand’s not-so-fun sizes. “These companies will never return products to the original sizes or prices unless they’re forced to, and that’s not going to happen anytime soon. I’m so tired of shareholders running our lives.”
Party Pack Hershey’s Miniatures Assortment
Hershey’s Miniatures assortment has also gotten… well… more mini.
The Party Pack weighed 40 ounces in 2019–2020, according to LendingTree, compared to the 35.9 ounces listed on the chocolatier’s website today. That’s a 10.25% decrease.
LendingTree also documented a price increase from $8.98 to $13.24 at Walmart between 2019 and 2024, while current pickup prices at the local big-box store clock in at $14.84 before going out of stock.
And while the Pennsylvania-based chocolatier has acknowledged this size and price adjustment, company leadership claimed it could offer the appearance of better value.
“It’s not a direct price point increase, but rather it’s kind of a combination of sizing and price, which can tend to offer perhaps a better value perception for consumers,” Hershey’s then-CEO Michele Buck declared during a 2025 earnings call, before stepping down that August.
M&M’s Party Size
M&M’S Milk Chocolate Party Size currently weighs 38 ounces, Mars reps confirmed.
That’s 4 ounces less than in 2019, despite costing $14.84 today compared to $8.98 then, based on current Walmart pickup prices.
The weight loss also affected their dark chocolate counterpart, which dropped from 19.2 ounces to 18 ounces — even though Walmart pickup prices nearly doubled, going from $4.86 to $9.48 today
Mars products have been slimming down across the pond as well.
A spring investigation by UK consumer advocacy group Which? found that the weight of a Maltesers milk chocolate Easter egg at Tesco had dropped from 231g to 194g — but the price per gram had risen by 39%.
“We always aim to absorb rising costs wherever possible,” a spokesperson for Mars Wrigley told The Guardian. “However, ongoing pressures, including the well-documented rises in the cost of cocoa, mean we have had to make carefully considered changes.”
“As with all our products, final pricing remains at the discretion of individual retailers.”
