Thursday, July 10, 2008

A Tide-y Prophet


Welcome to the new economy, where less is less it just costs more. Of course it's entirely possible that in the old economy marketers laughed their way to the bank selling us less by watering it down so it would look like more ... but that's just semantics.

On the left you can see the detergent I bought about three or four months ago. On the right is its replacement, which I purchased last week for the same price. The small bottle claims to contain the same 96 loads-worth of soap.

Let's see if the claims are true, shall we? Two loads down ... 94 to go.

My guess is someone's taking someone to the cleaner's alright. Or maybe they already have.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

But the one on the right is concentrated so you dont have to use as much

toyfoto said...

Tis true. The concentration WILL be factored in. But the proof will be if this bottle lasts the three to four months the others did.

I am still skeptical.

Anonymous said...

The new version actually cleans better, it just has less water in the formula which enables smaller packaging (so it's better for the environment!!)

toyfoto said...

Point well taken, Anonymous. And I would be thrilled to be wrong.

But I don't for a minute think your company (I checked your ISP with my site meter) is making any business decision based upon saving the environment alone. They are making their decisions on the cost of getting the item to market given the skyrocketing price of fuel and the whims of the consumers they hope to entice to buy their product over the myriad of products available to them.

Now in the overall, it may not be so bad to cut down on packaging, but the bottomline will still show P&G getting the most it can by packing more of these little buggers into the truck that supplies store shelves.

Of course the environment may very well benefit from this situation, but to say it's good for the consumer is something I will never buy.

Are these packages NOT recyclable? I mean we are putting them out with recycling and the recycling truck is taking them ... Should it really matter their size if they are being reused?

So many ways to look at it, really.

Shalini said...

Ooh, I can't believe someone from P&G actually commented; too funny. I read somewhere (and then confirmed myself) years ago that the Tide measurement cap had a line marked implying how far to fill up the soap for a load of laundry, but when you read the directions, the amount to use is actually HALF of where the marking on the cap is. Hmm, interesting. I don't know if they still do it, but it was too much for me for someone to be that obviously deceptive. I switched over to 7th Generation.
Oh, and this is the wrong post, but "The things I miss" made me cry; I feel the same way some days.

toyfoto said...

I know these big companies do scurrilous things to maximize their profits.

And thanks for that last bit. Sorry it made you cry, but glad you related.

toyfoto said...

oh. .. and I'd love to read your blog should you invite me.

Shalini said...

Thank you, but, oh, I don't really have a blog. I just got sick of the "enter your URL" thing whenever I would comment somewhere, esp. those that won't let you comment without a URL! I do have a flickr account, though under my real name...i'll leave a comment there some time soon.

toyfoto said...

Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

Get a sharpie and mark the container each time you do a load of laundry ;)