The last good thing at the supermarket is gone. Mad Chapman mourns the Cadbury mini egg cartons.

When life is overwhelming and it feels like every story around you is a bad news story, there are a few things that can be relied upon to instil a sense of calm, order and comfort in our lives. For me and, I’m going to assume, tens of thousands of New Zealanders, the little cardboard carton of Cadbury mini eggs only costing a dollar every Easter was one of those things.

Just did an unexciting grocery shop that you thought would cost $40 and instead cost $70? Grab a little carton of mini eggs at the counter for a dollar more and suddenly it’s a successful trip to the supermarket. 

Finding yourself feeling low every afternoon at your office desk when you’ve still got hours left to work? Crack open a little cardboard box filled with crunchy tiny chocolate eggs and experience a moment of ecstasy. 

Children freaking out in the muggy summer air? Your woes will be gone with a dollar coin and a pocket-sized little treat.

The examples are endless but the meaning is the same. Without realising it, New Zealand society of today built its foundations on rows of yellow cardboard boxes containing 41.5g of milk chocolate easter eggs. It was the only thing (barely) keeping us together.

And now, overnight, the foundations of our society and everything we hold dear are crumbling.

1. Without so much as a warning notice, Cadbury mini eggs returned to supermarket shelves, not in sweet wee cardboard cartons but in gross, bad plastic bags.
2. Not only are the bags fugly, they are also smaller (shrinkflation), containing a mere 31g. That is a nearly 25% decrease in size. 
3. Not only are the bags fugly and much smaller, they are also more expensive, at $2.30 for frankly three bites of chocolate, more than twice what it cost just few years ago.

Cadbury took shrinkflation, inflation and a worse product, rolled it into a turd, wrapped it in tinfoil, lit it on fire and threw it on our porch.

This all happened over a fortnight ago and shook the nation (my home of two people and a cat) to its core. I didn’t write anything about it then because I naively believed that Cadbury was simply doing a phased rollout, saving everyone’s favourite Easter egg for last (I was desperate and grasping at cardboard straws).

But no, it’s real, and 125g (AKA a handful) of shell-y chocolate will now set you back $8.50. 

None of this should be a surprise to consumers. The global chocolate crisis has been worsening for over a year, and manufacturers all over the world have pointed to the rise in transport and materials costs as the reason for rising prices on the shelf. And Cadbury is not immune to the global downturn. It saw profits plummet 33% in 2023, so someone somewhere was tasked with getting more for less out of its smallest product. 

I’m no economist – quite the opposite, actually – but isn’t there such a thing as a loss leader? Cadbury is not even close to being the most beloved chocolate brand in New Zealand, but they are (historically) cheaper than Whittaker’s. That Whittaker’s refuses to make mini eggs is perhaps a testament to seasonal goods being hard to square away financially, which has forced Cadbury mini eggs into being a strange sort of luxury item instead of the affordable and favoured option. I say swallow the cost and accept mini eggs as a loss leader. They are surely Cadbury’s equivalent of the Costco $1.50 hot dog.*

Typically, the mini eggs sell out before Easter. I have been burned more than once for being cheap and waiting to buy them on special after Easter only to find them long gone. But this year? This year may just be the year to wait. I bought one bag (for science) and the eggs were as delicious as I remembered, a worthy winner in The Spinoff’s easter egg ranking. But I won’t be returning nearly daily as I used to. Will you?

One day, when we’re sipping our $18 cup of coffee ($3 extra for milk) and reminiscing about the good old days, I’ll be the first to say, “remember when Cadbury mini egg cartons were 90 cents?”

*Mad’s advice is of a general nature, and she is not responsible for any loss that any reader may suffer from following it.