Melissa Simonson (@realmelissasimo) is back, and this time, she’s investigating purported changes to the Cadbury mini-eggs recipe.
The creator, who has over half a million cumulative TikTok likes, makes content calling out the shady actions of food companies, like shrinkflation impacting both Betty Crocker cake mix and Old Spice. And as the Easter season draws to a close, she’s looking at the Cadbury mini-egg bars, which she notes is a “beloved product that people hoard.”
But on the Hersheyland website, the chocolate bar has an average two-star rating, which it has amassed from 245 separate reviews. One reviewer, Kryptic, awarded the treat one star, adding, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Meanwhile, Maggie gave the bar a two-star rating. She said in her review, “I thought the bag I bought on Amazon had been chemically contaminated because they tasted so foul. When you make a major change without notice, that ruins generations of goodwill and future purchases.”
As fellow user LMisa dubbed the chocolate bar a one-star “disappointment,” Melissa noted that every single review had some variation of the following response from the company: “We will definitely take note of the information provided and will forward it along to the appropriate department. Thanks for sharing with us.”
Further to this, she noted how because the recipe has changed, a lot of reviewers are wondering if the food is no longer gluten-free, or safe for people with peanut allergies or celiac to consume. But rather than addressing these concerns directly, Hershey appears to be responding to every customer saying they will email them.
In one review response, the company revealed, “We are happy to provide information but do not do so on this site because the answer remains on the internet and will not be updated if the information changes.”
@realmelissasimo And we haven’t even begun to talk about Kraft, Mondelez, Cadbury and the hostile takeover! Follow for part 3! 🫶🏼 #cadbury #shrinktok #greedflation #marketing#greenscreen ♬ original sound – Melissa Simonson
In other words, as Melissa notes, what Hershey is saying is that “we might change the recipe at some point and we can’t be sure our marketing people will update the website fast enough to outrun a lawsuit.”
All in all, Melissa seemed baffled by this conundrum, as she noted, “When you have a product that is so successful that you have diehard fans who will spend 200-400 more dollars in your season so they don’t run out, that is a winning product that you don’t mess with. So why keep breaking stuff that you are winning?”
Hershey didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via contact form.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.