If you're like me, you can remember the days when you could pop into your corner shop with a £1 coin and purchase what felt like a extraordinary amount of goodies. Now, when I walk past the confectionery aisle and look at the prices of some of my childhood staples, I can feel my eyes water.
If you needed another stark reminder about the ever rising rate of inflation, and cost of living, seeing a Freddo listed as 26p will be it. True, it is lower than the dizzy heights of 30p which it reached in 2017, but for reference, the last time Freddos were 10p was in 2006 (oh, the good old days).
For those of you who have not been blessed enough to have enjoyed this treat, a Freddo (originally Freddy the Frog in the 1970s) is a chocolate bar brand shaped like an anthropomorphic cartoon frog. It was originally manufactured by MacRobertson's, an Australian confectionery company, but is now produced by Cadbury.
As celebrity Joe Lycett stated last year, when investigating this vital issue for his Channel 4 show 'Joe Lycett's Got Your Back': "The basic numbers are these – a Freddo bar cost 10p in 2000. It went up to 17p, that’s a 70 per cent increase, in 2010. Believe it or not, for a brief period it was 30p, but now it’s 25p.
"Obviously, for most of us, our quality of life stems from how many Freddos we can afford in a typical day, so I looked at how many Freddos you can buy in 2000 based on average earnings, compared with how many we can buy today based on average earnings.
"The average hourly rate of pay in 2000 was £7.50. That bought you 75 Freddos. Of course, pay has gone up really quite a lot since 2000. It’s gone up to £14.20 an hour on average. But here’s the really bad news. That average hour’s work buys you only 57 Freddos – disaster!"
I couldn't agree more, Joe - especially as the Freddo has pretty much remained the same size, despite the growing price, meaning you get even less for your hard earned cash. It started, in 2007, at 17g but grew, believe it or not, to 20g in 2007 - but then shrunk back to the current 18g version in 2011.
If you think that's bad, just be thankful we aren't Australian. As, whilst our bars may have grown in price and not size, theirs actually shrunk to an underwhelming 12g. Then again, this isn't exactly surprising behaviour from Cadbury, considering they recently shrank the size of its Dairy Milk sharing bars by 10 per cent - but did not reduce the price.
The company has been accused of "shrinkflation" - reducing the size of a product while keeping the price the same to boost profits. However, parent company Mondelez blamed costs associated with the production of its chocolate spiking.
A Mondelez spokesperson recently said: "We're facing the same challenges that so many other food companies have already reported when it comes to significantly increased production costs - whether it's ingredients, energy or packaging - and rising inflation.
"We understand that consumers are faced with rising costs too, which is why we look to absorb costs wherever we can, but, in this difficult environment, we've had to make the decision to slightly reduce the weight of our medium Cadbury Dairy Milk bars for the first time since 2012, so that we can keep them competitive and ensure the great taste and quality our fans enjoy."
As frustrating as this is, it is worth remembering that it isn't just Freddos - and chocolate more generally - that have become casualties of the cost of living crisis. Prices have soared on hundreds of items at a time when most people can ill afford it.
Just this week, dairy farmers warned milk prices could be set to increase by as much as 50 per cent due to rising farming costs. This is in addition to estimates from experts who have warned shoppers could face an added £180 to their average annual grocery bill.
"Price rises will be unwelcome news for households who already face falling disposable income because of the rise in national insurance and energy price caps," said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, earlier this week. "Retailers continue to face cost pressures from higher shipping rates, with crude oil prices having almost doubled over the last year.
"Other pressures include labour shortages, commodity price increases, and rising energy prices."
As Andrew Burns of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy added: “A pound is buying less, yet demand is increasing. I hate to use the phrase, but it’s a perfect storm of uncertainty and financial challenges all going in the wrong direction.”
And it is - for, whilst my heart bleeds for the generations who will never know the joy of buying 10 Freddos for £1 on a Friday, tracking their rising cost acts as an important and nostalgic reminder of a wider issue. Many of us use these childhood favourites as an indicator for the ever growing cost of inflation in this country and the very real cost of living crisis it has caused.
So next time you hear someone say those words 'How much does a Freddo cost?' maybe offer them a kind word before you answer.
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