The big Christmas question - are chocolate sharing tubs getting smaller?

At this time of year, chocolate sharing tubs are a firm fixture on living room coffee tables and in office kitchens around the Island.

However, every year we love to moan about the fact that these tubs are seemingly getting smaller, and that we used to get more chocolates for our money.

So, we went out and bought a selection of the most popular tubs – purely for research purposes! and counted how many chocolates each contained.

Generally, these tubs cost between £5 and £6, regardless of their size, though many supermarkets offer ‘buy one get one free’ or ‘two for £10’ deals. Check out the Christmas section of prices.je to compare the prices of individual tubs across all the Island’s supermarkets.

Currently, the best value for money is a tub of Quality Street, which contains 66 sweets. However, at the other end of the list, a similar sized tub of Cadbury Roses contains just 51 chocolates – that’s 15 less sweets.

Also, we found that a tub of Cadbury Heroes contains 563g of treats, but that an astonishing 213g of that is the wrappers!  

If you’re wondering whether tubs are getting smaller, then the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. In 2013, an average tub of Quality Street cost a similar amount to today, but you got 789g of sweets, rather than the 600g you get today. It seems as though manufacturers are keen to keep the prices of these festive favourites around the same price each year, and as a result, shrinkflation is coming into play.

And, back in the 1980s, you could get a 2.5kg tub of Quality Streets, which would last the family from Christmas Eve through to New Year’s Day. However, these were priced at £5 a tin, which with inflation would be the equivalent of £24 today, meaning they were far more of a ‘luxury’ item back then.

Meanwhile, a popular discussion on social media these days is what the public’s favourite Celebrations chocolate is. We counted the sweets in our tub of Celebrations (obviously this will vary from tub to tub). We counted: ten Snickers and Milky Way; nine Mars; seven Bounty, Galaxy and Maltesers Teasers; six Galaxy Caramel; and four Twix. How did your favourite fare?

Here’s what we found:

66 sweets – Quality Street – 600g (no seperate weight without wrappers)

60 sweets – Cadbury Heroes – 350g (563g with wrappers)

61 sweets – Celebrations – 550g (no seperate weight without wrappers)

51 sweets – Cadbury Roses – 550g tub (562g with wrappers)