Life on Mars

I know shrinkflation is old news, but I was genuinely shocked when I saw the size of a Mars bar last week. It was tiny, no more than two bites at best.

I can’t remember the last time I bought a Mars bar so forgive my ignorance, but it was so small I thought it must be one of those ‘fun size’ bars. And then I saw a Mars duo on the shelf above it and that was also smaller and much slimmer than I remember, so I did some research and this is what I found.

Launched in the UK in the 1930s, the first Mars bar weighed approximately 56g. During my childhood in the Sixties and Seventies that had increased to 60g. Thereafter it reached a peak weight of around 65g in the 1990s, a golden era that saw Mars add even larger bars to the range – notably the 84g King size which became my Mars bar of choice. In 1997 the company even launched a short-lived ‘Mega Mars’ bar that weighed in at an impressive 125g.

In the mid Noughties the King size bar was replaced by the Mars duo (‘a pack containing two smaller individual bars designed to be shared or saved for later’). Meanwhile the standard bar remained largely the same size (65g) until 2008 when it was reduced to 58g, and since then it’s been getting smaller and smaller – 51g from 2013 to 2025, shrinking to 40g this year.

Adjusted for inflation, a 25p Mars bar in 1991 should cost no more than 77p in 2026. Instead the current, much smaller, bar can cost up to £1.20. And it’s not just Mars bars that are being hit by shrinkflation because the same thing is happening to lots of sweets, including chocolate bars. Thankfully larger bars are still available … but for how long?

Photo: iStock / Ekaterina79