1991 Mars Bar surfaces at 62.5g — 56% heavier than today's 40g bar

A house clearance in Scunthorpe turned up an unopened Mars Bar with a 1991 best-before date, and it dwarfs the current product: 62.5g versus the 40g bar sold today, a roughly 22.5g (56%) reduction over 35 years. Victoria Gordon, who runs the clearing service, photographed the vintage bar next to a modern one and the comparison spread quickly online as a vivid example of ‘shrinkflation’ — the practice of cutting product size while holding or raising price. Mars, Incorporated responded that it has changed bar sizes and pack formats over the years in response to consumer demand, manufacturing costs, and the price of cocoa.

The significance here is purely as a consumer-economics and viral-media anecdote rather than hard data: a single decades-old bar is an illustration, not a controlled measurement of portion decline. Cocoa prices have in fact risen sharply in recent years, which lends the manufacturer’s cost explanation some credibility, but the story’s traction is driven by the striking visual and social-media amplification more than by any new disclosure.

Editorially, this piece sits outside a cybersecurity and technology remit — there is no security, software, or tech-industry dimension to it. It’s flagged here as likely mis-routed into the summarization pipeline; if the intent was tech coverage, the source is a poor fit and probably should not run.