Ever-decreasing chocolates

Things aren't what they used to be - how often did you hear that growing up?  Well, it turns out it's true, especially if we're talking about chocolates.

We've put up with quite a lot in 2016 already, but this may be the final straw.  It's nearly Christmas and the large chocolate companies are messing with our chocs!

It's been done quite sneakily and gradually - I bet there were hoping we wouldn't notice because of Brexit and Trump etc.  But Watchdog have highlighted it, and it's really quite shocking.

I'd suspected it for a while - I'm fairly sure that when I was a child a Wagon Wheel was the size of my head.  OK, if not my head, it still seemed pretty large.  Now it's not even the size of the palm of my hand.

That Christmas favourite, the Terry's chocolate orange, used to have the chocolate segments so tightly packed together we would have to smash it repeatedly against our fireplace to separate them, and then there was the solid stalk of chocolate left in the middle as an additional treat once the segments had been consumed, remember that?

Well, no more.  The segments are quite frankly puny, there's no centre stalk of pure orangey chocolate goodness and it's reduced in size by 10% too - that's two whole pieces less.

And do you remember the huge tins of Quality Street you used to get for Christmas as a kid?  The seemingly bottomless box of brightly wrapped chocs and toffees that you'd be wading through until well into the New Year?

Not any more folks - you'll be lucky to make them last until Boxing Day.  Also the Toffee Deluxe has been replaced with a Honeycomb Crunch - how was this allowed to happen?

Now there's gaping valleys between Toblerone's mountains, and a bag of Maltesers has shrunk by 15% - that's 10 Maltesers per bag lost, never to be seen again.

Enough is enough - it's time to take a stand, and woe betide the chocolate company that messes with the Purple Ones or the Strawberry Cremes and Dreams!