Spyke
Pyr
lemmy.ca

Stupid shape for a can too, tips over In a vehicles cup holder

111
lemmy.dbzer0.com

You sure about that?

Cylinders of the same volume will have the same area, so it should be the same amount of aluminum?

Maybe less, even, since the lid and bottom are thicker than the sides and on the taller can there's less of that thick top/bottom

15
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I had a feeling it'd math out something like that if I opened my fat mouth, lol

I do wonder if thickness of the walls or lid/bottom does have an effect, though, as there must be some reason they make these weird ass cans

21
Sippy Cupreply
lemmy.world

The lid uses more aluminum than the rest of the can, making that smaller will have a bigger impact than the height of the can.

10
404reply
lemmy.zip

there must be some reason

Just a marketing trick IIRC, since energy drinks got popular and beer cans got unpopular among gen z.

7

pretty sure it just lets them fit more cans into the same box for shipping, same logic as how you can pack more sand into a box than you can pebbles

2
daltotronreply
lemmy.world

I always thought that narrower pressure vessels could contain higher pressure, because the curvature is more severe, meaning that for a vessel that needs to retain a similar level of pressure, you could just use less material in the walls of the vessel. Is this not the case with these new cans, and they have the same wall thickness, or is the tradeoff just one that still works out to be in favor of more total aluminum usage?

1

same size top/bottom for both; only difference is that the standard has a wider body bevel, and the sleek can goes nearly straight down. same lid on both cans, as well. not sure what it does for the scaled material cost, but since the lid is by far the most expensive part, it's probably negligible, compared to the ability to inflate the price on a taller can.

I can't fully explain the trend, but ready-to-drink (RTD) alcoholic beverages are a big hit for the industry, and even moreso when presented in the truly/high noon shape. maybe it's a generational thing? I don't get it, but I'm also not the target demographic.

bonus fact: the conversion costs of filling sleek cans is pretty steep for most independent brewers, so craft beer will take a couple years to adapt, if ever.

4

The easiest way to imagine how cylinders have different surface area for a given volume, is imagine how closely a shape matches a sphere, it should have a lower surface area.

Imagine a soda can with the width of one water molecule. The cross section of that can would be on the order of four aluminum atoms for that hair thin can. Then imagine a can that's nearly a cube or a sphere and how all the liquid can be hiding behind other liquid atoms: hence fewer can atoms per liquid volume.

Blood vessels have high surface area. A pint of blood has low.

3
lemm.ee

That can’t be true.

Consider a cylinder cut in half, giving a circular cross section. Cover each new circular gap with new aluminum.

Now you’ve enclosed the same volume in cylinders, with a different surface area.

0

You also created 2 cylinders where once there was one, which is not what was being discussed. You even mention that you added material:

Cover each new circular gap with new aluminum

I could have said "2 cylinders of the same volume" but I felt context made that clear

6

Yes I did say that I added material. That’s the point: you cannot do this transformation without adding material.

But you’re saying this is only with two cylinders?

1
lemmy.world

...do people think the tall can is bigger? If anything, I've always assumed that they were smaller 🤷‍♂️

80
lemmy.world

Oh hey we watched that video in my psych class. Funny phenomenon. Kids are dumb

34
lemmy.world

Now now, you shouldn't put yourself down like that. I'm sure you're not dumb.

3
ladreply
programming.dev

You almost sound like PunnyName is the last remaining adult in the world

5
lemmy.world

Oh no! A potential monotonous job that lets me live a life of luxury 10,000x better than any of those animals if I wanted! Better equate it to a death trap... Not the reality of simply existing in the first place lol.

3
Morefanreply
retrolemmy.com

Capitalism isn't perfect, but no other system has provided so much for so many. Fact.

0

Saying "fact" after a stupid sentence doesn't make it true.

-1
Gabureply
lemmy.world

Lick more of that boot. Go on, get it shining, slave boy.

-1
lemmy.world

Said the dumb Gabu man to every man, woman, and child in a society born since 12,000 years ago.

What an absolutely, straight up, dumbest possible take anyone in existence could have. Are you possibly a literal baby talking to me from the afterlife after you refused to conform to society at all? After being born with such gifted intelligence that you refused to partake in existence?

If so, props lol.

Otherwise, have fun in your shack in the Outback or Canadian Wilderness with somehow so much time on your hands you're still shit posting on Lemmy lol.

0

Stop using so many drugs, your brain clearly got completely cooked.

0

"Kids are dumb" is your conclusion? Eff off. Adults fall for the same tricks kids do. Else things would cost $7.00 instead of $6.99.

2
moistclumpreply
lemmy.world

In my highschool psych class we actually went to an elementary school and did this experiment with the kiddos. It was a while ago but if I recall correctly, 9/10 times they thought tall = bigger. I bet some people never grow out of that mindset or at least at first glance our less smart brain goes “tall is big!”

30
lemmy.world

I guarantee these big corporations have psych majors working in their marketing teams and it's 100% intentional.

26

Oh for sure, it’s definitely a whole wing of the organization. People are the ones who spend money, so if you want more money, study and exploit the people who spend it.

7

This exact image is what I had in mind when I saw this post. Lol

10

Area is just hard to discern. Manipulating the radius a little bit will alter area quite significantly (because its quadratic) but you won't be able to perceive it. By comparison, height is much easier to see. So you can decrease the radius a bit and add height some and you can fool people.

3

They do have a larger surface area for the same volume...

3

Same. They look like the small 25 cl energy drink cans, so even if they're still 33 cl, they look smaller.

1
lemmy.world

That's a 2.24x price increase. That's even beyond Argentina-hyperinflation levels of increase. Are we sure this is an apples-to-apples comparison? Like, was there a sale or bulk discount that made the shorter can relatively cheaper? I'm struggling to believe a retailer would engage in such a brazen markup in a single week. (Not to say it's not possible, but it's extreme enough that I'm not taking the word of some random hand-written graphic on the Internet.)

61

I mean... I'll regularly go to the grocery store and see soda prices vary by 200-300% week-to-week. Sure, it's all based around "sale" value, but it amounts to the same thing. If it's $9 for 2 12-packs one week and then $11 for a 12-pack the next week, it isn't an invalid markup because you had to buy 2 to get the first price.

28

I'm more inclined to blame the manufacturer for the price increase (in this case Coke) as opposed to the retailer. Especially in this case, I kinda doubt a company as large as Coke would allow retailers to stray from the price they want by more that a few cents.

6

It probably costs more to distribute the new can shape since our entire civilization’s can infrastructure is built around a standard can.

3

It's not an apples to apples comparison. This was a reddit post made by someone who went out of their way to buy things for different amounts to make ragebait.

It's a dumb post and it is safe to ignore it. Sadly someone reposted it here.

2
programming.dev

Several years ago mountain dew had the following prices

20 oz - $2

1 liter - $2

2 liter - $2

1.5 liter - $1

It wasn't a sale, they had these prices on several stores for over a year.

49
9point6reply
lemmy.world

Honestly kinda based

Soda costs pennies, the plastic container is the bulk of the cost, and not much changes in plastic quantity between container sizes

16

Weird, looks the CEO's bonus is worth 1000 marketing and logistics guys.

Also, it turns out worker compensation and materials were already included in the cost of production.

1

This toxic garbage has negative value. They should be paying me to drink this poison.

1

These units hurt me. For others with the same pain 20 oz is a bit over 1/2 a liter

9
lemmyf.uk

20oz are more expensive per volume because they sell faster. There's less of a demand for larger sizes typically go flat too fast for people unless they're having a party or something, and even in that case they don't have the convenience of being able to drink from the bottle.

6
lemmy.world

Do you leave your soda uncapped or something? I buy almost exclusively 2 liter bottles and they very rarely go flat on me. I'll drink one over the course of about 4 days.

0

No. I never had any issues with larger soda bottles. I would usually buy the 1 or 1.5 liter bottles because they were usually the best deal.

I did some sales work for one of the local soda distributors, and it was crazy how much better the 20oz bottles did in comparison to everything else.

It was the same with energy drinks. Most people would buy single cans for $3 when they could get a 4 pack for $10 or a 12 pack for $20.

We would usually just open the 12 packs at our accounts because the singles simply sold better.

3

When I was in college a gas station a block from me would do incredible deals on soda 12 packs abouth once a month. Like buy one get two free. We'd stock a full month's worth every time and basically have a soda mountain for people to rummage through

3
Serinusreply
lemmy.world

A 12oz can was around $0.28 (when you buy a case). Today you're lucky if you can pay $0.45.

2
Fubarberryreply
sopuli.xyz

I've had the best luck with Dollar General for affordable drinks. You have to wait for a decent sale and stock up though, and use coupons when available.

For example: recently for Dr Pepper they had two 12-packs for $14, but you could buy three for $15 and there was a coupon for $2 off when buying three, making it $13 for three 12-packs. So you would pay a dollar less for 36 cans than you would for 24. Comes out to about $0.36 per can.

2
Duraniereply
literature.cafe

You know how many smokers have/had their hard line on what price would make them quit smoking? For me (a 52yo woman) that was when pop breached $5.99 a 24 pack case. I would buy it again occasionally if sale prices dipped into that range, but having crossed that line it broke my habit. The thought of $7 for a 12 pack is just painful.

4

Yeah, that's fair. I haven't stopped drinking it, but I'm reducing how much I drink as prices increase.

1

Yeah, they're happy to offer lower prices for people who are willing to climb barriers. It's just a way of doing tiered pricing.

2
ladreply
programming.dev

It's not always an available option. If an ink maker deprecates old containers and starts selling smaller ones for almost the same price you can't just buy something else if you need consistency. Coca-Cola probably thinks that you can't just replace Coca-Cola®™© with substitutes and I know some people would agree

11

Well, I meant within brands. Drug packages are the worst. I've seen two boxes of the same drug side by side and the smaller box had more tablets. That is to say, containers can be deceptive. Look at the volume and weight of the product.

10

Have yet to see those, but I met packaging for 1 (yes, one) capsule that was about half of a phone size, looked like the usual package for 20 something tablets. In this case it could be a matter of standard package though

But then there's Velaxin that was cheaper in 20×75mg pack then 20×32.5mg, and this I cannot understand ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1
Swedneckreply
discuss.tchncs.de

do other countries not have comparative price? here in sweden that's listed right under the absolute price, e.g. a bottle of soda might cost 2 bucks and the comparative cost is 1.8$ per liter.

my dad drives me mad because he utterly ignores that and instead manually tries to estimate the comparative price, it's baffling

4
lemmy.world

Fuck corporations but I don't believe this for a second. People are just making this shit up now. Some dude scribbles some prices on a piece of paper and this whole website loses its mind.

43
lemmy.world

I was going to say... who the fuck was paying $1.06/can for Coke to begin with? Hell, I saw one of those 32oz Big Gulp cups selling for $4 less than a week ago.

This all just looks made up and hysterical, because Americans cannot handle not having their sugary treats.

9
maynarkhreply
feddit.nl

Not from the US, Coke was always around 1.05 - 1.20 USD where I lived in the early 2010s. Haven't been drinking too much of it since then so IDK. But Coke is irrationally cheap in the US apparently. Or it's just the old before/after taxes shenanigans again?

4
lemmy.world

This is testable. Go to the grocery store. Buy staple goods. Keep receipt. Buy the same products the next week.

2
lemmy.world

if you're buying coke in america, you should get the 12 packs at grocery stores instead. it's anywhere between $5.99 to $8.99, which is less than a dollar per can

36

That’s fucking crazy. I stopped buying soda pre-covid, but I regularly got 4 12packs for $2.99 each up until at least 2019.

12
voxelreply
sopuli.xyz

most people are getting cans like that in a pinch tho, if you want a lot of cola, regular 2 liter plastic bottles (or even better, 6-packs of 1.5/2l) are a much better deal

9
stockRotreply
lemmy.world

Wow good point! Water IS cheaper than coke! And healthier too I'm sure! It's a damn shame we're talking about coke and not water, or else I'm sure someone would give you a prize for your thoughtful and original comment.

23

you'd be surprised how often bottled coke is cheaper than bottled water

4
forcereply
lemmy.world

Or get the 2L bottles, which are usually around the same price as the 500 mL bottles (for some reason).

6
lemmy.ml

IME, not only no, but they will yell at the housemate who does for putting it on too tight.

2

It used to drive me mental when people would complain about how tight I'd screw the cap on. What do you even think the point of that thing is?!

3
programming.dev

Yes, it probably won't be completely flat after half a liter but the fizzyness will be noticeably weaker and will only get worse the more you drink, especially if you don't get to it soon. Two liters are ok if you're sharing them with multiple people who will finish it right away or the next day but they suck for one person unless you drink a ridiculous amount of soda.

1

I think you're just shaking it too much. If you are gentle to avoid losing the carbonation and put the cap on tight, it can last for days.

1

Not on sale? Where I am, I only see the $7 price when it's on sale and you have to buy 3. So it's 2 for $10 and get one free. Without that the normal price is about $10. The best sales that come around during big holidays only are buy 2 get 2 free, which brings it down to $5.

3
lemmy.ml

The biggest absolute price decrease in the price of 2 liters of coca-cola was in 2015, when the price dropped by $-1.79, or -100%.

Coke was free in 2015? Or is there a script filing is these paragraphs and it's counting missed data points as zero?

14

It dropped by -1.79 which means it became 1.79 more expensive.

AI is amazing lol

10
Dabundisreply
lemmy.world

One advantage of the tall narrow 12oz cans is they take up less horizontal space in the refrigerator

5
XIIIesqreply
lemmy.world

One disadvantage is that they're harder to stack

12
lemmy.world

Another advantage is that they take up less horizontal space in the refrigerator.

3

Another disadvantage is they tip more easily if set down on an uneven surface or whacked by the dog’s tail

5

Sure, but one disadvantage is they're harder to stack.

2

Worked for Virginia Slims and other brands.

Remember the connotation was slim cigarette, slim figure. I imagine the same psychological trick is at play with the slim can.

4

They don't fit in my mini fridge like normal cans do either

3
lemm.ee

Maybe you want to have a cup of tea instead? Way more cheap and healthy. Or buy some off-brand soda. It is just as much garbage as coca cola but at least it's cheap.

26
ludreply
lemm.ee

Or just water.

27
Argonnereply
lemmy.world

What's the point of this comment? 99% of counties in the US have safe drinking water and the few that don't get called out for it like this. This is probably a better situation than most countries - including yours

0

Where did you get that 99% figure from? Because I suspect you made it up.

Especially since:

One-fourth of Americans currently receive water from a source that violates the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Safe Drinking Water Act.

https://www.multipure.com/purely-social/science/top-10-states-worst-public-water-ratings-united-states/

More information:

https://www.science.org/content/article/millions-americans-drink-potentially-unsafe-tap-water-how-does-your-county-stack

And then there are the substances which municipal water supplies don't even need to get out of their water-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water_quality_in_the_United_States#Substances_for_which_there_are_no_federal_standards

9
iegodreply

You may want to dig into the stat some more to get a handle on how bad the situation really is.

1
lemmy.world

I'm pretty sure that wasn't my point what with my link being about tap water. The thing the person I was replying to was talking about.

3
Lizreply
midwest.social

What? No no no. Clearly soda is the healthy option. You can never be too cautious.

-2

Got it. You're totally ignoring my point that water straight from the tap is too unsafe to drink in multiple U.S. municipalities and are just trolling. Have fun with that.

1
lemm.ee

I just need a sugar delivery medium. Preferably one that is socially acceptable.

3

Coca cola is a little below 3€ a bottle (1.5l if i'm not mistaken) house brand is what the price should be at most: 0.89€.

2
aidanreply
lemmy.world

I agree soda dependence isn't a good thing, but there's not much evidence diet soda is any less healthy than tea.

-2
lemm.ee

Diet soda contains sweeteners that are suspected to cause cancer. Granted, you'd have to drink a couple of liters of diet soda a day before you need to be seriously concerned, but tea has one big advantage: It contains as much sugar or sweeteners as you add to it, so there's that.

-1
Gabureply
lemmy.world

suspected to cause cancer

Except there's been a ton of reasearch on it and the best/worst they can come up with is "results are inconclusive".

3
lemm.ee

I am not discussing if soda of any kind is more unhealthy than tea or not. You can drink as much soda as you want. Just don't bullshit yourself or anybody else. You only have one argument: "I like soda, don't take away my soda from me." It is not a good argument but it is all you've got.

-1
Leekerreply
lemmy.world

Wait a minute are you telling me that their isn't a sugar fairy dumping copious amounts of sugar into my tea when I turn around?!?

Please tell me it ain't so. Then I might actually have to take accountability for my actions and I can't do that.

1
lemmy.world

Soda is such a fucking profitable scam because it's mostly water and that resource is mostly free. The syrup and carbonation should be pennies compared to what it actually sells for.

22
Fadesreply
lemmy.world

Water is far from “mostly free”, especially at the amounts used by soda makers

4

Here in Germany they can extract millions of liters for a symbolic euro, that is basically free and also far from a third world country. Coke has enough power to get through with this.

16
0xbreply
lemmy.world

Don't know the situation in america so what you say may be true, but on some countries (developing ones where the power of the state is diminished) water is not free for everybody else, but multinational corporations get almost unlimited use concessions for their bottlers for a laughably low fee if any, drying out the area and sometimes literally leaving towns or regions with no public water left for other uses, forcing the people to have to pay for other sources. I don't live in a place in that situation yet, but some other regions in my country are going exactly through that. In some cases, those beverages are for the american market.

15

It probably not that cheap anywhere in the U.S., but on the other hand, they probably get enough tax breaks to make up for it.

1

As long as I stay mad at "those damn libs" then companies can raise prices with impunity. If nobody boycotts these innocent companies then stock prices will be able to surge.

Honestly though, I wish people understood that by blaming only inflation they're effectively giving companies a blank check to keep raising prices. Sigh.

18
mander.xyz

Y'all, remember this is sugar water and even at $1.06 there's a significant profit margin.

15
GluWureply
lemm.ee

Is not even sugar water, it's corn tea with artificial flavors and colors.

7
Troyreply
lemmy.ca

Depends on the country. Corn syrup in everything is a distinctly American phenomenon

9
GluWureply

If you look at the picture you might be able to tell where it was taken. There are some pretty good hints.

0
Epherareply
lemmy.ml

Yeah, it certainly doesn't seem like their production costs would increase much from inflation...

1

They don't increase from inflation. The price increase is inflation and I think it's an important distinction to make.

11
lemmy.world

It's usually very small, but here, prices must also show how much 100g/100ml of something costs

15
lemmy.world

Then you get shops like M&S where all the expensive varieties of (for example) tomato are £/kg and the cheap ones are £/unit so you can't see the big price gap.

16
ladreply
programming.dev

Nah, in places where you're obliged to put the price/kg on display that would be illegal. But writing a price per unit in LARGE font and adding a really small price per kilo would be a legal, albeit shitty, move

7
aulinreply
lemmy.world

It still happens in Scandinavia where these laws exist, with e.g. toilet paper, where some are listed per kg, some per roll, and others per meter.

3
ccunningreply
lemmy.world

Where is “here” approximately?

In the U.S. retailers are notorious for having the “unit” price of similar items being listed as (for example) $1.57/oz in one case and $2.23/count in another.

5
bstixreply
feddit.dk

EU has a directive about it. Prices must be shown in the proper unit, including all taxes and any "before" price if it's on "sale".

8
ladreply
programming.dev

Do they happen to make this kind of sales, too?

I once had a chance to tell our local pub that their Chinese New Year sale sign is incorrect. They decided to put the sign in Chinese but got confused over how the discount is written in Chinese, so they wrote a price of +50% instead of -15%.

::: spoiler but why? In Chinese the sale price is stated as the remaining part of the original, and it is written in tens of percents (折), so the full price is 10折, and 15% discount is 8.5折, but they had a sign of 15折. Google translate seems to think 15折 = 8.5折 but I would guess that it's just AI outsmarting itself again. Now, a real person would probably be able to guess what was meant anyway, but it's nice to write things correctly and not rely on guesswork :::

4
bstixreply
feddit.dk

The specific rules are implemented in local laws, so it probably varies a bit from country to country, but generally it's illegal to market something as a special offer unless it actually is cheaper than before. The sign says "save more", which would be misleading marketing.

There are other ways to work around it though. For instance by alternating between two similar products biweekly, or simply by not having that specific product before Black Friday, making it appear like a special offer even if it's sold at full price.

3

Thanks for the info, I will now know of more schemes to try to avoid.

1
fidodoreply
lemmy.world

At least in California in grocery stores they always have a per weight tag too. Problem is that it's not always the same weight...

4

California also has the benefit of being able to choose the more confusing convenient unit, i.e. showing price in $/ounce, $/lb, $/kg, k$/stone, ounces of gold/handful, etc.

2

Not sure where that commenter is from, but it's the case for Germany. Pretty useful to compare

4

Exactly this, they will put $/oz next to $/unit next to $/lb. It's infuriating but I still take the time to do the math.

3

Well, since my instance is local I can just as well say that it's Switzerland. Apparently it's mandatory to label proces in a specific way. So far, I've never encountered the case that I wasn't able to compare those prices between products of the same category.

1

They “proved” the trick works by a couple years back, releasing some different flavors in that shape can. Too many of us paid the premium to get the different flavor, even knowing it’s just manufactured scarcity. I still miss the blueberry-acai Diet Coke. Maybe they came away with “weirdly shaped cans sell at bigger profit”

12
lemmy.world

If it's tall and slim, it worth more. This is true for both cans and people.

11
lemmynsfw.com

We've had those bottles for years now here in Sweden.

The reason for the change to the taller thinner can is because the amount of aluminium used in the top and bottom is less. The top and bottom in an aluminum can is the thickest parts.

The price increase has nothing to do with it though..

5

While the chapter can statement us true, they definitely took the chance to up the price if the dates match. Capitalism at it's best.

4
lemmy.world

How is the top smaller though? It looks identical. There must be another reason.

1
mindlightreply
lemmynsfw.com

Search on YouTube to see how aluminium cans are made and you'll understand why the "lid" and bottom is where the aluminium is thicker (as compared to the "walls").

1

This must be that soft landing 3% inflation I've been hearing all about.

4

They'll switch back to the normal can soon enough...with the raised price, so they can do it again...

4

Consuming that utterly unhealthy drink is the real trickflation.

3

For some reason, those taller cans even feel like less. Maybe because they are so thin. We have them for several years here in Germany.

2

We've had these types of cans for years and years and years where I'm from, but they were expensive before the switch too.

2