Are you being tricked by your treats? Some Halloween candy multipacks have shrunk in size, but not in price

Here's a frightening fact: you might be paying more for your chocolate treats this Halloween due to a recent spike in cocoa prices. 

And if you don’t get hit with higher prices, you might still wind up paying more due to shrinkflation, a tactic where companies quietly reduce the weight of a product, but not the price. 

After digging up online ads for Halloween candy from October 2024, CBC News discovered two major candy makers, Mars Inc. and the Hershey Company, had reduced the weight of several Halloween chocolate bar variety packs this year — by as much as almost 17 per cent. 

The changes might be difficult for shoppers to detect, because this year's variety packs contain the same number of candy bars as they did in 2024.

Both U.S.-based companies said their products may change due to changing customer preferences. Neither provided specific examples. 

In other shrinkflation cases, companies have said they reduced a product’s weight to offset higher production costs. 

"Companies are always looking for tricks and ways to maintain their profitability while not necessarily changing or increasing the final price consumer sees," said Jordan LeBel, a food marketing professor at Concordia University in Montreal. 

But as Canadians struggle with rising grocery prices, there are growing calls for food producers to be upfront about downsizing goods. 

“It's not really transparent,” said Sylvie De Bellefeuille, a lawyer with the consumer advocacy group Option Consommateurs. “By at least knowing it [has happened], we can make better informed decisions.”

Cocoa prices have more than doubled over the past couple of years, according to the Associated Press.

LeBel says extreme weather conditions in West Africa, the main global supplier of cocoa, triggered bad harvests. 

He adds that many cocoa farms are small operations, so they face challenges bouncing back. 

"Sometimes those farmers don't have the financial or economic solidity to start anew or replant for example, and that does impact supply," he said.

Prices for confectionery items — including chocolate — increased 10 per cent over the past year, according to Statistics Canada.