QUALITY Street has three fewer sweets in tubs this year – and festive favourites have been chopped.
Tubs contain an average of 62 sweets – down from roughly 65 last year, according to analysis by The Sun.
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It means each tub is missing one fudge, one toffee penny, one caramel swirl and a milk chocolate block.
However, there is an extra orange crunch, so there are five per box on average this year, up from four last year.
This takes the total number in the tubs this year to 62.
There are now just eight pink-wrappered fudges in a typical box, down from nine last year, while the number of toffee pennies has dropped from seven to six, on average.
The typical number of caramel swirls per tub has been cut from eight to seven, while the green-wrappered milk chocolate blocks are down from around five per tub to just four this Christmas.
While the exact number of each type of sweets can vary slightly from box to box, most contain the average amounts.
Each tub of the Nestle-owned brand contains 11 different types of sweetw – but some are more plentiful than others.
Nestle explained each selection contained a “balance” of fruit sweets, toffees and fudges and “nuts, chocolates and caramels”, with each category making up roughly a third of a box.
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It said because there were more varieties of chocolates, there were fewer of each individual type in this category.
But consumer expert Martyn James said psychologists believed there was a sophisticated science behind the sweet ratios.
He added: “If there was an equal proportion of sweets, we would tend to over-indulge in our favourites, which risks us losing interest. Having fewer of these sweets means there’s a battle for the best ones.
“When you reach the end of the tub and the rubbish sweets are still there, we tend not to throw them away, so the tub or box is always around, reminding us that we need to buy more.”
This Christmas, standard Quality Street tubs contain 600g of unwrapped chocolate, equivalent to around 620g of wrapped chocolate.
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This is down from 650g of wrapped chocolate last year – meaning there are around four fewer chocolates per box.
Since plastic tubs were first introduced alongside the traditional tin in 2013, the weight of the sweets they contain has shrunk by a fifth, or around 16 chocolates per box.
Tubs have become the standard selection box, which is typically sold in supermarkets at around £5, while the larger tins now usually retail at around £10.
A Nestle spokesperson said: “Each year we introduce a new Quality Street range with formats, sizes, weights and RRPs based on a range of factors including the cost of manufacturing, ingredients and transport and the preferences of our customers and consumers.
“Final prices are at the discretion of individual retailers.”
In other Quality Street news, Nestle recently announced it will axe the brightly-coloured wrappers in a bid to be better for the planet.
The move will stop nearly two billion wrappers a year from ending up in landfills, but it has nevertheless angered traditionalists.
