Tropicana reignited a 15-year feud with customers over its packaging design, slimming down bottles

Two Tropicana bottles, the old and the new design, next to each other (Credit: Courtesy of Tropicana)

Tropicana is about to learn if the juice is worth the squeeze. Customers are revolting after the orange juice juggernaut redesigned the shape of its bottles this summer, slimming them from 52 to 46 ounces. The backlash on social media and threats to no longer buy the product are reminiscent of a disastrous 2009 rebrand that sent sales plummeting, forcing Tropicana to revert to its original design.

This time around, orange juice drinkers are wary of shrinkflation, or product sizes reducing while prices stay the same. Indeed, while Tropicana has set the price of its new bottles at $3.99, about 70 cents cheaper than its old design, the slim bottles are still more expensive per ounce than the older ones in some retailers. At Walmart, the new 46-ounce bottles cost 7.7 cents per ounce, while the 52-ounce bottles retail for 7.6 cents per ounce. Consumers have taken notice of the alleged shrinkflation.