Pepsodent Shrinks Toothpaste Tubes Slightly To Keep $1 Price Point

The Grocery Shrink Ray is what happens when a company wants to cut their expenses, but not raise their prices. Pepsodent is a bargain-brand toothpaste that you can pick up in most stores for $1, but reader Tony noticed something when he bought his last tube: it was half an ounce smaller than the previous one, which he still had handy.

We tracked down who owns the Pepsodent brand in the U.S., and it turns out to be Church & Dwight, also known as the corporate parent of Arm & Hammer. We asked whether the changes to Pepsodent are permanent or something special for the dollar and dollar-ish store market. They didn’t get back to us.

Incidentally, Arm & Hammer was the manufacturer of the last toothpaste brand that we featured as a Grocery Shrink Ray perpetrator, back when they added more peroxide but shaved a third of an ounce off the total size of the tube.

Strangely, you can find both versions of Pepsodent on the market: Drugstore.com,, has both the 5.5 and 6-ounce versions available, at different prices. If you really have your heart set on that larger tube, you can pay a few cents more per ounce.