Companies Who Fooled Us With Their Deceptive Packaging

When you buy a sticker book from Disney, be prepared for most of the stickers to be useless. Maybe an adult can create something out of these squares, but a child would probably throw a tantrum when they run out of princesses to stick all over your house.

We don’t know why companies do this, but they find it necessary to use a box that is three times the product’s size. If you aren’t checking the ounces, you might think that the product is the size of that box. Don’t worry; we have all been fooled before. 

If you bought a lot of skincare in the past few years, you will know how popular it has become for companies to use frosted glass on the outside, with a plastic interior to hold the product. It makes it look nicer and makes the bottle heavier without adding more product. 

We can all admit to buying something just because we thought it was shiny and pretty, but deep down, we knew it was an unnecessary purchase. These stickie notes with the gold borders caught this person’s eyes, but after opening the package, she realized only the first note had the gold frame. 

This kit is teaching young kids what disappointment feels like early on in their lives. That is such a waste of plastic to use when they only give you about 20 beads. How many bracelets can they really make? Are they only using one or two beads per design? 

While the sticker may say microwave safe, the mug itself has a different idea. Maybe just the sticker is microwave safe, and you are supposed to know to remove it to get the real instructions. Hopefully, they found this before putting it in the dishwasher or heating it in the microwave. 

You never know who someone is on the inside until you really get to know them, and the same goes for food packaging. The picture might show the perfect cake, but inside there was barely any substance. It’s like a lot of the people we knew in high school. 

According to this company, when they say something is printed all over, they mean only printed on the sides. Did it cost that much extra to finish printing it in the middle? It really makes you wonder how these companies get away with selling products so deceptively. 

This brown sugar is about as natural as Khloe Kardashian; there is nothing natural about it. We don’t know where this product is from, but we are pretty sure it is illegal to write natural when it is clearly false. The natural part is just part of the name, but it has nothing to do with the product. 

When you see “500 Greatest Songs of all Time,” you might be forgiven for thinking that there are 500 songs in this book, but look at the fine print. It actually only has 39 out of the 500 songs, but they wouldn’t print that in bold letters because no one would buy that book. 

Chip bags are usually filled with more air than chips because it is supposed to stop them from breaking. However, the chips still break, and people are still paying for a bag of air with a label on it. When are we all going to learn that we need to read the weight of a product?    

If your parents gave you cosmic brownies in your lunch as a child, you were probably asked to trade snacks often. However, we wouldn’t want to trade for one with a single sprinkle on it. To be fair, it does say candy topped, not “candies topped.”

What is the point of making colorful pens that all have blue ink? Sure, the yellow pen would never get stolen because no one would want to write in yellow, but what about the other colors? That would be disappointing for someone who was trying to color-code their notes. 

This is blatant false advertising; they didn’t even include the baby! We hope whoever bought this doesn’t let their child get lost in what is supposed to be a ball pit. They would probably need at least 500 more balls to fill this thing, and it barely came with 20.  

This is why we have trust issues. This box of beef jerky was stacked so that the container would look full, but as soon as the person opened it, they realized they got robbed. It is important to check the net weight of things, but the company should have just used a smaller container. 

We don’t know how this can be considered dairy-free if it clearly states that it contained milk. What if someone who was allergic to dairy used this without looking at every single ingredient? That would be a really bad day for them. 

Whoever packaged this wrap is a sales genius. They knew no one would be able to see behind the label, so they made the sandwich smaller and sold it for the price of a full one. Whoever bought this probably felt tricked, backstabbed, and possibly bamboozled. 

After opening a brand new package of cashews, this person wondered why their hand was already touching the bottom of the container. They must have taken some ideas from wine bottles with this design, which makes this very misleading. 

While these might be the perfect sized pencils for a child’s hand, Crayola clearly forgot they have a large adult audience. These tiny pencils are half the size of a regular colored pencil, and the built-in sharpener is to make them even smaller… as if they weren’t small enough. 

The company decided to change up its packaging in the most bizarre way. Instead of having a small container that was full of product, the company switched it to a taller container that was only half-full. Instead of going green, they went in the opposite direction and created more plastic waste. 

The box might say 800 pieces, but don’t be fooled because half of them are useless dots that will either be lost, eaten by the dog, or sucked up in the vacuum. They thought they could save money by purchasing off-brand blocks, but that didn’t work in their favor. 

If you were wondering how to make watermelon juice, all you have to do is mix apple, beetroot, carrot, and ginger juice. Slap on a watermelon label, and no one will ever know the difference. What’s even better is that it says it also has strawberry and lemon, but even they aren’t in the ingredients. 

When you buy eyeshadow, you expect it to be eye-safe, right? Well, that is apparently not the case for all eyeshadows. What makes this even worse is that they wrote it in white letters over the white background. Aren’t eyeshadows supposed to go on your eyes? 

When someone gets plastic surgery, but they are still the same mean person on the inside. That is the equivalent to this shampoo; it may look different, but it has the same old formula in the bottle. The slogan may be, “because you are worth it,” but we don’t know if they truly feel that way. 

These people deserve a refund because the box clearly says 1,000 pieces, and after counting, they only got 523 blocks. If they are going to say 1,000 pieces, they might as well include the right amount of blocks even if there are useless pieces like the previous sets. 

When they opened their fresh tub of protein powder, they noticed it was only half full. Besides the gains they will make in the gym, they also gained the experience not to trust this brand. They say contents will settle during transport, but we don’t think they settle this much. 

The meatballs got lonely, so they moved to one section of the pizza, where they could see out the window. This must be punishment for someone putting meatballs on pizza. Some things just aren’t meant to be pizza toppings, like pineapple. 

This company officially wins the award for sneakiest packaging. In font the same color as the can, they made sure to include “less than” above the eight percent where you can barely see it. Even with the underline, it is impossible to see what it says. 

This store is selling flushable wipes with a big warning that they are harmful to aquatic life with long-lasting effects. Is it just us, or do those things strongly contradict each other? They might make your toilet sparkle, but they shouldn’t be going down the drain with those warnings. 

General Mills is out here trying to fool us with their new large boxes, but they are putting in less cereal. When you look at the net weight, the larger package has more air than cereal, and they still probably charge more for the tall one. What was wrong with the original box? 

The new chocolate bar claimes to be bigger, but it doesn’t specify what they compared it to. It’s bigger than one square of chocolate, but it is the same size as the old candy bar. The only thing bigger on this candy bar is the “now bigger” label. 

There might be 250 pieces in this matchbox, but 95 percent of the pieces are useless wooden sticks. Those sticks will burn, but they won’t start a fire like a match is supposed to do. The “strike anywhere” matches should include that fire is sold separately in the fine print.  

If only we could have been a fly on the wall at this design meeting. The designer said, “We’ve made something sophisticated, decorated with gold and party icons. what do you think?” Their bosses were impressed, but they wanted to take it to the next level. 

They say there are over 200 stickers in this pack, but we find that hard to believe, considering the “roll” barely makes a circle. If there are actually 200 stickers, they are probably tiny useless ones that fill in all the small spaces between the characters. 

The outer plastic later of this hose nozzle was made in the USA, but they found the core was made in China upon further inspection. It’s that kind of betrayal that makes us question the integrity of these companies. You never know what they are hiding under the shiny surfaces. 

Just like the Crayola colored pencils, these acrylic paints are miniature for absolutely no reason. They aren’t even the length of the container, yet they wasted all that space for no reason. They even covered the bottom of the container, so you won’t see that they aren’t full-sized tubes. 

When this person was at the store, they were having a hard time deciding between this box and another brand of chocolates. She chose to go with the bigger box and later found out it was mostly air. Lesson learned, never trust the size of something without looking at the weight.

This is probably the only time a product was bigger than the customer expected, but they wished it were smaller. This company claimed the picture was the actual size, but they forgot to include a few inches. Either these are two different products, or they reduced the picture’s size at the last minute to save printing costs.  

We don’t see how packaging like this could even work because crayons are heavy, and anyone who picks up the carton would realize it’s too light to be full.  These were probably free with a coloring book, so they didn’t want to give away too many crayons.

This coloring kit is an absolute scam. They left the entire container mostly empty and counted each piece of paper towards the 100 count of the kits total pieces. It never hurts to read the contents list of a package, and the light weight should have tipped them off.