Cadbury has once again left sweet-tooths with a sour taste in their mouths after reducing the size of a number of its popular chocolate bars.

An Australian shopper who noticed the change posted a photo of two Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars on social media forum Reddit this week.

“Cadbury bars are 45g now down from 50g. We’re being mugged in broad daylight,” they wrote.

The post has since attracted hundreds of comments, many of them recommending rival chocolate bars and lamenting the widespread trend of “shrinkflation” – where companies reduce the size of a product while keeping the price the same.

“Cocoa prices down 60% from the peak yet retail prices continue to go up while packet size goes down,” one complained.

“It was Cherry Ripe that ended it for me. The current bar looks like it came from a box of favourites compared to the original size,” claimed another.

In addition to the small dairy milk bar, “single serve” Cadbury Dream and Cadbury Dairy Milk Marvellous Creations have shrunk from 50g to 45g, according to nine.com.au.

It noted that several of the chocolate maker’s larger blocks had also fallen victim to shrinkflation, including Old Gold Cherry Ripe and Roast Almond, which have gone from 180g to 170g.

A spokesperson for snack company Mondelez Australia, which makes Cadbury chocolate, told nine.com.au that it continued to face “elevated costs” across its supply chain.

“While cocoa prices have eased from record highs, they remain above historical levels, making chocolate more expensive to produce,” they said.

“We have worked hard to absorb these costs where possible, but after careful consideration we made the difficult decision to reduce the size of some of our products to keep our range accessible without increasing the recommended retail price.”

The news comes just a couple of months after consumer advocacy group Choice revealed that for the second year running, Cadbury chocolate Easter eggs had fallen victim to shrinkflation.

Cadbury was also accused of Easter Egg shrinkflation. Source: Choice

“In the past 12 months, Cadbury’s entire range of boxed hollow Easter eggs have been hit by shrinkflation – each carton now contains at least one fewer egg than it did last year,” Choice journalist Liam Kennedy, who dubbed Cadbury a “serial shrinker”, said at the time.

Previous investigations by Choice have found that Australians are being hit by shrinkflation right across the supermarket aisles, with products ranging from cereal to bathroom cleaner decreasing in size but not in price.