Ah Christmas (I know that's now a fading memory, humour me). An excuse to gorge to excess on rich food and drink, and an opportunity to slip extras into the supermarket trolley without the wife putting them back on the shelf! Hence a big tube of Minstrels was craftily snuck amongst the shopping and made it through the till and home. Mmmmm Minstrels.
However glee turned to disappointment when opening the tube to find that it wasn't rammed full of giant brown Smarties, but instead contained three plastic bags of Minstrels. Bah! I emptied out the bags into the tube, which was then not quite half full. A complete swizz if you ask me. They've cunningly put them in bags so the tube doesn't rattle to give away the short-filling. I imagine I'm not the only shopper who assumed the tube was full but was disappointed, and I am willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the good people at Mars/Galaxy did this cynically to con the good British public. Even if it wasn't deliberate (and I bet they've got an 'official' reason for using the bags) I suspect they were perfectly aware of the fact that they were selling half the amount of chocolate that the buyer would intuitively assume. Grrrr.