To avoid raising prices, breakfast cereal manufacturers have engaged in shrinkflation, which is the practice of making the packaging smaller.

“The boxes always face forward on the shelves, so no one noticed at first,” spokesperson Wheaton Miller said. “The first complaints we got were from elderly people who said their cereal had disappeared. Turns out the boxes were on their shelves but end-on so they just couldn’t see them.”

Gestalt Psychologist Wilma Wundt explained the phenomena.

“Objects must impinge a minimum number of retinal rods or cones to trigger a neural signal to the occipital lobe for translation into a supraliminal experience.”

When asked to simplify, Wundt said:

“The boxes are too skinny to see.”

While perception is one issue, cereal manufacturers have run into other problems.

“We’re at the point where the cereal is nearly as wide as the box,” Miller said. “Right now the boxes are three Cheerios wide and we want to go to two-wide. So, we may have to make the cereal smaller.”

When asked if there were other issues, Miller added:

“Yeah, when people walk by the breeze makes the boxes fall over.”