A Bremen court has ruled that some Milka chocolate bars are misleading shoppers after Mondelez cut the fill amount from 100 grams to 90 grams while keeping the packaging size and design unchanged. The Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg, which brought the case, said the judgment makes clear that consumers must not be left with the wrong impression when a product holds less than before.

The Landgericht Bremen issued the ruling in case 12 O 118/25 on 13 May 2026. It said the dispute involved a so-called relative Mogelpackung, or deceptive package, because the mistaken impression about the fill amount came from comparing the bar with its earlier version rather than from any obvious change on the shelf.

The court focused on the gap between what a shopper sees at a glance and what the pack actually contains. Mondelez reduced the fill amount of some Milka bars in the previous year, but the familiar purple packaging stayed the same. The new nominal fill quantity is printed in small type on the front of the pack, yet the court said that recognition effect outweighed the actual change in content. In practice, the note is often covered by cartons on supermarket shelves, which makes it harder for shoppers to notice.

That detail matters because the case is not just about one chocolate bar. It turns on the way packaged food is sold and how much change a manufacturer can make before the pack itself becomes part of the problem. The Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg said the dispute concerned a redesign in which the outer appearance stayed fixed even as the product inside shrank.

The consumer group also said it had already won a similar case against Upfield over Sanella. In that matter, the Landgericht Hamburg ruled on 13 February 2024 in case 406 HKO 121/22 and required a clearly visible notice about the changed fill amount. The Hamburg group says the Bremen decision could have signal effect for the wider industry, where pack design and shelf presentation can be just as important as the number printed on the front.

For Mondelez, the ruling is a setback, though not yet the end of the matter. The judgment is not legally final, which leaves room for further legal steps. For shoppers, it is another reminder that the size of the package can no longer be trusted on its own when the contents inside have changed.