Shoppers have been left reeling after discovering the cost of a bag of Mini Eggs has risen to £16.

Days after Christmas, supermarkets across the UK have already filled their shelves with Easter treats, despite the holiday being four months away.

But shoppers have been left more shocked by the price of the treats with one Reddit user sharing a snap of a 1kg bag of Mini Eggs on sale at Tesco for £16.

'Never mind Freddos, £16 a kilo of mini eggs,' the shopper wrote, with hundreds sharing their disbelief.

Even more surprisingly, buying the same 1kg bag directly from Cadbury costs £22.

A one kilogram bag of Mini Eggs has risen in price every year since 2023, with the price almost doubling in the last three years.

In February 2023, shoppers could purchase a large pouch for £8.86 at Ocado, according to Which?, but in the same period in 2024 the kg bag cost an average of £12.95 (an increase of 46.2%).

Some stores were seen selling the sweet treats for anywhere between £9 and £11.50 just two years ago but WHSmith was spotted flogging a bag for £17.50.

Last year the sugar-coated chocolate eggs cost shoppers a whopping £14 and some even took to social media to share even more expensive prices with one large bag of Mini Eggs costing £19.

'For £22 I could get two amazing ribeyes from the butcher or even a kilo's worth of rump steaks as an example. 

'Hell during my student years I could get a whole weekly shop for myself for that much, and I could still do at least a few full days worth of food,' another person wrote. 

In Tesco, steak lovers can get their hands on a beef medallion steak for £3.29 or £14.49 per kilo, making a slap-up dinner for one cheaper than a bag of the Easter sweet treats. 

One user wrote: 'More than 5p per egg according to the approximate number of eggs on the Cadbury website.

'And it's £22 on the Cadbury website which is 7p per egg. Madness!'

A third wrote: 'More expensive than meat. Scandalous.'

Another said: 'NEVER MIND FREDDOS, MINI EGGS ARE £16 A KILO'. 

Others suggested that as 'depressing' as the price was, it was still a good deal because shoppers got more eggs for their money.

They commented: 'The depressing thing is, this is actually a good deal because they're selling 80g bags for £2 each. If you spent £16 on the smaller bags you'd only end up with 640g of mini eggs.'

But others posted that they would rather go without than pay £16 and wrote: 'Shocking tbh [to be honest], at this point I think I would rather do without...' 

A spokesperson for Mondelez International told the Daily Mail: 'We understand the economic pressures that consumers continue to face and raising prices is a last resort for our business. 

'However, as a food producer, we are continuing to experience significantly higher input costs across our supply chain, with ingredients such as cocoa and dairy, which are widely used in our products, costing far more than they have done previously. 

'Meanwhile, other costs like energy and transport also remain high. This means that our products continue to be much more expensive to make and while we have absorbed these costs where possible, we still face considerable challenges.

'As a result, we are having to make a carefully considered list price increase to our Mini Eggs Bags (1kg) so that we can continue to provide consumers with the brands they love, without compromising on the great taste and quality they expect. Please note retailers are free to set their own prices.'

And they're not the only chocolate to have gone up in price. 

Chocolate price has soared by 15 per cent in a year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

And brands like Maltesers are also now more expensive per gram than steak.

In Sainsbury's, a 126g share bag of white Maltesers now costs £4 - placing the price-per-kilo at £31.74, which is higher than the price of their matured sirloin steak which is £31.33 per kilo.

In October, a 93g pack of milk chocolate Maltesers in Asda rose from £1.61 to £1.75 and then went up again to £1.88 just five days later.

These price hikes are the direct result of record-breaking highs in the wholesale cost of cocoa.

A tonne of cocoa has typically been traded at between $3,000 to $5,000, but it soared to $12,906 last year.

This is because of a shortage which has cut global cocoa output by more than 14 per cent, caused by extreme weather in west Africa and diseases, such as cacao swollen shoot virus.

These conditions have caused smaller yields in cocoa farming, especially in countries like the Ivory Coast - the world leader in cocoa production.

Meanwhile, the price of cocoa butter - the fat extracted from cocoa beans which is used to make white chocolate - rose even faster because cocoa beans produce more solids (powder) than they do oils (butter).