(Not sure what Ad-Tastic means? Go here.)

They’re so small! It couldn’t possibly hurt me to have one!

For a reformed snacker like myself, these are the world’s perfect words. If I can just… maintain… my willpower, then I can have a tiny cookie without a care in the world. (Of course, if I have twenty tiny cookies, hat’s another story.)

To that end, I love this recent trend in making snack-sized packages of junk food. A bag of mini-doughnuts is never going to be good for me, but is it so bad if the bag is smaller than my hand?

That’s the snacker’s desperate logic at work, and the ad up there for Haagen-Dasz snack-sized ice cream bars exploits the logic perfectly. The crunchy deliciousness of the bar is nestled in a box of assorted candies. Instantly, we’re promised rich flavor with minimum guilt.

And the box itself is surrounded by an ocean of white space, which makes the bar seem smaller, smaller, infinitely small.

I assume the actual product is bigger than it is in the picture, and that’s an interesting reversal of the norm: Think about how big and juicy a Whopper usually looks on a poster. In the photo, the tomato slice alone is as big as your head, and while that may stoke your appetite, it also sets you up for disappointment when the smaller, less awe-inspiring burger gets thrust into your hand.

But for this ice cream bar, the ad actually lowers your expectations, setting you up for a pleasant surprise. (That’s apparently my theme this week.) If you’ve only seen the advertisement, you might feel excited when you open the wrapper and discover a bigger snack than you imagined. And yet, you can still be happy that you’re eating something smaller than usual.

That’s a crafty bit of ice cream trickery. The bar can seem both larger and smaller than we might expect, and both results can please us. Or please me. I think I’m going to buy a box. I’ll report back on their actual size and tastiness.