1491 Missing Peep

"The Case of the Missing Peep." Or if it was one of those English Cozy Whodunits it would be "The Conundrum of the Missing Peep." Either way it had me scratching my head.
I was holding in my hand a Peep package. And it was apparently complete. Except there were only five Peeps in it. My memory told me Peeps always appear in pods of 6. Or is that flocks?
I know they've always been arrayed in multiples or fractions of a dozen. After all, Peeps were hatched from Easter eggs and eggs are always packaged in dozens. Which always struck me as odd anyhow. If you have 2 eggs a day for breakfast you need 14 to get through a week. 1 egg a day and you need 7 with 5 left over.
Not egg-sact either way.
I've joked before that it takes five peeps to make a posse. Except in Canada where it takes six, because they're metric. Metric Posses are always multipliers of two. The Imperial Posse.
This had nothing to do with that. But here's what is funny. There was space in the packaging for another peep. The five Peeps had room leftover. I know American companies and packaging. Packages are designed to the last millimeter to save costs. A whole Peep worth of space would not be wasted.
Especially since the five Peeps remaining were fused together. Peeps are essentially auburn-eyed amorphous blobs anyhow. Crowding in another would hardly cause a crisis in shape integrity.
Which leads to one not-so-sweet conclusion. Robbing the children of a Peep was more cost-saving than reengineering the Peep packaging. The missing Peep was a victim of Peep-flation. The economic crisis has finally hit Peepland too.
The Peep wasn't missing, it was on furlough...
America, ya gotta love it.