Whenever I think of misleading product designations, I think of Handipt candles.
My mother laid in a supply of these ten years ago and I guffawed when I saw the package and product. She had paid a healthy premium and was persuaded that they were a quality product, and the trademark worked its magic as she indeed believed that her candles were hand made, starting with naked wicks, slowly building up each candle by the dip-and-drip method. “They’re hand-dipped!” she said. (They didn’t even appear to have been buffed after coming out of the mold.)
I am surprised to see this trademark in use after so much time - I would have thought that it would have surely run afoul of advertising standards regulations. Is this justifiable? Do they plausibly assert that “handipt” means something else, and that it’s an innocent coincidence that it implies quaint artisans labouring for hours over individual pieces?
At the time, they were pitched in person, so the spelling and trademark wouldn’t be such an obvious clue that it wasn’t quite “hand dipped.”
This is the same reason as some products are ‘cheez’ by name, isn’t it? (They don’t have to contain cheese). Also, why stores are ‘kwik’ - so they can be as slow as they like.
Does it actually make a damned bit of difference to the functional (if any) or aesthetic value of a candle whether it was molded in a factory or hand made by “quaint artisans labouring for hours over individual pieces”?
The only difference hand-dipping would make by itself would be that each candle would be slightly irregular, which might be viewed either as a positive quality or a defect, depend on your context - however, if you’re going the hand-crafted route, this generally says something about the type of product you intend to produce. Not many people are going to dedicate all that labour if the they are going to use cheap cotton string and plain paraffin wax.
Over the years I’ve had plenty of dirty hippie Commercial Drive and frou-frou West Van snob friends, and as a result I’ve tended to receive a lot of hand-crafted candles as gifts. There is a definite difference in aesthetic quality. Apart from the homey appearance, they tend to burn soft, and the flames have that Christmas card halo effect. They smell better when burning, and don’t stink up the room when they’re snuffed.
This $50 box of candles was indistinguishable from a $4 box you’d get at a dollar store. Mass-produced, plain paraffin wax, flame is as warm-looking as that of a Bic lighter, and they smelled like ass when snuffed.
“Hand dipped” can imply a lot more than just the manufacturing method.
I guess I am surprised that there isn’t any basic protection against deliberately misleading marks like this. Does there have to be trade organizations (like the dairy council) protecting their own registered marks?
If I started marketing Organick® produce at a markup to capitalize on people’s confusion, I’d expect to be smacked down. Who would do the smacking?
