chi·can·er·y — the use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose.
I have to admit, I’d rather explore the internet and bounce on my trampoline than eat candy. So when I read on the Whitman Sampler box,
We’re a nearly 200-year-old family-run chocolatier that honors the craft of chocolate making.
I said,
What?!!
Okay, the first Whitman started making chocolates in 1842, 172 years ago, close enough to 200 years. But Pet, Inc., a maker of evaporated milk, bought the company in 1963 because Pet wanted to become a big food conglomerate. Then in 1993, Pet sold the Whitman’s brand to Russell Stover Candies, the largest maker of boxed candy in the United States. That’s not exactly what I think of when I read “a family-run chocolatier”.
Then there’s Russell’s Stover’s MANUFACTURED IN SMALL BATCHES®. the ® presumably saying the term is a registered advertising slogan, so maybe we shouldn’t take the term too literally. That strikes me as a bit of a cheat, but it didn’t bother me as much as these lines on the Russell Stover box.
We hand blend these ingredients in small batches using copper kettles and kitchen mixers.
The company manufactures nearly 100 million pounds of chocolate a year, so I find it hard to believe the candy in our supermarket was hand-mixed. I spent some time wondering how they could possibly say that, and all I can figure out is in some of their stores they do make handmade candy, and you can order some from one of their kitchens in Kansas.
Chicanery is the word that comes to my mind. What do you think?
November 29, 2014
I am in total agreement with your description. In India, they could be taken to Consumer Court for misleading the consumers.
We have truth in advertising laws here, too — I don’t know how they get by with that. I think it’s funny.
when my bob had cancer . . . but could still be alone . . . i worked for awhile to earn a little extra money.
i had a job at oral roberts university as a ‘letter checker.’ reams and reams of printed out letters came in boxes. they were connected . . . like a run.
it was our job to look at each one and mark any duplicates.
now i’m sure it’s all done with computers.
he wrote thank you letters to each one. form letters of course. but they all LOOKED original. and we checked for duplicates because it would be “embarrassing” if a person received two identical ones. proving they were form letters.
i remember asking how in the world he could “pray over each and every personal letter from his followers.” as he attested he always did.
i was told it wasn’t a lie. the bags of thousands of letters (after the money had been removed from them) were taken to the ‘prayer tower.’ there he would touch each bag and say a prayer.
that way it wasn’t necessarily a lie. even though he made it SOUND like he prayed over each individual letter. people don’t think of the details of plain common sense and logistics. they really believed him. amazing.
a form of chicanery? you be the judge.
some of the letters were pitiful. they were from people who barely had enough money to buy their medications. they said “i thought YOU should have this instead.”
wow.
my eyes were opened for sure.
i only worked there about 6 weeks. and even those 6 weeks were too many to lose being away from my beloved bob.
Oral Roberts was a lot worse than Stover’s. My guess is no one even reads the bit about handmade, they just care if they like the candy. Oral Roberts was a real criminal.
I agree with you — Unfortunately it’s used a bit too much these days, isn’t it? Buyer beware I suppose…
It was probably even worse in the bad old days, before there was any consumer protection.
various cases hit the newspapers here of false or misleading advertising…one of our pet reeves in NZ is the photoshopped objects – that are about double size of the actual product – every so often that comes up for analysts to explain why your Big Whooper is actually a miniaturized version…
some major companies that should know better try it on as well, often competition with another similar company – but they don’t usually get away with it…
then you get mis-weights where a packet states 250gm and there is only 220grm or similar…OR where a packet seems smaller when the company changes it’s packaging and it is actually smaller but they are putting up the retail price
I guess it’s a worldwide thing though…
And how about when the package size remains the same, but the contents are a lot less? In that case they usually print the correct weight on the outside of the package, assuming people won’t read it before they buy.
The Whitman Sampler boxes are still large, just a lot more padding inside.
I’m now thoroughly used to big companies claiming their products are “hand-crafted”, “farm-fresh” and all those other bogus descriptions that try to fool you they don’t come rattling off some assembly line at the rate of 200 a minute. But “made by robots” and “machine-fresh” wouldn’t be quite so appealing, would it?
Here we have “market fresh” produce and “fresh” fish, a legal term meaning the fish have only been defrosted once. Although in our new store they distinguish between fresh fish and “previously frozen” ones. That’s a real plus.
Chicanery seems like a good word to me.
I think it’s a great word. 🙂