Negative reviews of scented candles return as Covid cases rise again

The negative candle review boom is back, which means people are, once again, correlating one-star critiques to a rise in Covid cases.

Back in 2020, unsatisfied Yankee Candle consumers became the new surveillance tool for monitoring the rise and fall in Covid numbers. Researcher, Kate Petrova, analysed the influx of candle complaints and found that "no scent" reviews grew from less than 2 per cent in January to 6 per cent in November.

She explained: "First, I downloaded a random subsample of US-based customer reviews of the three most popular scented candles on Amazon.

"Between January 2017 and January 2020, the average rating stayed around 4.3/5, but there was a sharp drop between January and November 2020.

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"Could it be because of the Covid-related loss of smell? To investigate, I plotted the reviews of the three most popular unscented candles on Amazon, and the difference was quite striking."

And, now they're back: Two years later.

Twitter user Drew (@drewtoothpaste) picked up on the new reviews, which strangely coincide with the US' rise in case numbers.

One review read: "This candle barely has any scent. I just bought the same candle about a month before and it was cheaper and had a fantastic vanilla scent and lasted long. What happened?"

While another slammed the candle, saying, "I have always bought Yankee Candles and I have always enjoyed their strong scent", but they are now "disappointed" with the lack of odour.

Of course, the link between the two shouldn't be considered scientific. The correlation comes down to one of the main Covid symptoms: loss of smell.

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