Mistletoe is still scentless despite the candles and pot-pourri

According to this blog’s stats some people are visiting these pages following a search for ‘what does mistletoe smell like’ or words to that effect.  I’m not surprised that they’re asking – as there are many seasonal mistletoe-branded scented products out there – candles, pot-pourri etc.  And they’re a complete con – mistletoe doesn’t have a scent.  

I covered this last winter – hence the hits on the searches – but it seems timely to re-visit the issue.  Last year I concentrated on candles – reviewing a few of the ones labelled as mistletoe-scented and discovering that, other than being green or white, they had nothing whatsoever to do with mistletoe. Most seemed to be pine-scented.  Re-visiting a few this season seems to confirm this – Yankee Candles are marketing their ‘Mistletoe and Fig’ range as having ‘the authentic, true-to-life fragrance’ of, er the ‘naturally fresh scent of gleaming, snow-covered pines’.  No mistletoe then.  Or figs for that matter.

This year I’ve investigated some of the mistletoe pot-pourri products.  So what do those smell like? Well, Colonial HomeScents ‘Frosted Mistletoe’ (box pictured above) smells of – you guessed it – Pine.  And not any old pine-scent – this one (believe me, I’ve picked a box up and sniffed it) really does smell like pine disinfectant – which is what I likened the candles to last year.

To emphasise the cheap, tacky, link to mistletoe, their label (see detail left) depicts what is clearly plastic mistletoe with artificial frosting.

So, no real mistletoe inside, and no real mistletoe on the label either.  At least they’re consistent!

But why are these candles and pot-pourri labelled them as mistletoe-scented?  I’ve no idea – apart from trying to re-brand pine-scented candles differently to sell more at Christmas.

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A total and utter con though – and perhaps someone should be formally complaining about it.  But the con covers a wide geographic area – Europe and North America – so it might be more trouble than it’s worth.