HOT MESS AWARD: Applewood Bonfire

Products: candle
Area used in: bedroom
Time Period: mid-October - December

Description: Warm up to the cozy scent of an autumn bonfire - apples, crackling barks and fresh cut wood

...oy vey!!!

*sigh. Y'know...I'm a sucker for the underdog and Applewood Bonfire was definitely the underdog of the fall line. Not many people were talkin about it and the few who were seemed generally unimpressed and underwhelmed. Applewood Bonfire was the skinny dorky unpopular kid sitting all by himself in the lunchroom or the awkward country bumpkin Amish guy leaving his community for the big city. I felt genuinely sorry for it and despite the underwhelming and indifferent reviews, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. Twas a bad decision on my part

On a positive note, AB gave a fabulous burn. It had nice sturdy wicks, nice sized mushroom tops, the flames danced consistently high and the wax pool was always deep and even. Sounds like a dream candle, right? So what was the problem?

IT HAD NO THROW!!!! NONE WHATSOEVER! ZERO... ZIP... NADA!

My bf and I would take big lung filling sniffs to see if we could smell it just a bit. No not so much! Even standing over the candle I couldn't smell anything! Poor AB was trying its damndest to be a good candle but it just didn't have the strength and gumption to give off a decent throw. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to keep it and just let it burn out or take it back to the store and return it. Then I thought about - what is the point of buying a BBW candle if I can't smell anything?! I might as well just burn a regular cheap generic candle or Glade (oh snap, I went there!) I'd rather have a candle with a shitty burn but a great throw and scent than a candle with an outstanding burn with no throw or scent at all!

With that said, last weekend I went to the store and I exchanged AB for Fireside (my first exchange in months). That's right, I dumped the well-meaning but still awkward dork for the hot and popular jock. Superficial..perhaps..what's your point?!

I just feel like BBW didn't put much thought or effort into this candle. They did have the right idea though - a nice smoky woodsy scent with a hint of autumn apple; a Fireside for fall! It had potential, at least in theory. But what did BBW  do in the end? Hastily threw stuff together! They took out the amber and leather notes of Fireside, mixed in the apple and pomegranate notes in Autumn, gave it a boring generic brown wax color, slapped on a picture of hobo shantytown garbage fire and called it a day! Very lame on your part BBW!

It sucks that this candle was so boring and underwhelming. It was a wasted opportunity to present a truly unique scent as well as wasted space that could've been given to another scent altogether. So many "new" scents that BBW have been releasing lately are either repackages/repackages with a twist and thrown together bs like Applewood friggin Bonfire. Gone are the days when scents were well thought out and complex and it's scents like this that make many of us wish that those days would return!