Darrell Lea liquorice in our store used to have the word original on the packaging. The bag was striped. This changed a month or so ago with their packaging overhaul. The changes never made sense to me because Darrell Lea liquorice customers are regulars for this product.
I was in Woolworths yesterday and purchased the Darrell Lea liquorice pack in the photo. It is labelled original. I have a few questions about this:
- How can this Woolworths products be the original product when it is not original?
- Is the Woolworths Darrell Lea liquorice the same as what I have in my store? I suspect not because my shelf life is much shorter than the one year shelf life for the Woolworths product. A check of the package details indicates that the products are different. Theh taste different.
- Why does the packaging of the Woolworths product look similar to what we used to have?
- Is there a breach of the Trade Practices Act with Darrell Lea having different product with different shelf lives called essentially the same thing?
- Why is the new Woolworths product original and our original product no longer called this?
Maybe I am jumping at shadows. Maybe not. The two liquorice products from Darrell Lea certainly look, feel, smell and taste different.
I would be inclined to think that the use of the word “original”, in this particular case, is misleading to consumers. If the product is not the “original” recipe then the manufacturer is making a false claim. I would certainly raise the issue with Fair Trading Australia. I’ve seen manufacturers forced to change their on-product marketing for far less obvious misleading claims. I would certainly raise the issue with the ACCC or your state based government agency that enforces fair trading legislation.
My immeadiate reaction without any investigation into it is that “Original” is this case is referring to taste. Is there also Strawberry etc on the shelf in WW?
Have a look at the nutrition information and see if the ‘Woolworths’ sold product has more preservatives to increase the shelf life.
Niall,
I think it would be a difficult to claim the tast is “original”. The taste itself, from what has been said here, is different from the “original” Darrell Lea product. I have never seen any manufacturer use the term “original” to describe the flavour of their licorice, with the exception of it being the actual flavour of their original recipe. There is no common indistry usage as there is with something like potato chips, where consumers recognise that the term “original” means unflavoured, salted chips.