Candle reviews lately have picked up some serious steam on TikTok’s FYP (For You Page, for my TikTok-mystified millennials). Some of those videos have generated so many views that the featured candles sold out everywhere — even at big-box stores like Target and Bath & Body Works — within hours. Below, I’ve put together a list of some of the current most-popular-on-TikTok candles: One is a Diptyque dupe, and another apparently … smells like Draco Malfoy.
All right, this is going to take me a second to explain. Put as simply as possible, there’s a TikTok trend in which people film themselves lusting over Harry Potter characters. A large, obsessive majority of these videos focuses on Slytherin Draco Malfoy (if you’re interested, visit #dracotok, which has 4.7 billion views). About a month ago, some TikTokers claimed that the Bath & Body Works candle “Mahogany Apple” “smelled” like Draco Malfoy (it is described as having scents of “apple, lavender, peppercorn, and mahogany), which apparently struck a chord with the #dracotok folks: The candle sold out almost immediately. Nowadays, you can only find the original Bath & Body Works scent on eBay or Poshmark. Meanwhile, several Etsy shops have formed to keep up with demand, selling similarly scented candles called “smells like Draco.”
Perhaps the most popular TikTok candles are these “jackpots” (the hashtag #jackpotcandles has 53.5 million views). Basically: Once you burn them long enough, a little aluminum-foil pouch appears in the hot wax. Pull that out with a set of tweezers, unwrap it, and you’ll discover a piece of jewelry.
DIY candle videos are also extremely popular: TikToker @giovanni_pastrami racked up 2.2 million views for their tutorial on twisty and bendy candles. To make your own, you just place candle sticks in warm water for about 15 minutes. Then, when they’re soft and wiggly, flatten and twist them with your hands and then put them back into cold water. Done. To make the bendy candles, you essentially follow the same method above, but instead of twisting you bend the candle.
A TikTok executive (known on the app as @sircandleman) recently made his page exclusively candle focused: He now frequently posts videos of himself reviewing and rating different candles. He claims this $30 candle is a dead-on dupe for Diptyque’s highly coveted $60 “Baies” candle (which Meghan Markle and LeBron James love).
Escentwick is a small business based out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that recently became “famous” for its candle-making TikToks — it has 263,800 followers, and its videos get upwards of 1 million views. According to its page, its most popular candle of the moment is this “Juicy Watermelon” scent, which has notes of plump, mandarin, and vanilla.
[Editor’s note: This candle is no longer available, but Escentwick has eight other scents available on its Etsy page.]
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