Happy for one minute, brainwashed for 48 hours.
What is the most ritualistic time for a birthday? Put on the crown, turn off the lights, close your eyes and make a wish, then blow out the candles on the cake... This is basically the most classic step in the birthday process, among which the birthday candle, a ceremonial prop, is the finishing touch.
So some manufacturers made articles on candles, trying to make the step of blowing candles more ritualistic - a lotus candle that accompanied many people's childhood and could sing was born.
Petals made of cheap plastic. Paired with a buzzer to play a birthday song with a touching sound, this flower-like candle can be regarded as standard electronic waste today. But don't underestimate this thing - light the lead in the center, you will see a series of short eruptions of fireworks, slowly blooming petals, with the flowers blooming through the eardrum birthday song, in a dozen years ago, these for most people absolutely improve the happiness of the black technology.
Just recently, this candle, which had shone on the dinner tables of many Chinese, inexplicably went overseas. Some time ago, in the birthday live broadcast of a member of a Boy Band in South Korea, he lit the lotus candle on his cake, and as a result, he shouted at the blooming candle in front of him, claiming to "open a new world".
The exaggerated reaction intensified the attention of foreign fans to the lotus candle, which temporarily aroused many overseas netizens to discuss warmly, and many people even went specifically to find the same model, while the comments of mainland netizens unsurprisingly showed an attitude that was not surprising:
But interestingly, some people have the same attitude as Chinese netizens, saying that "this is all the stuff I played when I was a child", in the past few decades, lotus candles have crossed the ocean and shone in countless birthday parties.
And with it, there are troubles that last far longer than happiness.
1
It is no accident that lotus candles can enter the childhood of many people. Looking back at the evolutionary history of birthday candles, lotus candles are almost incomparable all-round existence today.
After the evolution from paraffin wax to edible wax, birthday candles began to develop towards people's high-level artistic pursuits. But how cool can a birthday candle be? It's either unique or powerful.
The lotus candle, which was patented in China in 1999 and quickly became popular after the millennium, can be described as a combination of all needs. This slap-in-the-face product can be said to have achieved the ultimate in user experience.
If beautiful cakes, hearty meals and birthday gifts are just the steps of the birthday party to enter the climax, then a lotus candle can bring children the feeling of being in the center of the world at that moment in the process of "blooming for you".
In order to meet the needs of more people, lotus candles also have many choices.
Monochromatic isn't cool enough, and there are candles with colorful petals
If you don't like the lotus shape, the rose shape, the trophy shape, etc. look foreign. And if you like the classic lotus, there are also double petals and even double layers of different rotation directions to choose from.
If you think that lighting a fire is too dangerous, the lotus candle also has a reusable LED light version, it has a birthday song with better pitch, and extremely fast petal rotation, faster, stronger and even more environmentally friendly.
Lotus candles were once unusually popular, loved by children, and were often bundled in cake shops.
It has also sold well abroad and has been inserted on cakes around the world. You can capture the surprise and a hint of fear in the eyes of countless children when they face lotus candles on social media.
Some overseas netizens also found that in the stores in their respective countries, you can not only find cheap lotus candles, but also buy cake decorations that were once indispensable in our eyes - small paper umbrellas.
It turns out that children can't resist lotus candles, but so do adults. In the recent birthday photo of Hunter Schafer, the actor of the American drama "Excitement", this candle obviously occupies an important place in the photo.
Some bloggers deliberately bought it to do unboxing, and netizens from all over the world in the comment area proudly said that they had blown out such a candle, of course, without exception they were all "Made in China".
However, the joy of this sense of ritual comes and goes faster. The lotus candle is even more excessive at this point, bringing short-term happiness to people when it travels around the world, but also bringing people the same bad things.
2
Most people who have used lotus candles know that this "world center" kind of happiness does not last more than a minute, and the troubles can last for the next few hours.
This is thanks to one of the core selling points of the lotus candle, the playing birthday song feature. Know that people's tolerance for its harsh music is very limited, and once you have passed that short candle-blowing session, its sound becomes unnecessary.
What countless people still remember is that the sound of the lotus candle is very persistent, lasting to the point of collapse.
The sound system of the Lotus Candle comes from its buzzer and button battery pack that provides power. Most of the lotus candle generator devices cannot be turned off, and once started, they will continue until the battery is exhausted. Because of this, people who didn't know the principle at that time tried their best to make it "shut up".
If left unchecked, the sound of lotus candles will last in the trash can for two days and two nights. Especially when the battery is about to run out of time, its sound will be very strangely out of tune, like a precursor to the arrival of horror movie plots. To this day, many netizens can still recall the fear of being dominated by this voice.
There are only two ways to end this demonic song, one is to let it go away from you, and the other is to make it stop.
Then the lotus candle single-handedly created some chilling scenes — a lotus candle thrown into a public dumpster near a residential building that would allow an entire floor to listen to a birthday song all night.
Something even more outrageous than that may have come from some unreasonable neighbor upstairs who doesn't have a sewer pipe.
And how to turn it off, in the case that most people do not know the principle, the most common means is to destroy - this time it is really not a prank of the bear child.
Of course, the destruction is not entirely effective, and sometimes after people shoot its fragile plastic shell into pieces, the sound is still tenaciously "alive" because the key original is not damaged.
Some lotus candle switches use thermal switches, that is, copper wires are wrapped into the candle wire, and when the fire burns to the copper wire part, the circuit resistance is reduced, the circuit circulates, and the music switch is turned on. Some people who understand some of the principles have stuffed candles into the refrigerator in an attempt to end it. In terms of a lot of feedback, this trick did not work, and many people pulled open the refrigerator the next day, and the candle was still "singing".
And the lotus candles in foreign countries, of course, have not been kind to foreigners. On social media, they are doing the same as we are.
"My mom bought it for me and sang it for two days"
Under a video of a Youtube blogger explaining how to turn off the sound of a lotus candle, one netizen also recounted how his candle sang for 15 hours without sleep and frightened the dog walkers in the community.
Some netizens tried to solve the problem themselves. Following a video of how to scrap the alarm on Walmart's supermarket items, they packed the used lotus candles into sealed bags filled with water, but waited for a while to no avail. Another person put the candle in a box filled with water and stuffed it into the refrigerator, claiming that the candle had finally stopped singing.
A netizen with the ID "Ryan Self", after surprising his children, used a similar flooding method to the above netizens, and the results were useless.
Then he stuffed the candle into the microwave.
After a brief explosion in the cabin, the candle stopped singing.
One might ask, is there really no normal way to make it stop sounding? The Indian netizen with the ID "Live Delight with Pallavi" on Youtube demonstrated how to solve problems without violence.
Disassemble the center and you can see the generator
Some netizens also answered the question of the thermal switch - as long as the copper wire of the generating device is cut, the sound stops, and there is no need to plug the refrigerator.
In short, it must be reminded here that no matter which method is used, even if it is allowed to sing for two days and two nights, please do not learn from the foreign netizen who puts the candle in the microwave oven to heat.
3
The magical lotus candle has not only become people's childhood memories, but also a shadow of some people's childhood in the true sense. While walking into thousands of households, it also turned into a bomb on the dinner table without paying attention.
Since most of the plastic of the product has not been flame retardant treatment, after the candle carried on the lotus candle is burned out, the flame will have a small probability of igniting the plastic, and if the fire burns all the way to the button battery of the sounding device, it will cause the battery to explode.
In fact, it did cause many such accidents – in the years when lotus candles were selling best, there were news of candle explosions injuring children almost every month.
The packaging of the lotus candle clearly states that the candle needs to be operated by an adult and extinguished as soon as possible shortly after it is lit, but its safety hazards seem to have always existed. Security has also become one of the reasons why it has been eliminated by the times.
In the past 20 years, the lotus candle has also been synonymous with "soil", and has joined the e-commerce platform 9.9 free shipping army, deepening the impression of "three no products" in people's eyes.
Seeing that the foreign atmosphere in our eyes when we were young has become the soil of today, it is somewhat lamentable. However, all these conditions did not end its life, and the lotus candle can still return to the trend in a unique way.
On social media, people gather childhood toys together in line with the concept of "the soil is the tide", with the intention of finding the feeling of the past in the "Renaissance". On the short video platform, lotus candles have also joined the popular items of short video with goods, which is quite popular.
When people find lotus candles, they may be nostalgic for the few childhood birthdays that they spent carefully in the presence of their families as children, hoping that the objects will bring them the carefree happiness they once had.
After just a short period of happiness, I don't know how many people can patiently make it "shut up".