Limited edition, for three years

There is a box of biscuits in a Kuwait City supermarket that has said limited edition on its front for as long as I can remember seeing it.

Nobody believes it, and that is not really the point. The words are not there to inform. They are there because that is what a biscuit box from a serious company is expected to say, in the same way it is expected to show a serving suggestion and promise a new improved taste.

Most categories carry a set of these small untruths. Only a few left. Price slashed. Freshly made. Each is too minor to call a lie, and so common that it has become part of the costume. A product wears them to look as if it belongs on the shelf.

That leaves anyone making something new with two choices.

You can wear the costume. Print the same words, borrow the same claims, and the shopper files you with everyone else, which is safe, forgettable and slightly untrustworthy.

Or you can take it off. Say on the box what is true: the same biscuit as last year, we only changed the picture. Say on the shelf tag that the price has not moved. It sounds odd at first, because nobody else talks like that, and the oddness is the signal. A shopper who notices one honest sentence starts to read the rest of the box differently.

One thing not to do is take it up with the young man restocking the aisle. He did not write the box, and his shift is long enough already.