Basic Trope: Handmade articles are seen as superior to machine-made ones.
- Straight: During a bake sale, Alice makes her own cakes and cookies. Bob buys his goodies from the store and simply resells them as-is. Alice's stall gathers long lines, while only one or two customers are willing to buy from Bob.
- Exaggerated: Not only does Alice's handmade goodies cost 10x more than Bob's, she gets 100x more sales than him.
- Downplayed: Alice's stall is only slightly more popular than Bob's.
- Justified: Alice is a Supreme Chef, and she uses the best and tastiest ingredients she can find to make her desserts taste amazing. Bob simply buys goods from the convenience store and marks up the price for profit. No one wants to buy Bob's goods because they could easily get the exact same thing elsewhere for a cheaper price.
- Inverted: Alice attempts to bake her own desserts, but all of them turn out badly, and they're not even consistent (the first batch is burnt, the second is half-raw, the third had no sugar, etc.). Bob curates the best-selling products from the most popular brands around the town, and his stall performs much better than Alice's.
- Subverted:
- Alice promotes her goods as "homemade cookies, straight from Grandma's Recipe", and this attracts visitors in troves. Until one of them actually eats Alice's cooking and finds that it tastes bad. Everyone promptly flees to Bob's stall.
- It turns out that Alice didn't bake her own cookies. She bought them from the store like Bob, but didn't tell anyone.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice's cooking tastes bad because Bob has sabotaged her dough. When she manages to make new batches without interference, they are very good, and the customers come flocking back.
- Once Alice's fraud is discovered, the customers demand a refund and go to Carol, whose goods are genuinely handmade.
- Parodied: Alice buys cookies from the same store as Bob did and shoves them in paper bags without even unpacking the cookies from its original packaging, claiming it's that homemade and fresh from the oven. The customers eat up her claim and buy from Alice's stall instead of Bob's.
- Zigzagged: ???
- Averted:
- No one makes anything by hand.
- Alice's and Bob's stands are equally popular.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Yum, handmade cookies are the best."
- Invoked: Alice has spent months practicing her baking skills to be able to produce cookies better than the store bought variety.
- Defied: Charlie, who owns a company that mass produces cookies, pays for the highest quality ingredients and manufacturing equipment to ensure the cookies he sells to stores are just as good as anything made by hand.
- Exploited: Despite using very cheap ingredients, Alice deliberately jacks up her prices by promoting that it's handmade.
- Discussed:Diane: You spent $20 to buy three pieces of cookies from Alice? You could have gotten more from Bob for less than half the price!
Earl: Hey! Alice's cookies are handmade. They're worth the price! - Conversed: ???
Back to Handmade Is Better.
