Pine Garden to stop selling S'pore passport cake as no permission given to use National Coat of Arms

Cannot have their cake and eat it.

Lee Wei Lin| May 04, 2022, 04:04 PM

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Local bakery Pine Garden is no longer selling the passport cake.

According to Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, Pine Garden came up with the product after a customer showed them a picture of the Singapore passport and requested that the bakery create a cake version of it for their friend.

Image (now deleted) from The Pine Garden's Facebook.

Restrictions on the use of National Coat of Arms

According to the Singapore Arms and Flag and National Anthem Rules, the National Coat of Arms cannot be "printed, published, manufactured, sold, offered for sale or exhibited for sale" unless one has received "prior written permission of the Minister or any authorised officer".

Screenshot from Singapore Statutes Online.

The National Heritage Board (NHB) told Zaobao: "Receiving commercial profits by selling items related to the National Coat of Arms is not allowed."

NHB alerted the Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth (MCCY) about Pine Garden's passport cake, which in turn notified the bakery of the restrictions on the use of the National Coat of Arms.

The bakery subsequently were told that it had to remove all images of it from their promotional materials.

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Top photos by The Pine Garden's Facebook page.