Just been helping some students assemble some electronics projects: We'd bought the Dick Smith branded "Digitor resin (sic) cored solder type 35" and the Dick Smith branded "Super Solder Wick" cat No N2814.
To cut a long story short, neither product works very well: The solder can't wet the shiny nickel plated terminals on the binding posts that DSE sells probably because of the passivation used to keep the metal shiny after being handled by grubby hands and the solder wick can't mop up solder very well as it was made without rosin being applied to the wick.
Once I brought out some much older DSE solder made by Multicore and Soder-Wick made by Chemtronics the soldering became possible.
The whole problem was caused by three distinct products not being quite good enough for the purpose they were sold for. It seems that the cost cutting, "Near enough is good enough" attitude adds up and compounds the difficulty of getting started with electronics.
I'd compare these items with the cheap discount store goods where you know you are taking a risk, a bit like the cheap epoxy I bought that never hardens past a sticky, jelly-like consistency.
For someone starting in electronics this would be a great way of discouraging them as they couldn't solder properly with this stuff and would conclude the fault lay with them instead and go back to playing their Playstation.