Emailed Keith, got a reply in less than 5 minutes. You gotta love these guys. Here's the 911 (I know, it's 411, some comedy movie had a dork say that. You had to be there.)...
Kendall,
The taper should be at the foot. Must be either CI's mis-pick or a factory packing mistake. If the box says "Favorito" on it, then it's probably a factory packaging mistake, and oddly, I have heard this before (but not in several months). The favorito and the perfeccion are the same dimensions 7"x49 (the perfeccion is the regular torp and the favorito is a reverse torp) and I think a crop of the slide-top wooden boxes must have been packed incorrectly at one point.
Thanks for the heads-up, I'll look into it more closely. We'll take a return if you want, just let Trish, Mike or Steve know...
Sincerely,
Keith