I'm glad you understand the concept of the empty product. Not everyone does. Wikipedia, despite its many, many flaws (peruse Wikipediocracy sometime), at least recognizes that this has to be dumbed down for the general public, it has to be made less sophisticated. Some people have trouble with the idea of a single integer being a product of one integer, how can they understand an integer being the product of no integers at all?
This is why the article says "either is prime itself or is the product of prime numbers" rather than "every positive integer is a product of primes." 2 is the product of a single prime, itself, while 1 is the product of no primes at all. You understand that and I understand that. But if you're writing for someone who might not necessarily understand these "subtleties," you have to dumb it down.
You also have to consider the history of the subject. 1 has never been a prime number, but it took mathematicians a long time to recognize this. In explaining a unique factorization domain, you have to keep in mind that some people may not know that 1 is really a unit, not a prime.
Also, and I am neither the first nor the last to say this, but too many people have this idea that unique factorization is something that needs protection. It is true that in one sense, $1^3 \times 2 \times 5$ and $(-1)^4 \times 5 \times 2$ are different things. But both expressions evaluate to the same number and involve the same prime numbers. The units and the ordering changed, not the prime numbers.