What with the current glut of “old school” toys that are making their combacks recently, I felt this particularly aprapos; some hours before the New Year hour, my now three-year-old girl walks over and offers me one of the My Little Pony figures she got for Christmas and I shrugged and hugged it close to my face to please her.
Boy-howdy did I get a shock when my nose - in it’s capacity as a kick-start to the memory - was shot through with wonderful fragrances of the past.
I was suddenly reminded of mements twenty years ago when at a friend’s house smellers hers by chance and recalling that many of them had particular sents of their own. It was amazing.
Later in the night, when an old friend of mine came over, I handed it to him and said simply, “Smell this” and he did the exact same thing.
After only a few seconds I remembered that many toys from back in the day had smells of their own. Who else recalls the particular olfactory distinction of the He-Man figure, or of the truly old StarWars figures?
Have y’all had similar experiences?
Who’s been taken back by what their kids have now to your younger days? Isn’t it an amazing experience?
No kids, but neighbor’s kids had some Play-Doh.
Ooooh, the smell is great, but doesn’t taste as good as it used to (had some on my hands and didn’t realize it. Very salty. Ick.)
And WHEN did they start making BLACK Play-Doh?!? I had funky Yipes!Stripes! zebras when I was a kid, becuase they did not make black Play-Doh.
I have said before-there is NOTHING in the world like the smell of a brand new Barbie doll. To me it smells like Christmas morning when I still believed in Santa Claus.
I had the same sort of Proustian experience with a Strawberry Shortcake® doll once.
I read somewhere (sorry, no cite) that one of the most universally recognized smells for people of all ages in the US is crayons. Even if it’s been 50 years since you last tried to color within the lines, one whiff and you’re all “Ooooh, crayons!”
OK this phrase in particular means something to me… is it gum?
Was Yipes Stripes a gum?
I love when a scent grabs my memory and takes it for a stroll… It happens a lot, too. What I always find fascinating is when I smell something and think… “That scent means something to me!” (much like the Yipes Stripes phrase above just did) but I have to stop and do a mental backtracking to figure out what (and where and when) it represents to me. Sort of like remembering a dream.
It’s a lot like watching a picture develop from the center out. Very cool.
This is my absolute favorite way to break the ice at parties where people don’t really know each other - leave two of the huge boxes (you know, the ones with the crayon sharpeners built-in?) of Crayolas out on the coffee table with a few coloring books and lots of blank paper.
Dignified lawyers and college professors will suddenly become gleeful 6 year olds - but slightly more capable of sharing. (That’s why I do two big boxes instead of lots of little ones - more colors, and they have to ask each other to pass the box for a new color.) By the time everyone’s arrived, they’re giggling and laughing and sharing their work and asking each other questions. It’s pretty freaking cool.
And yes, *everyone *sniffs the crayons.
I love the smell of boardgames. I’m kind of weird.
WhyNot, I have to admit that the box of crayons idea is one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. We have (almost literally) tons of crayons around, so we can try that the next time we have a party (no dignified lawyers or anything at our parties, though - they only come in to play in the aftermath )
I remember the smell of My Little Ponies (Ponys? I think it might be correct like that) very well. A light sweet scent, over the smell of plastic.
Smells remind me of places. A whiff of jasmine and I’m on my parents’ back porch, where a small jasmine plant grew out of control to the point that it almost took over the house. I don’t know how many days I spent on the porch on sunny summer days, reading a book. When I was in high school, my parents remodeled the house and the porch - and the jasmine - both went away.
I have a million of these. I’m a very smell-oriented person. I walk around sniffing the air a lot, trying to figure out what I’m smelling and why it is reminding me of Christmas at my grandparents’ when I was 9.
Yup. Yipes!Stripes! was the catchphrase by the spokeszebra for a brand of brightly-colored, swirly-striped gum. Not sure exactly the name, but it’s another childhood smell.
Along with:
Elmer’s glue
Chocolate
gramma’s apple pie
Necco wafers (black ones were pinchy-tasting)
Diesel fuel (dad worked around large machinery)
– The leaves during fall, or a deciduous forest in general (grew up in Upstate NY, here in Florida we only get those smells when the wind blows south during winter)
– Old oil and dirt (the smell of a late-80s convenience store video game parlor, converted from an oil boutique.)
– Ozone (or another electrical smell, not sure what, but that was the smell of Golden Age video game arcades.)
In adolescent times: the hazardous yet attractive odor of that fresh purple ink/toner? that wafted from exams and handouts that had just come from the mimeo machine.
We used to inhale those things deeply. Now it’s nothing but unscented copies.
Yawn.
Oooh, and rubber cement. Remember that in elementary school?
Old apples and grapes (we had a few trees in backyard, and our neighbor had a grape arbor). when they were overly ripe, mmmmmmmmm.
Burning paper. Dad had a burn barrel for paper (this was way before recycling).
Summer cook-outs (charcoal briquettes, lighter fluid, burgers on the grill, salt potatoes & butter, and corn on the cob)
Juniper bushes by the front door.
The biggest smell from childhood for me, that gets me every time, is that occasionally I will be going somewhere and walk past a woman that smells like one of my old teachers. It sends me back to elementary school all over again.
The smell of crayons and the newsprint-type paper in old colouring books is another big one for me.
Not a childhood memory, but one of my ex-lovers from about five years ago (now passed away)… we used to sit and paint together in his living room, on the floor, often with the door open while it was pouring rain outside. I love the smell of oil paint and turpentine, especially mixed with scented candles, because of that.
Whenever I uncap a marker, I have to smell it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Crayola or a Sharpie. It seemed like all the magic markers of my childhood were the kind that smelled.
Stale coffee reminds me of my fifth grade classroom, which smelled just like that.
Like jinwicked, certain perfumes will take me back. Both my first and fourth grade teacher wore distinctive fragrances.
Oh yes! The smell of Crayola markers. Green ones, especially… the dark and cool of our finished basement in Kansas, during the blazing summers. Toads in the window-wells, tumbleweeds above. I could take half the staircase in one jump.
When I had my first child this summer my mom brought out my 2 old Cabbage Patch dolls (Mac Alwin and Nanette Lily :)). One smell of their little cloth bodies reminded me of playing “mommies” with my friends and snuggling with my “babies” at night. It’s kind of a plastic-y baby powder smell.
Heh, the other day cleaning out the basement I found my old soccer cleats. It was bizarre- as soon as I laid eyes on them I remembered the leather smell, when the smell hit my nose I was 11 years old again for a moment.
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