I had to laugh at Saturday's "Foxes In Love" cartoon. Click the image to view a larger version at the comic's Web page.
The descriptions of the scents are uncannily like what I smell every time I walk through the scented candle displays at supermarkets, or farmers markets, or wherever. To put it bluntly, they stink, particularly in combination! I have no idea why the vendors make them so strongly scented, but it backfires more often than not. It's rare that I find a candle that smells attractive, and (particularly) not too strongly. My wife has an even harder time, because excessively strong scents can cause breathing difficulties for her.
The question remains . . . why do they do it?
Peter
17 comments:
No idea, but someone has to be buying it. I can barely stand to walk BY those places, much less enter them.
It reminds me of a meme I have somewhere: "I'm not saying your perfume is too strong, I'm just saying that the canary was alive before you came along..."
I stay away from scented candles as much as I can. Same problem as your wife. If I walk in a candle shop I will be reaching for my inhaler.
The only answer to the why is that somehow they must be getting a benefit. Maybe their market, of whom neither you or your wife or I are members, must be attracted to the strong scents. I have know women, and that market is almost exclusively women, who would stink up their whole house/apartment with such things.
$$$ as always... sigh
I had blissfully enjoyed the "Foxes in Love" cartoon since finding it last year. Until a few weeks ago, I learned that it is not a male and female fox couple, but a "gay" male fox couple. Go back to 6/12 and you'll find it. Very sad indeed.
Why are they scented so strong? For the same reason as fishing lures get more garish by the day. In short, fishing lures stand more of a chance of catching fisherman than fish, but the lure makers know there's an endless supply of first-time buyers, and they need to make the lures "loud" to attract them. The same goes for those candles! My wife loves them. I don't. The candles and those damned "plug-ins" say one thing to ANYONE entering the house; "I'm trying to hide something." Funny; none of those candles come in "Clean House" "Recently Bathed Dog," or "We Don't Have A Cat" scents...
Incense is another thing that smells really good until you burn it.
My wife works at a big department store & has to work the men's cologne counter sometimes. She came home a few nights ago smelling something awful. She said the stuff was $800 for 6oz. Almost made her shower in the back yard. Stink doesn't describe it.
Women buy them. Different scent perception from men. Explains women's perfume use too. Why it's always way too strong and floral. They buy it for themselves,.
Back decades ago I had one that smelled like creme caramel. I also had a person in the next cubical that had a personal hygene issue and a particularily rampant vaginal infection on a frequent basis.....
I brought the candle to work and it was strong enough to mask the smell next door. It also filled the whole of the building and HR came down to vomplain it was messing up her diet.
Exile1981
Almost NO sense of smell, although I am VERY sensitive to odors that I react to (reaches for his inhaler...)
If I can TASTE the perfume/scent/odor I can only imagine what "normal" people's smeller is reacting to it!!
@Anonymous at 12:20PM: I'm sorry to learn that, but it won't stop me enjoying the comic strip. The relationship depicted is pretty universal, and is definitely family-friendly, so I don't find it objectionable.
IIRC, the original use for perfume was to cover up a person's body odor, as bathing tends to be uncommon without indoor plumbing in most of the world. Candles as smell obscurers for habitations might be a variation of this practice.
I do not understand why these things sell at all. Candles are for when the power goes out.
Like the smelly plug in things they are just a fire hazard.
This is a radical idea but maybe if people cleaned more often they would not need them? (Now I am starting to sound like my mother)
Hmmm. Just up the road from me in Deerfield, Mass is something called the Yankee Candle Company. It's a large complex and includes a room about the size of a football field that is full of bins of votive candles in literally hundreds of different scents. And that's just one room of many. To read the prior comments here one would think that Yankee Candle would be a disastrous money loser but au contraire, they seem to be doing quite well, thank you very much. The place is in fact a major tourist attraction; it's full of people from all over, not just New England. I suppose the majority of visitors are women but not overwhelmingly so. And everybody seems to leave with a bag full of scented candles.
I guess the point is that your preferences (and mine) are not necessarily the same as those of other people . . . a lot of other people, in fact. Different strokes, and all that.
Because people buy them.
I get ill if I have to spend more than a minute in that aisle. Hold my breath and run by with the shopping cart...
I think their main market is smokers and potheads who think if they use enough air fresheners, landlords and cops won't notice the indelible stench of illicit activity. Same as glade plug-ins and axe body spray. All that stuff is extremely toxic and completely unregulated because it ain't food or drugs. Probably gives you cancer.
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