You are an Obsession, You're my Obsession...

Trend Scratch n Sniff Stickers

Truer words from the 80s were never spoken... And this was and is mine...

Scratch n Sniff stickers...

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, companies like Mello Smello and Trend pumped out sheets upon sheets of this awesome invention. A simple looking sticker with some funny cartoon animal or object wasn't anything to jump up and shout about, but... when you scratched or rubbed the sticker... Suddenly, your nose was filled with the scent of spearmint... or fried chicken... or skunk... Yes, those of you not old enough to remember this incredible fad, they even had a skunk scented sticker (see the first image above), a shoe scented sticker... One company made one that smelled like gasoline. Makes you wonder why in the hell they thought young children would want to smell those things...

But I digress...

For me, the obsession all started with one little spearmint scented sticker. As a matter of fact, it was the frog sticker shown above, the very first scratch n sniff sticker I ever received, that began what turned into a fetish.  The very day I got that sticker, I insisted my mom take me out to find more of these wonderous things. 

Before I knew it, I had about a half dozen books (one an 8x10" size) so filled with these stickers that there wasn't even a bit of the actual page showing. 

Sadly, as it always is in the case of remakes, the newer scratch n sniff stickers today aren't the same... The types of scents are very few, not as strong and the pictures not as imaginative or cute. It's disconcerting...

However... vintage stickers like these above can still be found on websites like ebay and Etsy. I myself have bought a few of these amazing stickers from ebay and am happy to report... they still smell as fabulous after all these years...

But while these sites do have a vast cornucopia of vintage scratch n sniffs, there are still those that seem to slip from my grasp... 

Trend, for a time, made larger and more shapely stickers than the smaller circular ones. For example... the picture on the above right... This is a set of six cat themed scratch n sniffs made by Trend. The sticker in the lower right corner, the cat with the pitcher upturned on its head, was one of my all-time favorites. I can't tell you how much time I spent scratching that sticker and placing my nose right up against the sticker so as to not let one whiff of the sweet cream scent escape me. 

It was difficult enough to find this tiny image of the sticker... Finding it for sale, it seems, is damned near impossible. But I won't give up the search. Such is the curse of the obsessed... 

And of the sticker sniffers...