10 Smells Every Gen-X Person Will Remember From Their Slightly Toxic Childhood
Eliza Alves | CanvaIn a recent essay I wrote about a GenX Makeup tutorial, someone commented about a product I hadn’t listed: Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. They came in a small, normal lip balm-sized tube, or, if you were lucky, Santa put the giant, oversized tube in your stocking.
I was lucky. The mere mention of this item took me back to the mid-1970s and immediately embedded the long-lost smell/taste of sweet strawberry candle wax into my middle-aged brain.
Smells are a weird thing. One mention of a product can teleport you back in time to a happy place, a traumatic time, or a make-out session in 8th grade with that boy who smelled like teenage angst and whose name you can’t remember. As I wrote this list, I realized that while some of these smells are sweet and innocent, many of them are something out of a post-apocalyptic toxic horror show.
Smells every Gen-X person will remember from their childhood:
1. Loves Baby Soft
There weren’t too many little girls and preteens who didn’t wear puffy, pinky, powdery-smelling fragrance in the little glass phallic-shaped bottle with the white cap. It was our introduction to “how to attract or repel” the opposite gender. Clearly, our parents didn’t pay attention to the explicit nature of the ads when buying this for their 7-year-olds. Weird.
2. Cigarettes
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Let’s rip the Band-Aid off and go straight into deep stank: Growing up Gen-X, everybody smoked. All four of my grandparents smoked. My parents briefly smoked, my sister smoked, many aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and neighbors smoked. Walls were yellow from smoke; people’s fingers were brown from smoke, and teeth were gray from smoke. Our hair and clothes were permeated with smoke just by walking past ashcans in the grocery store, the doctor's office, and the mall.
Yeah, your doctor smoked. Sitting in the smoking section of an airplane was like being in the Rat Pack in the 50s. Everyone was smoking and sucking back a glass of Rye. If you didn’t try a cigarette by the 4th grade, you weren’t deep in the heart of Generation X. My first one was standing in front of Martha Hart Pond with my neighbor Leslie. (I choked but felt liberated.)
My mom’s cousin smoked a carton a day. Yes, 10 packs a day. And when we’d go to my great-aunt’s house, she’d light up one after another. They’d tell her not to blow the smoke at me because I was this little kid coughing constantly, and she’d look at me with her scary brown teeth and say, “Oh, sorry, Kristen,” as she lit the next one while sitting at the dinner table.
3. Old Spice
I know you immediately started whistling the song from the ad where the old sea dog gets off his ship and meanders through town, attracting all the ladies with the musky smell that hopefully masks the smell of the old boat.
Everyone’s father had that white glass bottle sitting on their dresser next to a comb, a key case, and a pack of Doublemint gum. I think this is where I got my first love of men’s musky smells. Or maybe it was when I drank a bottle of my dad’s High Karate cologne.
4. Coppertone Oil
There was no SPF in sight in my youth. That giant fireball in the sky wasn’t a concern yet. We were all encouraged to get that deep, dark tan. From age five, I remember my mom greasing me up with this distinct, clean, sunshiny smell to “protect” my skin when we stayed at the beach for two weeks every summer.
I loved the smell, but hated the application process. Nothing like making a sand castle and all of the sand sticking to your oily skin. I was a walking piece of sandpaper. And here we are, 40+ years later, most of us are crawling to the dermatologist to get random bits and pieces of our bodies cut off.
5. Plastic Halloween Costumes
One word: petroleum. Those toxic, flammable plastic costumes were all the rage. There was no thrifting or Pinterest to spark anyone's creativity; we just went to the corner drugstore to wade through a rack of cheap plastic costumes that smelled like gasoline.
The masks were razor sharp, had a too-small rubber band stapled tightly to the sides so it cut into your face, and the chemicals in the mask were such that when you tried to breathe through that tiny mouth hole, all you smelled was your own breath.
6. Mimeograph Machines
Every time Miss Huck, my first-grade teacher, asked someone to pass out the “ditto sheets” or to go to the office to make dittos, hands shot up like cannons.
The mimeograph smell was like “baby’s first huff.” Papers came out damp and cold, the sweet smell of toxic fumes permeating each sheet. If sheets were passed out quickly enough, the entire class, almost in sync, would lift the page to his or her face and inhale deeply. No wonder so many of us graduated to weed in junior high.
7. Jovan Musk for Men
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My best friend's boyfriend wore this, and I can only describe it as hormones in a bottle. Something about that deep, musky, oaky scent could drive a gawky, foreyed teen to want to steal her bestie’s man. She knew I thought Mike was cute, but when he got close enough to hug, and I smelled that scent mixed with his pheromones and Marlboro Reds tucked into his plaid flannel shirt, look out.
Fast forward to my years as a cosmetician at Albertsons in my early 20s, and I had a tester bottle of Jovan Musk stashed in my office for the occasional nostalgic sniff.
8. Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas)
If you went to the dentist for a cavity, you likely got dosed up and drugged out with laughing gas. As a kid, this was the only kind of “numbing” for minor dental work. I didn’t have a shot of Novocaine until I was 12, and it irritated me; I wanted the gas. The smell of the sweet gas and rubber of the mask being placed over your face was the beginning of your trip to the live-action version of The Electric Company.
9. Iron-On T-shirt Transfers
Picking out a transfer from a wall of vinyl iron-ons was a whole weekend event. You could get your name put on a shirt, your favorite sports team, or your favorite teen idol. I chose Shaun Cassidy.
The moment the t-shirt was spread out over the giant iron and the image was placed on it was nerve-wracking. You trusted the pimply teen behind the iron at T-Shirts Plus to get it just right and not ruin what would be your favorite new shirt.
Once the transfer was in place and the iron was lowered, “PSSSSSSSSSSSSFFFFFFT” the magic happened. You could smell it. Burning vinyl and cloth, all melded into one glorious piece of artwork. As the iron lifted and you approved the work, a warm shirt was handed to you and, like the mimeograph, you smelled it. Shaun never smelled so good hanging on my wall.
10. Spencer’s Gifts
I can’t describe the smell of this store, but I know it had a distinct smell. Maybe a combination of candles, incense, plastic, horny teens, and teenage angst. But it was everyone’s favorite hangout. Grab your Orange Julius and head to the back of the store to peruse the selection of blacklight posters.
But be sure to quickly run down the dirty aisle, the one with the adult games, before the staff comes over and tells you to scram because you’re under 18. Who wants fuzzy handcuffs anyway?
I know I missed a ton: Polo, Chef Boyardee, Jean Nate, and Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific, to name a few, but I tried not to overthink it, and this is what popped into my dusty, old, post-menopausal brain.
Kristen Crisp is the founder of Not Even Wine With Dinner. A community/mission for those looking for peer support with sobriety, self-esteem, mental health, aging, and all the things that come with being human. She is also a frequent writer on Medium under the handle @notevenwinewithdinner.
