Friday, October 15

Smell that? It's my Youth.

Apple Dumplin'.  Not as yummy to eat as actual Apple Dumpling.I was walking down the hall here at work and caught a whiff of something familiar.

I'm not sure if it was someone's fragrance or hairspray or roomspray or what, but it smelled exactly like Apple Dumplin'.

Now let me clarify. Not Apple Dumpling, the dish.

Apple Dumplin', one of the characters from Strawberry Shortcake.

Strawberry Shortcake the cartoon character.

When I was a kid and got my bedroom revamped, I upgraded my decor from Holly Hobbie to Strawberry Shortcake. And that automatically must've meant I loved Strawberry ShortcakeShe smelled like strawberries.  Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. (And by the way I didn't. The red sheets were on sale, and my mom was hell-bent on building a theme around it.)

So for my birthday, I got all these Strawberry Shortcake-related accessories. Socks. Wall hangings. Sticker books. And an Apple Dumplin' action figure. Random.

The schtick with the action figures was that their hair smelled like their accompanying scent, and Apple Dumplin' smelled of apple. That is if "apple scent" implies a synthetic fruit-ish aroma, that smells somewhere between newly manufactured plastic and aerosol preservatives.

So that's what I smelled today. My childhood.

The one smell that sends me back faster than old books or a fresh box of crayons.


What did your childhood smell like that?

Just curious, I know everyone's got a different trigger for their personal Wayback Machine.



4 comments:

  1. I LOVED Strawberry Shortcake! I acutally have a couple Strawberry Shortcake dvds that I bought a few years ago (due to giving in when getting all nostalgic) which I am now trying to get my daughter to watch, lol. I loved the smell (by the way, the dvds smell like her also!). I think another smell is Cabbage Patch Kids. I don't think they were known for a scent, but they did have one, at least to me, lol.

    Sometimes I smell perfume and it reminds me of one of my elementary school teachers, probably my kindergarten teacher. I don't know what the perfume is, but whenever I happen to smell it (very rarely), it always takes me back.

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  2. Hahahaha -- Debbie was it Jean Nate or Windsong? Omg, those "imitation designer fragrance sprays" always remind me of some authority figure from my youth.

    And be honest - Strawberry Shortcake's strawberry smell wasn't really strawberry-like, but what plastic strawberries dolls should smell like, right? lol

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  3. I'm telling you, Toni, stop what you're doing and get a set of those markers where each color is a different scent - takes you right back. Oh, and shrinkie dinks.

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  4. Lol!! I'm sure it was one of them!

    Strawberry Shortcake definitely didn't smell like real strawberries, but it was unique, I'll give it that. Ooooh and My Little Pony! They had that weird scented plastic smell also. And what about Play Doh (I seriously just had to look up that spelling)? Lol. I could go on and on! :)

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