Flashback Friday – Drugstore Perfume Edition

07/30/2010 11:00 am by

This Flashback Friday is brought to you by some really foul smelling  shit.

When you were 12 or 13, or at least when I was, there was nothing worse than someone actually thinking you were a kid, even though you totally were. So you tried to make yourself seem older by wearing clothes your parents would never approve, wearing makeup and bathing in perfume. However, you probably ended up not looking adult, but rather like a 12-year-old caricature of adulthood: clothes a little over the top, makeup completely tarty and overdone, and drugstore perfumes so vile-smelling and strong they could be used by riot cops to knock down angry mobs.

Here are the fragrances of my youth and perhaps yours.

Love’s Baby Soft

Love’s Baby Soft was definitely the most demure drugstore fragrance and, to be honest, it doesn’t really reek. For the most part, it smells like baby powder. In my day, it was the popular “choice” for girls with strict parents who wouldn’t let them wear makeup and perfume. I suppose their parents thought, because it smelled like babies, that it connoted innocence and purity. These parents clearly never saw any ads for Love’s.

loves baby soft e1280500332928 Flashback Friday – Drugstore Perfume Edition

Electric Youth

electric youth perfume Flashback Friday – Drugstore Perfume Edition

Debbie Gibson’s signature fragrance for Revlon smelled like rotting fruit and embalming fluid. And I fucking showered in that shit.


Exclamation!

exclamation by coty Flashback Friday – Drugstore Perfume Edition

I don’t remember what it smelled like, but I’ll never forget the bottle. By the way, did you know that’s a once unknown Famke Janssen in the commercial?

What foul-smelling cheap perfume did you wear in your day?

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About Snarky Amber

Snarky Amber pursued a degree in interdisciplinary studies in order to obtain a well-rounded perspective, which she now uses to make fun of people who make more money in a week than she stands to make in a lifetime.

Filed Under: Best Of Featured, Best Of MamaPop, Flashback Friday, Nostalgia Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,


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  • http://fawnlikeadeer.blogspot.com Fawn Amber

    Exclamation! God, that was my go-to. That and my mom’s Youth Dew, which now makes me want to hurl.
    Someone also bought me a bottle of Charlie once. It smelled like rubbing alcohol and roses. Gross.

  • JenGid

    I wore the hell out of exclamation! I can smell it just thinking about it. Another one was Skin. Who the hell wants to smell like skin? Apparently I did.

  • http://lovethemama.com annemarie

    Gender One, the cheap-ass knockoff of CK1, which I totally couldn’t afford on my allowance. Our whole basketball team would emerge from the changeroom in a cloud of this stuff.

  • http://www.themummychronicles.com Vicky

    Exclamation! It smelled like cheap candy and dead flowers. Yum! I wore that and Love’s like mad! I coveted that Electric Youth bottle but never got it. Now I want to go and buy Bonnie Bell lip gloss in strawberry too.

  • Debby

    I also wore Emeraude (Spelling?) in addition to Loves and Exclamation. Fun fact: I’m 38 and wearing Exclamation! right now!

  • Kymm

    I loved Exclamation! It smells like apples, kind of a clean scent, a little like that Salon Selectives shampoo, which I had to convince Mom to buy. Also wore Love’s Bsby Soft. Then I got into all the cheap vanilla smells, vanilla musk, etc.

  • Pinkie Bling

    That’s hilarious!! I wore all three of those. YIKES.

  • KarenFerguson

    I wore Vanilla Fields and CK1 in High School. I remember everyone wearing CK1. Even now if I catch a whiff of someone wearing Vanilla Fields or CK1 I have PTSD flashbacks of High School.

  • http://www.danielletodd.com Danielle

    I am ashamed to admit I wore all three of those at one time or another. I also had one that I think was called Aspen.

  • Brooke

    Jovan Musk…a mix between my 80 year old grandmother and pine sol.

  • Karen

    Exclamation, oh God, I can’t believe I wore that crap. And Love’s Baby Soft, I think my babysitter got me some of at for a gift and I was so frakking excited to wear PERFUME!

    I remember my mom getting me Elizabeth Taylor’s “White Diamonds” (and then all the other foul-smelling ones, like Rubies and Emeralds and whatnot).

    I had a friend who wore “Tea Rose”. I think she got it at TJ Maxx. On her it smelled lovely, on me it smelled horrid.

    The worst, worst, smelling perfume though, is Tabu. My ex’s grandmother wore that. No, she bathed in it. And I lived with them for a while, and now if I smell Tabu I have horrible, horrible Vietnam-combat-style flashbacks.

  • http://twitter.com/barbsobel barb

    i not only rocked that nasty Love’s Baby Soft, but i believe i went through several bottles of Camp Beverly Hills. word to 1989!

  • L

    Sand and Sable. I only recently gave it up…

  • diamondcait

    I, too, rocked the Jovan Musk. Also, some dreadful Anais Anais knockoff. My best friend was a Preferred Stock man, which was some high end (smirk) walmart men’s cologne.

  • Erin

    Someone above mentioned Sand and Sable. I remember thinking back then “This really does smell like the beach!” Yeah, if that beach was on the shores of a chemical pond.

    Sadly, 3 years ago I received a birthday gift of a very large bottle of a Michael Kors perfume that smelled entirely too similar to Sand and Sable. That baby went right back to Sephora.

  • Erin

    And on the topic of Loves Baby Soft…does anyone else remember when they came out with different scents/colors? I owned a aqua blue one and a light purple one. Each with their own distinctive scents of yuck.

  • Suzy Q

    Love also made Fresh Lemon. I smelled like a basket of citrus.

  • http://www.sweetney.com Sweetney

    That Love’s Baby Soft Ad just made me throw up in my mouth a little.

  • http://nannersp.com Nanette

    I, too, wore Exclamation and Vanilla Fields!

  • http://www.theanviltree.com Sarah Lena

    I had all of the Love’s scents as well as White Shoulders, Electric Youth (I still have the bottle.. I DON’T KNOW WHY), and a lot of Teen Spirit Spritzes.

    And surprisingly, very few friends.

  • http://franciespeaks.blogspot.com Francie

    I went through a Baby Soft and Electric Youth phase, then when I was in 6th grade I wore Aspen and thought I was very mature. That Exclamation ad is about the 80′s-ish thing I’ve ever seen.

  • http://muirnait.blogspot.com Heather

    Just seeing that Exclamation! bottle totally gave me a flashback ;) And that BabySoft ad is creepy as all heck.

  • http://muirnait.blogspot.com Heather

    Oh, and I wore the Body Shop vanilla. Always. :P

  • Indycitygirl

    All of the above and also Sweet Honesty by Avon,I swam in that and oh yeah, Heaven Scent, loved that sweetgooey scent!! Ahhh youth. My first lipstick shade was Pebble Peach that I ordered with the Avon Sweet Honesty! Memories

  • incognito

    That Love’s Baby Soft ad is horrifying.

    My parents bought me 4711, which was okay, and I had a bottle of Colours de Benneton that I never used. Emeraude I liked. And I think I also had Camp Beverly Hills! I loved the smell strips of Coty Musk, but heard that they beat leopards or some such to extract the musk so never got any.

    The defining smells of my high school days (mostly on other people) were White Musk from the Body Shop and Calvin Klein’s Eternity.

  • DianaCLT

    I would have never remembered, if Debby hadn’t put it out there, but yeah, Emeraude. As per my mom’s suggestion. Also, White Shoulders, per her suggestion. Charlie – got it as a gift once, and my mom hated it, so I lurved it (naturally) for awhile. Aviance (which I always remember, courtesy of Hannibal Lecter and his mocking of Jodi Foster). Then I got bad-ass with the Benetton Colours, eventually landing into Chanel for late teens and into late 20s.

  • http://www.underqualifiedmommy.wordpress.com Mrs. WTF

    Designer Imposters. Yeah, I know. Luckily, when I was 10, Alicia Silverstone alerted me that this shit was NOT gonna fly.

  • JellyBean

    Jean Nate, which smelled lemony, Enjoli & Jontue which smelled like bathroom deodorizer but I sloshed it on anyway. Even though this is a men’s Cologne, anyone remember this from the commercial?
    C = come on over
    A = alright
    N = now
    O = okay
    E = etc, etc

  • Suzy Q

    Heaven Scent! Yes, I remember that one, too.

  • miranda

    I totally wore all 3 of those in addition to malibu musk and tribe- gag.

  • Jenn

    Other than the Liz Claiborne perfume in the big red triangle bottle, I don’t remember what I wore. But I do remember that ALL the boys in high school wore Drakkar Noir. A LOT of it.

  • natasha

    I am just wondering if I am the only one who is smelling sunflowers right now, looking back on my perfume use as a young up and comer. I sneeze and die inside every time I smell it now!

  • http://www.disabledmama.tumblr.com Kati

    I rocked Navy in the 5/6th grade and then moved to Sunflowers in the 7/8th. I think I bathed in that stuff and wore my babydoll dress with knock-off maryjane shoes.

  • Gennie

    Loves Baby Soft! I totally rocked that. And Lady Stetson. Am I the only one who wore Lady Stetson?

  • Melanie

    You guys are young! Back in the day (1976) the dime/drugstore scents getting scooped up were these really cloying “essences” of strawberry, raspberry, patchulli (Sp?) and sandlewood, that were sold in tiny little amber bottles with a waxed-in cork. The sandlewood essence would darken on your skin and leave a stain if you wore in strong sunlight. Yuck!
    Charlie, Love’s Baby Soft and Jean Nate were the vile concoctions we bought with our babysitting money.

    My first decent scent was Halston-and even that would put your teeth on edge!