Smells of yesteryear.....

[Linenspots]

My most prominent ones are:

The delicious smell of the bottle of Coppertone that Mum used to plaster us in for our annual holiday at one of the many Pontin's sites. Does anyone else remember Coppertone?

I also have really vivid memories of the smell of the turkey cooking at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, right after we opened our presents, and being excited for the arrival of various family members. Am I imagining it, or does the aroma of turkey cooking these days not seem as strong as I remember?

Mum's perfumes - for best, she wore Estee Lauder's Youth Dew or White Linen (although she always called it Dirty Sheets). For everyday, it was Coty L'Aimant. My first bottle of perfume was Smitty...I felt so grown up!

Those smells...treasured memories.

@MabelAnderson - aaah yes, never thought of that !

The smell of sulphur of an Englands Glory match when you lit one of 5 Park Drive down the park on a frosty night 🤣
Now a box is £39.95 on EBay 😂

Pond’s cold cream

Badedas

I hate the smell of TCP. Some of my older patients ( dentist) still use it as a mouthwash to cover up halitosis. To be honest I rather smell the bad breath than TCP.

I used to work in a newsagent when I was 18-19 and yes, it’s really distinctive!

My dad used to clean his hands with Swarfega when he’d been in the garage. I’ve just looked it up and apparently it still exists, but I haven’t smelt it since I was a little girl.

I tried some handcream tester and was like 'Wow that takes me back!'

Sugar beet. Where I grew up the whole town would sometimes smell of it in the mornings if the wind was blowing in a certain direction. I usually associate the smell walking to school on an autumn morning. Very strange smell. Difficult to describe if you have not smelt it before- almost sweet and sulphuric at the same time. Makes me feel very nostalgic!

It smells of urine.🤮

@ElsieJay @bungobungobungo @thebeautifulsky
My dad lived in Worthing as a teenager and went on a day trip to France with his older brothers. Would have been around 1936/37 - I still have the hand tinted postcards they bought
Anyway, they bought my Aunt a bottle of Eau de Soir 'scent' over there and whilst clearing her house after she had died in the 1990s I found the bottle, tucked away in her drawer

TCP reminds me of treating my self harm wounds. I‘m sure my mum would have been proud

This is a great thread! Smells are so evocative.

Nivea Creme in the blue tin
YSL Opium
YSL Paris
The smell of hot ironing…because these remind me of my late Mum.

Newsagent’s shops
Proper linseed putty
Pipe tobacco
Flex Conditioner (the bright yellow custardy looking kind)
Christmas Day (I really can’t put my finger on what this was but it smells a bit like T2’s French Earl Grey Tea…and that doesn’t really smell like Earl Grey)
Brut 33
Zest Lemon Soap
Wombles Madame Cholet Talc
The smell of my Dad’s Lodge in the 70s…bar smells, damp, calor gas heater…always happy times at their children’s parties
These really take me back to my childhood.

I had a terrible crush on a teacher who wore Givenchy Gentleman and even today my tummy flips over if I smell it. DH wears the original Boss aftershave, tricky to find now but it has a similar effect. I still wear Anaïs Anaïs. Still love it.

The thread is long and I haven't read it all, so I hope I'm not the 100th person to reply to this, but I used one of these in the 80s when I was teaching! It was called a spirit duplicator. Everyone called it a Banda which was the brand name. You made a master sheet and all the copies were printed off that, but it only made a limited number and faded quickly, so the last few copies were in light pink and light blue!

One of many skills I learned that I'll never use again!

White Sunblest bread toasting under an, "Eye Level" gas grill.

The smell of my Auntie in Suffolk's breakfast.

I'm not from the UK but here I go anyway;

The smell of chocolate crackle and crushed Roasted peanuts that the ice cream man would dip your ice cream into

The smell of summer camp damp cabins

Campfires and s'mores

The smell left after fireworks and proper hot dogs on firecracker night

The smell of hot chocolate and snowflakes at the ice rink before a big snow

The smell of autumn leaves after the rain

Orange Popsicles melting

It comes in a hand pump & it's orange & does not smell the same at all. DP uses it. Shame.

Jean Paul gaultier classique on A Level results day

The scratch and sniff stickers at school

The smell of those plastic Christmas decorations your parents would hang from the ceiling- they’d concertina out across the whole room.

Omg, I’m loving this!
For me- the smell of tomatoes growing in a green house, the body shop banana shampoo and conditioner and passion fruit cleansing gel, tobacco pipes or snuff, the perfume called Champagne (my mum wore this), aniseed balls, those sweetie cigarettes (smelt kind of dusty vanillary), those little exploding things wrapped in paper that you threw on the floor (bang snaps), homemade rolled up ginger snaps, old book/library smell, that glue that smelt of almond, indoor fireworks, proper rose smelling roses, rosehip syrup.

Oh, just thought of another one! Apologies if lots of people have said it before but this thread has moved on quickly since my first post in it.

• the smell of ‘caps’ - those paper strips of explosive dots! We used to buy a roll and use a stone to strike them on the pavement. The smell was lovely. You had to be careful not to burn your fingers though 😂

Charlie, Aquamanda and the fumes from a paraffin heater!

Oh that was an ace way to start fires
Hit the cappies with a steen flare up light paper etc.
NeScotland early 70s.

Not RTFT, but it was Gestetner fluid.

My mums Anais Anais perfume and Oil of Ulay cream. I miss those smells. That and my dad’s Old Spice.

Boots aftersun lotion. The smell had already been changed before I left for Australia.

Johnson baby wipes. I used them with my DD and for all wipe needs afterwords. Because of the link with nappy changing, the smell always made me think of baby poo. On a trip back to the UK, I smelled one of the wipes. Yep, the old smell to memory link still worked.

They were scarily good for wiping up paint drips too.