Fuel Fragrances by Manhattan Oil

For the fraghead who is also a gearhead, there’s a masking odor for your car exhaust. Suddenly I can’t even remember how I found this, but I’m still just as dumbfounded.

They look like a bottle of blowing bubbles (see the pic above) and they come in reefer madness flavor. You pour them into your gas tank or into your engine and it makes your car smell like bubblegum, grape, fruit punch, and they’re new baby powder scent. My head is spinning. There’s also Hot Rod Hippie Patchouli flavor, which I guess smells different from the Reefer Madness flavor? Jk.

For $14, a 4-oz bottle will treat 20 gallons of gasoline, and it’s a “proven crowd pleaser.” Anyone who uses this or can give me some insight into the subculture behind this I would greatly appreciate it.

-check it out here

Post Script

On Masking Odors: Sometimes there are odors created for the sole purpose of not smelling. They’re added to things that naturally smell bad so that they no longer smell like anything (I say naturally but what I mean is – as a result of their intended process of manufacture or fabrication). Many of the products that we use would smell kinda gross if we didn’t do this. Seatbelts for instance, which are pretty close to our face, have a special chemical recipe added to their manufacture so they don’t smell like whatever else goes into a seatbelt that happens to smell like crap. It’s ironic because it is treated just like any other fragrance – designed by fragrance specialists, created in fragrance labs, etc – and yet it doesn’t smell, and its sole purpose is to not smell. (In fact, well I’m not sure about this, but a masking fragrance might smell like something, but when added with its target product, the two negate and create a neutral non-smell.)

Diverting even further for the sake of a great example, the smell that we call Leather is not about the leather itself as it is about the fragrances that are added to leather to mask the nasty smells that come from the harsh treatments used to make leather in the first place. Historically, there’s a recipe that goes well with these bad smells to make everything into a good smell. Also, the smells of roses and shit are pretty similar on a molecular level, hence rose-scented air freshener. Enough of that.