We’re barely into 2023, but like many of you, I’m still fixated on some of the details of the year that just passed. Most significantly, I have been eagerly awaiting the American Synthetic Stench Mobility Union National Commendation Honors (ASSMUNCH) awards for superlatives and excellence in the field of car air fresheners. While everyone out there is reporting on the 2022 Stench Of The Year (Menthol Mule, no surprise there), I’m more interested in one of the foundation’s more niche awards: the Most Least Popular Car Air Fresheners. This year, a solid dozen made the list, the most since the Pandemic killed demand for car air fresheners in 2020 because nobody could smell for shit because of all the Covid. The industry has clearly bounced back, boasting twelve of the most popular scents almost nobody bought.
Let’s go through each Winner of the Losers, one by one! Hot damn, right?
The Tree-Shaped Air Freshener Scent air freshener likely failed because it was just too confusingly meta: It was an air freshener scent based on the scent of another air freshener, the famous “Little Tree” type. But while the original Little Trees are based on scents from trees or fruits or other root-source smells, nobody wanted a synthetic smell based on a synthetic smell. It was like a copy of a copy.
While praised for its uncanny accuracy, nobody seems to have wanted their car to smell like it was burning oil while the clutch was slipping and the brakes were cooking and the car was overheating, all during a pretty severe electrical fire. Plus, lots of people complained about headaches and general anxiety.
The overall theme of this air freshener mixed the smells of a delicious shrimp cocktail with the heady, humid, pheromone-saturated smell of a full night of passionate loveplay. On paper, this was expected to be a runaway hit, combining two such desirable concepts, but in practice the Erotic Seafood air fresheners just tended to make people uneasy and a little uncomfortably horny.
This one actually did find a niche market of people who used to drive old air-cooled Volkswagens or Porsches, or 60s-era Mercedes-Benzes and had recently switched to a more modern car, but still craved that smell of horsehair seat filling mixed with the near-constant smell of motor oil. I bet many of you can smell it right now.
Latke Fantasy was a joint promotional air freshener from the Idaho Potato Grower’s Union, the Midwest Judaic Outreach Council, and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. The attempt to combine these concepts ended up becoming a flying Judeo-Elvish latke that hailed from Middle Earth and had near-wizard like powers, but not enough people read the tiny print on the back of the freshener to understand the backstory, and, worst of all, it smelled kind of like a hash brown soaked in patchuli.
This air-freshener was designed to smell like really top-notch Chinese food just overturned in your passenger seat, soaking the fabric in rich, delicious sauces and bits of vegetables, spices, and meats. It just made people too damn hungry.
This sour-smelling, slightly musty air freshener scent proved once and for all that nobody wants an air freshener that seeks to guilt and cajole you about housekeeping mistakes people may have made. Some people felt it proved a useful reminder for them to get clothes out of the washer, but most people just hated both the smell and the nagging implications.
An air freshener that combines the scents of body odor, fear, and duplicity was an impressive technical achievement, but proved extremely unpopular in the marketplace.
A combination of stale cigarette smoke and lots and lots of Febreeze, this one was taken off the market due to a joint lawsuit on behalf of RJ Reynolds Tobacco and the Febreeze Royal Family of Febreezistan.
The Thoughtful Ham air freshener was expected to be a runaway hit, as olfactory scientists had finally perfected a method of making pork scents seem insightful instead of insolent, as they had been for decades. Unfortunately, the air-freshener-buying public had moved on, and was no longer as obsessed with complex pork-and-cognition-related scents, a real shock to watchers of the industry.
An attempt to appeal to patriotic Americans, this very bold air freshener combined the American icon of a pair of well-worn blue jeans, but, in a misguided attempt to make it feel more “genuine,” the smells of heavy, redolent urine were mixed in, as though the jeans had suffered innumerable soakings over a period of days. While popular in some niche fetish markets, this proved a flop.
This air freshener was guaranteed to make any car smell like a 1990s to early 2000s Volkswagen (and some Volvos) interior, heady with the rubber off-gassing scents that smell just like crayons. Seems the nostalgia for this smell was overestimated.
How many did you guess right on the list? With our readers, so invested in the car air freshener world, I bet a lot, right? Right?
Now this is the top tier reporting I expect from the Autopian!
All wonderful choices Jason. You are one demented dork. Which is a good thing btw.
Forgot my Dad’s favorite though.
It was called: “pull my finger’…
Miss that bastard.
How do you pronounce the word niche?
I always read it as short “i” sound and the “ch” being the hard ch like pronounced in chicken and the “e” is silent.
Now on social media I hear it being pronounced more like “neesh” which seems all wrong to me.
Fun fact, the Little Trees brand air fresheners are made in upstate New York in the small city of Watertown.
Can’t see the phrase “copy of a copy” without linking to this Omega Mart gem (I hope this works!):
Didn’t VW actually use coconut fiber (coir) rather than horsehair? Having been in places with a lot of coconuts & in places with a lot of horses I only ever got VW vibes from the smell of the coconuts; every time I get in my early baywindow bus I always think of coconuts. Even when growing up around air-cooled VWs in the family & among family friends I always thought the distinctive smell was due to coconuts & not horses… Cursory research online provides conflicting information. Guess I’ll have to dig out my old VW books, both coffee table & technical.
Maybe they used horsehair in the very early days, but all my Buses & Squarebacks had coir-stuffed upholstery.
Chemical Guys has an amazing air freshener called “stripper scent,” which is the only air freshener I’ve ever used in any of my cars for over ten years. They still sell it, but they’ve changed the name to “signature scent.”
They overlooked “Musty British Car”? and “Wet GM Jute Carpet Backer”?
Unbelievable
That said.. funny you should mention air fresheners. Recently I caught a whiff of something that reminded my of air fresheners in my youth. Back in the late 60’s there was a popular freshener sold at gas stations (at least the one I worked at) shaped like a Poodle. It had a very unique scent that I can’t really describe. Citrus?..Maybe? That led me to recall a perfume worn by high school girls of the day called “Heaven Scent”. I can even recall their advertising jingle.
Scent is a powerful thing.
We own a 2000 VW Jetta. I pointed out to my son who now owns the car that they all smell like crayons. His friends now call it the crayon car. It’s kinda great, in a smelly yet nostalgic way.
Yes it’s 2023, and the car has been in our family since my late mother bought it. The crayon smell NEVER goes away. Talk about long lasting air fresheners.
I wish I could buy it for all the Mk4 kids I know.
I can tell you why Vintage German oil soaked horsehair failed; they only used vintage engine oil. If you want a properly vintage aromatic bouquet you need to add a bit of vintage gear oil with REAL extract of sperm whale ripened through hundreds of heat cycles.
Nothing else will do.
Speaking of which I heard “1970s LA Basin” was again a top seller. It has the right balance of ozone and carbon monoxide to trigger flashbacks and just enough partially combusted leaded hydrocarbons to take the edge off them.
I was rooting for “Smells like the Valet”
I’m surprised no one has made a “Cockroaches have thoroughly infested this car” scent, or maybe “Busload full of Mexicans using a Texas rest stop” scent, or perhaps a “Howard Hughes’ Room” scent, or maybe “Bedbugs infesting the local homeless shelter” scent.
The urine-soaked jeans + forgotten laundry should get you pretty close to late stage Howard Hughes.
Where the hell is “Burning clutch”?
It’s the second one.
I burned up the first one, but I was more careful with the second one. Those things cost money!
Not seeing my guess, Dead Mouse Partially Masked by Wintergreen Muscle Salve, on the list, I stand humbled. I never expected it to be popular at all.
I went looking for the new Autopian vent clip-on air fresheners, but all they had was “morning dump” and “moldy brine soaked carpet” and I wanted a change.
You mean they sold out of shower spaghetti?
Torch, I don’t recall inviting you to our boardgame night when we collectively decided that Shrimp were infact, quite sexy.
I was stunned to find it included in this list.
You always seem to have this knack of reading minds, but only the real bottom of the barrel thoughts, it’s as if every time someone shakes off an intrusive thought, it gets sent straight to you. It’s what makes you one of my all time favourite people.
I loved the Chinese food one, but then my car was stinky again two hours later.
Can’t believe they discontinued ‘Spilt Petrol’, what an oversight
Many years ago I actually thought a bourbon scented air freshener would be a fine idea. I changed my mind. “Sir? Have you been drinking?”
The title of this article reminds me of a scene in the adult cartoon Metalocalypse where Skwissgarr asks a potential employee the question, “What can’t you most, the least?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbTEX0t61oM
I found it funny.
I’ll take two each of the tree-shaped, burning oil, and horsehair fresheners, assuming I qualify at my membership level.
No hablo “uncomfortably horny” . . .
I hoped this would imply that the “Damn Nelson Mandela, You Smell So Good” air freshener was one of the top sellers, but alas it seems like it has been discontinued.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001L4DU2O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=coolshityouca-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001L4DU2O
I smell a Pulitzer Prize!
Not gonna lie, you had me in the first half.