Eau de Play-Doh

At Scott's Spot, we subscribe to Chemical & Engineering News, the official news magazine of the American Chemical Society. It's mostly full of business and academic chemistry articles, which we recommend if you have problems with insomnia. It also has the occasional controversial editorial by editor Rudy Baum, whose increasingly political writings are more liberal than 99.4% of C&EN's readership.

But sometimes the magazine reports on items of interest to the general public in a section called "Newscripts." This is where we learned about the development of the Labacus, the ultimate lab rat's PDA, which we profiled here.

And this week, we learned about an important advance in fragrances. We refer, of course, to the Play-Doh fragrance developed by the Demeter Fragrance Library. It's the perfect thing for those baby boomers among us who are trying to relive our childhoods. A 1-oz cologne spray retails for $19; a 4-oz bottle goes for $39.50.

On the other hand, Play-Doh might not be your thing. That's OK, because the Demeter Fragrance Library can accommodate your tastes as well. Here is a very small sampling of some of the scents they offer:

• Beet Root
• Bon Fire
• Celery
• Dandelion
• Dirt
• Dregs
• Dust
• Earthworm
• Glue
• Holy Smoke
• Lobster
• Mildew
• Paint
• Poison Ivy
• Pruning Shears
• Stable
• Tarnish
• Waffles

They also offer some more mainstream type scents at the Demeter Fragrance Library. But we don't care about that kind of thing at Scott's Spot.