When dollar stores go bad

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this evening.

Went to the local dollar store by K's place yesterday. Like I've said before, I love the dollar store. You never really know what you're going to find.

Apparently, sometimes you win, and sometimes you get stinky stuff. Literally.

Parking all day long outside with the windows rolled up in the sun does not make for a good smelling car. Unless you have the infamous bake your arse leather interior, you're pretty much going to be reduced to a mildly stinky car smell once the new car smell goes away.

My car lost it's new car smell about 14 years ago.

Anyway, so the friendly neighborhood dollar store had quite the potpourri (no pun intended) of smelly products for your car. I'd had good luck with smelly spray for the house, so I figured my luck would continue with the car stuff too.

Not so much.

Along with other silly purchases like glow sticks, a nut cracker, and a soap dish, we ended up buying 3 car smelly products.

One was this "oil" based smelly liquid that was wicked into what looks like a very small tampon (to be honest, that's what it looks like) and the scent gets released to the air through magic.. It contained a clip that you could use to clip on to your air vent. I was a little skeptical, but K had purchased a similar product a while ago that worked pretty well. So I put my faith in the dollar store and thought I'd give it a try.

I chose "strawberry."

After leaking all over my hands and not clipping securely to my air vent, I was ready to throw it out. Very disappointed. Not giving up hope, I decided to take it home and put it in the kitchen. I figured it would be safe since it would just sit on the counter, and not be at the mercy of crazy starts, stops, and turns.

The story just goes downhill from there...

So then we bought these two little plastic containers of smelly gel beads. They looked super cool. Like salmon roe, but in fun tropical colors, and named scents like "melon" and "spring breeze." Not only did the gel beads look cool in the plastic container, but from the name, K and I had visions of driving off into the sunset, smelling of melon in my car, and smelling spring breeze in hers. (ok it may be the other way around, I kind of forget).

So ok, back to the story.

We opened up the green smally gel balls with "melon" smell. At first, it was ok, but then things quickly turned sour when it started to smell like old lady bathroom scent when you got too close. But eventually, that's all i could smell.

Not pleasant.

OK OK, so I have to admit, my faith in dollar store smelly stuff for the car had completely been destroyed. But I still had a flicker of hope, figuring that we just got a dud.

hmmm. if only we were so lucky.

So then K opened her container of sky blue "spring breeze" smelly gel balls. Again, it smelled ok for a second. Then it had a familiar smell that I coudn't really place. It took me a second, and then I knew exactly what it smelled like.

Urinal cakes.

Needless to say, we don't have any of these air fresheners in the car. I still have the oil based air freshener in the kitchen. Only bad thing is that you have to stick your nose up to the tampon thingy to actually smell strawberries.

So the moarl of the story, stay away from dollar store car air fresheners. No matter how cool they look.

-Kirk