I have partnered with Life of Dad and Old Spice for this promotion.
Every picture tells a story, as the song goes, but the same is not necessarily true of every smell. At least, not every smell tells a sweetly scented story. And that is the story of the first third of my life, a period of time involving a trio of odors that have stuck to me…only figuratively. Thankfully.
‘Tis kind of amazing that I can even be in the same zip code as onions let alone fancy them caramelized and gracing many a sandwich and stew because I was woken each and every Thanksgiving of my youth by a devil’s brew of raw turkey and sweating onions. I’m talking some pre-dawn pungency here. My nostrils still have battle scars. But the smellmories of my childhood don’t start or end on Turkey Day. My dad wore a super musky after shave that still to this day, should I play some kind of smell association game, would be identified as the odor of adulthood. Maybe this is why I’ve never fully grown up — like a fine smelling Peter Pan. And then there was the stench of my dad’s Optima Palmas cigars that he’d smoke all too frequently. My early years were idyllic save for these scents. This is why as a dad, I made a smellmitment to my own kids that I would give them better smell memories.
You can do the same. With the holidays around the corner, Old Spice is offering manly Gift Sets in great scents like Swagger, Bearglove and Timber. They’re under 10 bucks and each will help you project the scent of manliness for future generations. Because no kid should have to smell onions cooking at 5:30 A.M.
Old Spice Gift Sets include:
- Body Wash
- Deodorant
- Re-Fresh Body Spray
- Plus…trial sized extras!
Strong smells have and continue to play a role in Isaiah Mustafa’s life too. He’s the deadpan actor who plays the role of both the Swagger and Timber Man opposite the muscle flexing Terry Crews who is the perfect Bearglove Man in the famously ridiculous Old Spice video series. In the new set of videos, the dynamic duo team up for a friendly competition to plead the case for their favored scent and illustrate Old Spice’s tradition of offering different scents for different kinds of gents.
During the interview I conducted with Old Spice star Isaiah Mustafa, he told me that the smells he associates with the holiday season are the opposite of ridiculous. Instead, he recalls melting butter, brown sugar and chocolate and said that he wouldn’t mind at all an Old Spice Body Wash in exactly that flavor. Sign me up for that flavor of milkshake!
And just as I can still feel the tingle of a musky manliness emanating from my father in the morning and from my parents’ bathroom long into the day, the scent of Isaiah Mustafa’s dad’s deodorant and after shave has stayed with him deep into adulthood. Common ground is always able to be found, even if that ground is our nasal passages.
In the end, I have made piece with my smell memories and I’ve chosen to be a Timber man…at least through the MLS Cup to properly cheer on the Portland Timbers. I may not have a full beard and I may never have held a chainsaw, but I too can make a smellmitment to be a manly man with Old Spice and their 80 year tradition of iconic scents and grooming gear for guys.
