The following article was written by Julia Gaskill. Thanks for putting your olfactory senses to good use!
I just had my twenty-second birthday at the start of July, and I received a lot of great gifts. My brother gifted me with a coffee maker, one of my best friends gave me some Muppet and Fraggle comics, I finally got a new laptop, and I received fifty-eight pairs of socks from both my actual family and a whole slew of my ToughPigs family (warm feet for the win). However, while I received some really marvelous presents, there was one that stood out from the rest. As my cousin handed me a little package on my big day she smiled and said, “I saw it online and just immediately thought of you.” As I tore away the wrapping paper and lifted the lid, my mouth fell open in sheer amazement.
She had gotten me Fraggle Rock perfume.
As reported by ToughPigs back in May, the web-site Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab concocted and is selling some Labyrinth perfumes. Their site, as some know, also happens to sell Fraggle Rock perfume as well, which I now have the good graces of owning.
There are eight scents all together: Gobo, Boober, Red , Uncle Traveling Matt, Doozers, Wembley, Mokey, and the Gorg’s Garden, and I happen to have almost all of them. The only fragrance I don’t have in my possession is the Gorg’s Garden, which seems pretty similar to the Doozer’s scent anyway, so I think I’ll live (both contain the scents of radishes and soil, the only difference being Gorgs have herbs and Doozers have glittering crystals).
I’m not entirely sure how to go about properly reviewing this product, so I’m just going to give my honest opinions on whether or not the fragrances bring to mind the characters they represent and, of course, how they smell.
(Word of warning: a little goes a long way. If you happen to own multiple Fraggle scents, be careful about applying more than one at the same time. I should know.)
Ingredients: glittering crystals, soft soil, and radish dust.
It’s hard not to admire the Doozers. They’re hard working little guys who are quite diligent in their building. So, while I have only the utmost respect for these characters, well, to put it bluntly, their perfume smells exactly like dirt. So, I guess it does the job in making me think of Doozers, who are surrounded by dirt all day; however, it does in no way make me wish to smell like a Doozer. I’d recommend only getting this one if you’d like to own the entire collection, or if you REALLY like the smell of dirt (or if you happen to be friends with a Grouch named Oscar).
Ingredients: dark chocolate, figgy vanilla, pear, and quince.
This one took a while to grow on me, but I think I’m warming up to it slowly. The four scents don’t mix quite as well as you’d like them to, and one of the scents is far stronger than the others (though I’m not sure which one it is). I figure that the creators chose chocolate for an ingredient because Uncle Matt’s a brown Fraggle, but I’m not exactly sure why the rest of the scents were chosen. Then again, I’m not sure what ingredients I would’ve chosen to make up Travelling Matt either. It is, admittedly, a strange scent, but then again Uncle Travelling Matt is a very strange Fraggle, so perhaps that is the point.
Ingredients: white musk, banana, orange blossom honey, pineapple, and mint.
Wembley is, without a doubt, my favorite Fraggle of the Fraggle Five. He’s sweet, earnest, and extremely adorable. This is why it saddens me to say that his scent is probably my least favorite of the group. The creators were obviously striving to evoke a tropical feel, hence all the fruity ingredients, to pay homage to Wembley’s Hawaiian shirt. Unfortunately, the fragrance as a whole doesn’t mix well and doesn’t really make me think of Wembley or Hawaiian t-shirts. Plus I’m not really a big fan of banana as a scent, and this perfume sort of sucker punches you in the nose when it comes to the smell of bananas.
Ingredients: lilac blossoms, violet sugar, orris root, stephanotis, and osmanthus.
Mokey’s scent has a gentle, nature smell to it, which fits the character to a tee. This fragrance definitely brings the character to mind. It also smells pretty good. Nothing extravagant, but I can definitely see me dabbing a bit on in the future and then running out to buy myself a Night-Blooming Yellow-Leaved Deathwort for a new pet.
Ingredients: sweet red currant, tangy cranberry, pink musk, and spicy pink pepper.
Reading the ingredients, I was expecting something with a kick, since it is Red after all. However, this scent is pretty tame in comparison to many of the others, and not quite as tangy as I had been hoping for. That being said, this is probably a good thing, because I really like this scent a lot. There’s a soft citrusy flavor to it, and the smell is actually pretty sweet. It definitely doesn’t make me think of winning races or whooping all my friends at sports, but it is one of the few scents I’ll probably wear on a more regular basis.
Ingredients: freshly-washed laundry, linden blossom, soap suds, and a sprinkle of vanilla.
I’ll give credit where credit is due: this scent definitely will make you think of Boober Fraggle. Why’s that? Because it smells pretty much exactly like soap. What else would Boober, our favorite laundry loving Fraggle, smell like? The vanilla and linden blossom do make this scent more pleasant, but truthfully it just makes it smell like a linden blossom/vanilla flavored brand of soap. Although, I do admit I would rather smell like laundry soap than dirt any day (sorry Doozers), so I would say this fragrance is still pretty enjoyable in comparison to some of the others in the group.
Ingredients: tangerine, lemon peel, sugared pink grapefruit, and vanilla cream.
I’m not quite sure Gobo’s fragrance makes me think of the Fraggle leader himself, mainly because I don’t have a scent in mind when I think of him. That fact aside, Gobo’s fragrance is by far my favorite. The makers did it right by keeping it simple and sticking with four ingredients that all fit well together. The scents are obviously connected to the colors that make up Gobo, and while the scent doesn’t necessarily scream “Favorite nephew Gobo!” it blends well enough in a citrus, sweet fragrance (much like Red’s) that I’d be willing to recommend it to just about anyone.
As for purchasing these, you can buy a 5ml vial for $26 on the web-site, but from shopping around online it looks like my cousin ordered my tinier (and much cheaper) perfumes most likely at the seller’s livejournal.
In short, if you are looking to go undercover as a Fraggle anytime soon, then you may want to purchase some of these perfumes, in hopes of blending in as one of them. Though if you’re looking to go undercover as a Doozer, I’d advise you to go roll around in your garden and save yourself some money (which you can then spend on a very tiny hard hat).
Click here to smell like Doozer dirt on the ToughPigs forum!
by Julia Gaskill
