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When the package came, the first thing I tried was Tuscan Blood Orange.
I love orange: I love it in chocolate, in cakes, in perfumes, and am a huge consumer of the fruit, especially Japanese mikan, iyokan, and ponkan: I think my colleagues find me slightly bizarre. While I ultimately think I prefer lemon, there is nothing more uplifting and easy than a good orange, though it is not often successfully carried off in perfume for some reason (see my other post on oranges for some exceptions to this rule).
This perfumed version of the fruit, ‘Tuscan Blood Orange’, is not an orange, per se as much as a jelly baby, or rather a fistful of jelly babies, those classic British gummis that kids of my generation grew up with, and which my grandparents always brought round to the house on a Sunday night, along with Twixes, Bounties, and Mars Bars. And I loved them. Boxes of Bassetts jelly babies in their bright friendly colours of green, red, black, orange……mild, delicious, as you bit of their heads with a tinge of guilt and kept dipping your hands in for more.
The marketing teams at Bassetts also decided, a few years ago, to name each flavour (making the dental decapitation all the more savage, don’t you think?) and this cute little perfume by American brand Pacifica seems to feature almost the entire posse (though Bigheart, blackcurrant is conspicuously absent)…
While an appley melon top note makes you question whether the perfume has been labelled incorrectly for a few seconds, soon Baby Bonny (raspberry); Brilliant (strawberry), and even brief flashes of Boofuls and Bubbles (lime and lemon respectively) make appearances before Bumper, that lovely, sweet orange jelly baby, smiles, winks, and immediately tap dances its way into your affections.
Wearing this perfume, then, is a total confectionery blast from the past for me and puts me in an excellent mood – it is so cheap as well that I might have to order myself a bottle from Amazon. Sometimes I like such pleasing uncomplication.
NB The title of this post comes from a science experiment that I wish my school had done, in which jelly babies are thrown in tubes of potassium chlorate and fizz away instantaneously in fits of oxidisation, squealing, apparently, as they do so, and leaving the science labs reeking of candy floss. I think that if chemistry lessons at my school had involved such olfactory pleasures, perhaps I might now have been making perfume, rather than merely writing about it.
Fantastic! You had me laughing from beginning to end and clearly understanding now why this is one of Courtney’s favorite among the Pacifica line-up: my “barking Buddha” has a terrible sweet tooth!
Pacifica does indeed offer up uncomplicated pleasurable scents that are RIDICULOUSLY affordable. And if you are wearing perfume on a daily basis (or financing perfume for four in the house!) they are a very good option indeed. As you work your way through them all let me know if there is more that you want.
The names of those candies brought to mind one of Brittany’s favorite show as a toddler: “Teletubbies”- with names like Tinky Winky, La La, Dipsy and Po- not a far cry from Bumper, Booful and Bubbles!
Great review…keep ‘em comin’!!!!!
ooh Teletubbies! That was Dante’s favourite show when he was three! I have a real soft spot for that one! Hi Brie! x
Hi Nina!
Somehow I had the feeling that our children were relatively close in age so of course you would be familiar with this show!
Make sure that Neil shares all of his perfume goodies with you when you see him!
I will! And I really do like this perfume a lot. Thanks for introducing it to me.
Sounds great! Alas poor jelly babies squealing in the lab, but how fab a lesson! I used to love it when we did potassium permanganate experiments at school. That used to fizz when lit I seem to recall. Remember dissolving it in water and rubbing it all over hands to get a tan! On the subject of perfumes smelling of sweets – someone said to me that she thought Miss Dior Cherie smelt like Spangles! Also, have you tried the Trussardi Donna? That reminds me of boiled sweets a little too.
So many perfumes these days have sweetie elements, often to banal, infantilizing effect, but this one is simple and fresh and works the jelly baby to delicious effect.
Wonderful review, Neil! And the idea of jelly babies screaming in a lab left me hysterical.