The playboy perfume pretzel, and other short stories

Well this is an odd one, even for me. When I was in college, a friend of mine worked in a department store in the mall. She gave me a small sample of a trendy perfume named "Child." I held onto it forever. Like, a whole 10 years! I finally started wearing it and was all "Woah. This stuff is awesome!" So, after that tiny vial was almost empty, about a month later, I looked it up online. And surprise surprise, it's not sold anywhere except online now. I ordered some from beautyhabit.com, and waited anxiously for it to arrive. How does this have anything do to with pretzels? Wait for it...


So, when my order came, I immediately dabbed a bit on, and it didn't smell like I had remembered it. I waited a few weeks, and just never felt like it smelled the same. Like the genius that I am, I waited a good year before I thought, Oh hey, maybe I should email the company to see what is wrong with it.


I googled Child Perfume, found the link to the main company's website, and found the only email address on the contact page. After a short, but sweet email to a person named susan, explaining what had happened, I hit the send button expecting an auto reply saying thanks and hang on we'll get to you in a minute, right after we've taken care of the other 256 nut jobs ahead of you. So, when my iPhone beeped alerting me of a new email, I checked it and found quite a lovely surprise. Not only did Susan reply to my email, but Susan just so happens to be the ass kicking FOUNDER of the cult perfume. The founder! Replying to little old me! Personally! Within hours. I'm easily impressed apparently, but I know how hard it can be to keep up with emails, even just with a business my size. So, yeah, that was impressive.


As we chatted back and forth about the perfume, she noticed my signature that goes on every email that I send. The DipSticks company name and url are on there, and she had checked it out and said it looked incredible. After all the help she was to me with the perfume (oh, you still want to know what happened with the perfume? who cares! this is the exciting part!) I offered to send her a box of pretzels as a thank you. Then, she challenged me with a very unique request: To make a pretzel look like the Child bottle.


That seemed easy enough. At least the bottle wasn't shaped like a giant hat or something. It is a very simple, elegant roll on, with a black matte cap, and a frosty clear body, revealing the yellowish tinted perfumey goodness inside.





The biggest hurdle this task would have is what to roll the pretzel in. I roll all of my pretzels in something...even if it's just more pretzels. I do this for a few reasons. One being that they don't stick to the waxed paper that way, and another because it gives my pretzels the larger size I want.


But, since this bottle is so sleek, that wasn't really an option. I tried rolling it in multi-colored non-pareils and jimmies, to go with that childish vibe, but it looked lumpy and weird. So, I just went with straight caramel.


The yellow chocolate was easy enough to match, and the black wasn't as hard as I initially thought it would be either. I used dark chocolate and added black food coloring. Overall, it was a fun distraction, and Susan loved it. The next hurdle is to figure out if we can get a Child logo directly on the pretzel itself, just like the bottle has. Stay tuned.


As for the perfume dilemma and the playboy connection? Well, I've determined that somehow my body chemistry has changed. Because, I found my vial of the sample that I so dearly loved, and mysteriously it smells the same as the new bottle does. That means the common denominator is me. It use to smell good, now it doesn't, so my theory is that I am eating something, or something has changed, that is altering my biochemistry, hence altering the smell of this perfume. (But, that's for another, more scientific post.) With the whole sugar cleanse thing, I have a feeling I'll notice a difference. Oh don't you worry, I'll be posting about THAT in detail too.

Now for the part you've been waiting for. Susan was a former playboy playmate and partied it up with my rock gods, Motley Crüe and Poison. How amazeballs is that?! Yeah I hate that word too, but you come up with a better one! She's since moved on and is the nicest person I've ever not met. Even if this experience results in no sales, it was worth it to be able to say I know someone who partied with guys I have on a shirt somewhere in my closet...next to a jean jacket with pins of those other guys she partied with. And Ratt.

Vicarious living......sometimes it's good enough.