Man Candles: For That Manly Riding Mower Smell

Introducing Yankee Candle Company's latest weapons: candles that smell like the man you want to smell like.

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YANKEE CANDLE COMPANY, INC

Some gimmicks are just too irresistible. The Yankee Candle Company, purveyor of scents that you might stumble upon while perusing the shelves of your local pharmacy, has a nifty new idea to enlarge their potential customer base. Man Candles.

Yep, an attention grabber.

“We wanted to develop a collection of scents that men could strongly identify with,” said Hope Margala Klein, a senior vice president, in the company’s press release. The target demographic, as evidenced by the bunch of chilled beers in the background of the promo picture, isn’t very subtle. It appears aimed squarely at the sort of man who presumably might not be enticed by existing Yankee Candle collections like “Summer Love”, “Water Inspirations” or “Citrus Passions”.

That’s all well and good. But wanting to create something that men could “identify with” and something that, you know, someone “would actually want their home to smell like” are two different propositions. These are the scents they’ve come up with:

Man Town™ — Escape to the man cave with this masculine blend of spices, woods and musk.

First Down™ — This combination of orange, patchouli, vetiver and leather is as exciting as game day.

Riding Mower™ — Hot sun. Cool breeze. And the intensely summery scent of freshly cut grass.

2 x 4™ — The warm, unmistakable scent of freshly planed wood and sawdust evokes a sense of confidence and quality.

Those descriptions aren’t parodies — they’re the real deal. To be fair, NewsFeed has no idea how a “First Down” candle, with its combination of orange, patchouli, vetiver and leather,  makes the average guy’s apartment smell like Friday Night Lights. Nor do we know if a “2 x 4” candle projects the same workmanlike “sense of confidence and quality” that, say, an actual 2×4 would.

If only there was a scent geared to the non-football, non-lawn mower riding, non-woodworking man? Here’s an idea: designer Tobias Wong’s Times of New York newspaper-scented candle, for the literate-minded man (or woman) who’d prefer a dead tree scent that’s “newsy, with hints of guaiacwood, cedar, musk, spice.”

(More: Scented Candles Too Girly? 13-Year-Old Invents ‘Mancans’ With Manly Smells)