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Hasbro just trademarked the smell of Play-Doh

Hasbro just trademarked the smell of Play-Doh

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Your Etsy business for nostalgia-scented candles just got a whole lot more expensive

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People have tried to trademark a lot of weird stuff over the years, from celebratory poses to the Tarzan yell to, literally, the word “cocky.” So it’s actually kind of surprising that it took Hasbro 27 years of owning the Play-Doh brand before the company attempted to corner the market on that weird, yeasty, almost-food smell that has compelled generations of children to tentatively lick their (non-toxic!) mush toy over the years. That’s right: the smell of Play-Doh is now trademarked.

Per Gizmodo, in order to lock down the Play-Doh scent profile — which has existed in some form or another since the product debuted at an education fair in 1956 — Hasbro first had to define it. Now we know that that doughy smell has a little extra something mixed in to elevate it from your average DIY salt-and-flour map dough: “a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, combined with the smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.” (This information just deepens the mystery of how my granddad didn’t notice the yellow wedge of “cheese” my brother and I once served him was cherry-scented and not cheese-scented before he took a bite.)

Like the Tarzan yell, this application, which was approved this week after being filed in February 2017, falls under the category of a “sensory mark” — that is, not a physical product, but a sound, feel, or scent that a company might leverage for licensing opportunities. Which means that unless you want to fork over an undisclosed but likely hefty fee, you’re gonna have to find some other toy smell to crib for your nostalgia-based Etsy candle shop. Maybe those scented Cupcake Surprise dolls are still up for grabs?