#note: licorice

[cleolinda]

Sugar, sugar (Pink Sugar, 2004)

(Pink Sugar Amazon store)

Have you ever taken the lid off a sugar bowl and really stuck your nose in there and given it a good huff? There's a texture to the scent that reminds me a little of sand; I couldn't quite explain it in terms of amber, and I still can't here, but I swear to you, it's an ambient dryness that smells distinctly different from the liquid sucrose of a green hunk of sugar cane. And this is different from powdered sugar (even holding a powdered donut to my nose, I don't smell much), which is different from brown sugar (a touch of molasses that actually smells sticky), which is different from marshmallow (fluffy, slightly vanilla), and incredibly different from caramel (cooked sugar, rich, almost buttery) or praline (nutty, possibly creamy) or cotton candy (vanilla + strawberry/raspberry). What I like about a good sugar perfume is the nuance of the type of sugar, the character that is something beyond the literal sweet—and this is itself entirely different from the floral nuances of a honey perfume, which I also love.

Ideally, you'd apply a sugar perfume with a light hand, so that the nuances will blend with the scent of your skin and become A Secret Third Thing. If you're traipsing around smelling like a candy shop, you—well, I won't say you're doing it wrong, but that's not what I'm advocating for here.

Let's rewind a moment to that sugar cane I mentioned. Demeter Fragrance's single note Sugar Cane was the first scent of theirs that I tried, partly because I wanted to know what the hell they'd done to win two FiFi Awards with it. Demeter prides itself as a company on their Proustian sensory experiences (which is why they have scents like Crayon, Dirt, Paperback, and, uh, Fuzzy Balls), but they could not have known that Sugar Cane would take me back specifically to preschool. I have an incredibly vague memory of standing on a (dirt? paved?) road among the other kids on a field trip to a farmer's market, holding a four-inch chunk of freshly-cut sugar cane. I have no idea how we ended up there or if the preschool even got our parents' permission (it was 1983, a lawless time), but I do remember gnawing on this green hunk of cane, and my mom remembers me bringing it home. (She did not seem the least bit bothered that I'd been off who knows where chewing on produce, because it was 1983.) Everything is vague but for the olfactory memory: Demeter's Sugar Cane really, truly has that fresh-cut, not "vegetal" or even "green," exactly, but that ineffable sense of a juicy plant that is not yet dried and crumbled and cubed. It's lovely, and I wore it off and on for years.

Another favorite sugar perfume of mine is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Sugar Skull ("A blend of five sugars, lightly dusted with candied fruits"), a seasonal offering. As time has gone on, my 2004 bottle has taken on a richer brown-sugar tone, but it actually started out with that whiff of dry sugar bowl. I'm not sure what the fruits are supposed to be, but I might guess plum and strawberry, like the sugar-dusted strawberry candies I used to get in my childhood Christmas stocking. Which means that I might guess something like Furaneol is involved: "Intense caramel and fruity note, reminiscent of cotton candy. Indispensable ingredient for strawberry, pineapple and exotic fruity accords. Often used to bring a jam effect. Naturally found in coffee, malt, grape, guava, pineapple, raspberry, strawberry." I tried Sugar Skull on the other day for this post, and while the fruit accord comes out more distinctly now, the perfume itself is still fairly subtle, a restrained golden sweetness that hangs back rather than yell at top volume.

No, top volume would be Pink Sugar.

In my experience, ethyl maltol (the caramel/praline note you may remember from last week's Mugler Angel) might be strong when it's fresh, but it's Godzilla when it's aged. My bottle of Pink Sugar (maybe 2007?) has also turned from clear to brown, which might be the vanillin. I would be willing to bet there's a strong dollop of furaneol in this thing as well, and the musk isn't helping; all together, I remember being like, "Let's give it a lil spray, see if it's still good," and having to evacuate the room. The powdery candy musk cloud, my GOD. So for this post, I went and ordered a fresh decant (for the princely sum of $0.99 USD), so I could at least see what Pink Sugar's ideal state is, and also I could control it with a tiny wand cap.

A couple of swipes, and this, this is why I liked Pink Sugar back in my twenties. I'll say up front that, these days, the Italian company Aquolina doesn't seem to have much of an internet presence anymore, except for a pinksugar.it site that mostly exists to redirect you to the Pink Sugar Amazon store (and a US Instagram that redirects to Macy's). So I had to dig a little to get the creator(s)' name and the full list of notes: raspberry, orange, fig leaf, bergamot, cotton candy, licorice, red berries, strawberry, lily of the valley, caramel, vanilla, musk, tonka bean, sandalwood.

Secondly, I'll quote two other reviews from people with sharper noses than I have:

Bois de Jasmin:

On a technical level, Pink Sugar is a clever thing, and I find it impressive how its creator, Pierre Nuyens, chose to offset the dessert extravaganza with plenty of sharp citrus, tart berries and crunchy anise seeds. The drydown of musk and sandalwood is like a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar on warm brioche. Its softness offers a respite after the burnt caramel overload. It’s a long lasting, tenacious fragrance and a little goes a long way.

[I'll note here that I have seen Pink Sugar credited to either Pierre Nuyens or Shyamala Maisondieu of Givaudan, and I don't know what's with the discrepancy. Are we possibly talking about old and new formulations?]

Now Smell This:

Pink Sugar opens on an extraordinarily sweet blend of fruit and caramelized sugar. There is a hint of citrus, but the red berries dominate the first 15 minutes or so. If you love the smell of strawberry candy, the top notes may well be your idea of heaven; I'm afraid it is not mine. [...] There is lots of vanilla sugar, a teensy little whiff of licorice, and a pale, woody-musky base with a hint of powder. It is, as advertised, very reminiscent of cotton candy.

That mention of "offsetting the dessert extravaganza" is similar to the logic that Olivier Cresp and Yves de Chirin used with Angel: it was so unexpected in 1992 to build a fragrance around ethyl maltol that they balanced it with a tornado of patchouli so intense that I can't smell a single other damn thing in it, other than some fruit in the first ten minutes. But by the time Pink Sugar came along in 2004, truly, nobody gave a shit. Trying to balance candy with more candy is, if we are honest, just the slightest gesture towards optimizing your Eau de Toothache (I say this lovingly). There's a reason that Angel is considered a Hall of Famer and Pink Sugar is something people generally scoff at.

So I open my new sample, and I brace myself. The current decant opens with, yes, a pretty strong citrus to immediately counterbalance the sugar. And yet, while I said that Dior's new Joy has a "vanilla lemonade" feel, that's not the kind of sugar + lemon we have going on here. There are several things going on, including some kind of musk, but mostly, my nose can't distinguish what they are; "it's very well-blended" is what you say when you can't figure that out. I'll also say that I couldn't perceive strawberry, or even strawberry candy (no matter how much I love it), in all this; what I get is Cotton Candy™. I remember how surprised I was to find out that the traditional flavor of American cotton candy is just vanilla, often with some strawberry if it's pink, and definitely with raspberry if it's blue. Cotton candy is just A Thing Unto Itself to me (ask me how shocked I was to find out that yellow cake mix is just vanilla. Mm, tastes like yellow), and that's mostly what I smell in Pink Sugar. A specific whiff of caramel emerged about two hours in, but that was the best my nose could do.

Four hours in, as I sat drafting this post with Pink Sugar on the back of my hand, the citrus notes had evaporated, and I was getting just that cotton candy—but dry and fluffy, on a floating bed of musk, not a sticky, just-melted-in-your-mouth, washed-by-a-confused-raccoon note. So the first hour is when Pink Sugar is most interesting to me. And I'm gonna tell you—I can't distinguish fig leaf or lily of the valley or even sandalwood in this thing, but I get something in that first hour that I haven't seen anyone else mention: something shadowy.

There's something sultry about Pink Sugar early on to me, and that may be the combination of licorice and musk, going by the notes listed. (You'd think I could pick out licorice after two posts about it, but not specifically in Pink Sugar, no.) You're at the cotton candy stand, sure, but there are dark clouds gathering overhead. For some reason, Johnny Jewel's "Windswept" popped into my head—something noirishly forlorn. The fairground is closing at the end of summer, the boardwalks are empty; up in the late afternoon sky, something watchful and gray is rolling in.

And this stage does pass. But that first hour, that's the interesting stage, the part where I get why "counterbalancing the toothache" is such an important consideration. I also have Demeter Fragrance's Cotton Candy single note (does what it says on the tin), and sometimes a simple sugar is what you want. But if someone could actually cook up Film Noir Cotton Candy Stand, combining two things you would pretty much never think to put together, you would have a story on your hands. Pink Sugar has that for about an hour—except for the fact that I think I must be hallucinating it, because I've never seen a review where anyone ever accused Pink Sugar of having one iota of depth to it, much less darkness.

That's the thing about fragrance: it's so wholly dependent on what your own nose can pick up and how it interacts with your own chemistry, as opposed to anyone else's. I could hold out my hand thirty minutes in and say "SMELL IT. SMELL THE FILM NOIR," as you do, and it might be that no one else would smell anything "sultry" or "gray" or "forlorn" in Pink Sugar at all. You ever have that Super Deep Thought that maybe nobody sees color the same way, and maybe what's orange to you is blue to someone else? With fragrance, that might be a little bit true.

The other thing I've realized is that most people smell a perfume on you after you've been wearing it a while—people at work or a party or wherever you actually left the house to go, they'd mostly smell the base notes and maybe a few mid notes of your fragrance by the time you got there. (Unless you're reapplying it frequently. I... do not advocate for that.) Everything I find interesting about Pink Sugar would have faded by the time anyone smelled it on me, leaving just a vague aura of musky sweet. I'd actually love to smell a fragrance made of all the notes that aren't cotton candy: Pink Sugar Without Sugar.

I'll end by pointing out that I started with a nostalgic story about preschool and sugar—and a different fragrance. Most people reviewing Pink Sugar mention nostalgia as part of its appeal, but it doesn't evoke memory for me at all, and I think that's because the musk is so strongly present for me all the way through. I will argue, though, that the Secret Third Thing it comes up with is more sophisticated than people give it credit for.

Perfume discussion masterpost

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Did you know that Rollo’s VA also does Licorice Cookie in Cookie Run Kingdom?? They really made him the most pathetic and nonserious baddie lmao

The gif is Rollo in anger management therapy, daydreaming about playing Whack-a-Malleus/j

YEAH, THEY REALLY DID... Rollo's VA (Hiroshi Kamiya)... playing the part of a sentient cookie trying to hard to be taken seriously as a bad guy but just failing at every turn... Turning to the forbidden arts of Black Magic just like Rollo turned to flowers that should have been exterminated to achieve his goals... 💀 Licorice Cookie's in-game description even tells us that he keeps a diary "filled with everyday rants and complaints could fill up a library" which sounds like SUCH a Rollo thing to do??????

Recently I learned that there's a ton of other TWST VAs that are in Cookie Run Kingdom, not just Kamiya-san! If I recall correctly:

Chiaki Kobayashi (Deuce's VA) plays Sparkling Cookie, a bartender known for his impeccable manners and serving delicious juice. How fitting for Juice Deuce Spade, who aspires to be a well-behaved honors student 🧃✨

Aoi Ichikawa (Ruggie's VA) plays Stardust Cookie, a lump of dough granted life from the stars. He now seeks a place to call home and a purpose for himself. I guess you can say Ruggie went on a trip to visit his mom among the stars... ⭐️💫

Nobuhiko Okamoto (Floyd's VA) plays Mint Choco Cookie, a skilled yet humble and polite violinist. This one’s the most different from his TWST counterpart; I think the only thing Floyd and Mint Choco have in common are that they can play instruments 🍬🎻

Wataru Komada (Jade's VA) plays Espresso Cookie, a researcher obsessed with the pursuit of coffee-related knowledge. A perfectionist, he's always preoccupied with work. This is Jade if he had a hyperfixation with coffee instead of mushrooms— (though I’m sure the two can also be combined) ☕️🍄

Nobunaga Shimazaki (Silver's VA) plays Clover Cookie, a bard that seeks inspiration for his songs. The local animals are often attracted to Clover Cookie. He and Silver are similar in coloration and have many animal companions! 🍀🐇

[mintyvoid]

another of the og gang

[quibbs126]

Oh yeah so I finally found that original image with those flavors of certain characters. Well actually I found it a week or two ago, I just forgot about it until I was doing cleanup this morning

Anyways, so I’m aware that these aren’t actually talking about the flavors of the Cookies themselves. This is about the macarons based on each Cookie and what flavors they are

But I kind of want to take these and make them into headcanon flavors. Or at least, they’re tertiary flavors/something that’d be picked up in a dough analysis

Like for instance, Dark Cacao has a trace amount of sea salt in his dough, and similarly Eclair has trace amounts of birthday cake in his. Cotton has some milk in hers, so perhaps she has some ancestry from the Milk Tribe. Sea Fairy tastes similar to Fruity Pebbles, which tbh vaguely remind me of the color of coral, so I like to think she could have originally been a coral based Cookie, assuming she was something before being Sea Fairy. Dark Enchantress has a berry flavor to her. I don’t really have ideas for the other three but there’s things you could come up with

Again I know these aren’t canon, but I can at least incorporate them into headcanon if I want to

[couldtheycatchkira]

[couldpolyamorysavethem]

LICORICE COOKIE, POMEGRANATE COOKIE, and PARFAIT COOKIE from COOKIE RUN

Justification:

"maybe if licorice cookie had pretty girls who actually gave a fuck about him he would get better. and i think parfait could make pomegranate a little nicer perhaps. lico and pome dont need redemption arcs, they need some fat girl with a nice voice and an actual career" - Anonymous

[bakersstreetirregulars]

Weekly Bulletin, 5/20/24

Weekly Hours

There is no Open Board Meeting this week in order to prepare for the Expedition to Beast-Yeast. All findings for Phases 1 and 2 will be redirected to the Crepe Archives.

-The Second Floor Detective

Coffee Marshmallow Cookie’s application has been approved. She will be positioned part-time with the Cookie Kingdom Studio as Heavy Cream Cookie’s apprentice.

Zoning applications for a studio in the Crème Republic on the southwest corner of Crispia have been filed. We await further response.

Scheduling seize-ups will end as updates roll out.

CRK - Powers Beheld Beyond Cacao

Stormbringer Cookie has been summoned to confirm that she was the cause of Meringue gaining his magic two years ago. Queuing attempt for the Crepe Archives has been delayed due to misreading the timetable.

A report from Black Raisin Cookie has returned suggesting that the Sublime Cake Towers are permanent. Possibly the rumored remake of the Tower of Sweet Chaos since its closure from the public on specific request of the St. Pastry Order.

A report from Radish Raven Cookie and her clairvoyant nature has returned.

[BEGIN CONDENSED PATCH NOTES REPORT BENEATH BREAK]

Episode 3 of Beast-Yeast, “The Awakening of White Apathy” will be available SOON.

Selected stages will have the Anguish effect as a gauged gimmick. The gauge fills with time or when enemies attack. When the gauge is full, a Dumpling King will appear to cause trouble. The gauge should reset after the current wave and the Dumpling King are cleared.

Clearing Episode 3 enables Balloon Expeditions for the area, but you’ll need to upgrade your Bear Jelly Balloon to travel to Beast-Yeast.

Travel to Beast-Yeast area 3 to get “Realm of Apathy Yeast Ore” depending on your Cookies’ condition, with an inventory maximum of 60. Use one Ore to open 5 Beascuit spaces in your storage.

Mystic Flour Cookie has appeared as the first playable Beast Cookie.

Skill: Whispers of Apathy - Creates the Realm of Apathy, shielding the allies with the Cocoon of Futility. Allies within the Realm of Apathy have their HP periodically restored. They will also gain the Touch Meaninglessness buff. Once the duration of the Realm of Apathy is over, the allies will be Healed for a portion of the DMG they have dealt.

Cocoon of Futility - Heals allies, removes debuffs, and can dispel Apathy inflicted on allies. Targets are immune to the Power of Apathy while affected by the Cocoon of Futility. Cannot be Dispelled or removed by Zap or Overcurrent. The effect will remain even after the HP Shield reaches 0 capacity. If the target is at Max HP, incoming Healing will restore the HP Shield instead.

Realm of Apathy (Enemies) - If an enemy Cookie enters the Realm of Apathy, their Cooldown will be increased, and their ATK SPD will be reduced. They will also be inflicted with the Pale Plague, increasing the remaining Cooldown when dispelled.

Cooldown Bonus - Mystic Flour Cookie will increase her own DMG Resist based on the decreased amount of Cooldown.

Lantern of Apathy - Her Lantern of Apathy will keep healing the allies regardless of Mystic Flour Cookie's current status and will be further enhanced when she is defeated.

Safeguard Sacrifice - If there are no Safeguarded Cookies in the team, Mystic Flour Cookie cannot be incapacitated, and gains increased Max HP. The amount of Healing coming from the Lantern of Apathy and its trigger rate will also greatly increase. Ally Cookies will also be provided with Buff Protection.

Immunities - Mystic Flour Cookie is immune to Apathy along with all targets of the Cocoon of Futility and disrupts the Power of Apathy effect affecting enemies.

She might join your Kingdom through the Beast Gacha if you possess enough Light of Apathy. This gacha has the same rules as other Legendary Gacha banners with different mileage levels introduced with Stormbringer Cookie’s event banner.

Beast Cookies will not be subject to ascension; 6 Stars is their maximum promotion grade.

At 2, 4, and 6 Stars respectively, the Cookie’s appearance will change and new character quotes become available

Regardless of rank, only one Beast Cookie is allowed on a Kingdom Arena team. We don’t know if this overrides the withstanding 3-Cookie rule for Cookies that are Ancient, Legendary, or Dragons

Cloud Haetae Cookie will also appear with the next update.

Skill: Haetae Charge - Takes the form of a Cloud Haetae. After transforming, gains an increased DEF and DMG Resist and grants HP Shields for the entire team. With their regular attacks, transformed Cloud Haetae Cookie charges at the enemies, dealing area damage. Cloud Haetae Cookie will also heal the ally with the lowest HP with Cloud Rolls (except Cloud Haetae Cookie themselves). When the transformation is over, Cloud Haetae Cookie will perform a last forceful charge to deal greater damage and Stun the enemies. Belonging to the Realm of Apathy, Cloud Haetae Cookie is resistant to Apathy, can briefly disrupt the Power of Apathy effect when using their skill, and grants the Visions of Apathy buff to the team. When in the same team with Mystic Flour Cookie, Cloud Haetae Cookie will gain the Haetae's Loyalty buff. Cloud Haetae Cookie will regain HP with each 3 regular attacks in the Cookie form.

On Initial Transformation - Gains DEF Up and DMG Resist, Heals teammate with lowest HP excluding themselves

Transformation End - Charges for more damage and stuns affected enemies

Basic Attacks - Splash damage during Transformation, melee, self-heals with every 3 attacks regardless of form

Realm of Apathy Inhabitant (Passive) - Resistant to Apathy, disrupts Power of Apathy, grants Visions of Apathy to all teammates

Combi Bonus - Gains Haetae’s Loyalty when on the same team as Mystic Flour Cookie

The Windmill Garden expansion project is ready to store and manage Production Buildings.

Restoration task opens after researching “Production Dashboard”

Storage and expansion conditions mimic those of the Sky Garden

All production in the Windmill Garden is managed by Wizard Gnomes (Assumed NPC characters that do not have their own EXP levels or otherwise)

Compatible with Easy Goods Collection (collecting items from buildings in either the Windmill Garden or the Kingdom will mass-collect from all buildings in the other location if EGC is enabled)

Stormbringer Cookie’s Mystic Costume “Mystic Gold: Splitter of the Seas” will become available.

The Darkness element has been added for several Cookies:

⚔️ Dark Choco Cookie

🌩️ Dark Cacao Cookie

💀 Licorice Cookie

🐦‍⬛ Black Raisin Cookie

🍰 Red Velvet Cookie

😈 Devil Cookie

🎃 Pumpkin Pie Cookie

🏹 Caramel Arrow Cookie

🐾 Crunchy Chip Cookie

Darkness element users can inflict Consuming Darkness

Consuming Darkness: CRIT% and Healing Down for an extended period of time

Beascuit breakthroughs are ready for consumption.

Max level -> 30

You can get Special Beascuits from Beast-Yeast episode 3 by chance. They start at level 20. - There is a chance to obtain special Beascuits by playing through Beast-Yeast episode 3.

Special Beascuits will have new bonus effects: “Darkness-type DMG Up” or “Electricity-type DMG Up.”

Only one of the two effects will be available depending on the Beascuit’s type.

Once obtaining a special Beascuit, the first slot will be set as either “Darkness-type DMG Up” or “Electricity-type DMG Up.”

All bonus effect values are set according to the probabilities table

You can use the “Reset” function to change the first slot to another bonus effect.

Part 2 of the Might of the Ancients quest is now available after finishing Part 1. Pick either Golden Cheese Cookie or White Lily Cookie to meet them immediately, play missions, and get a special title once it’s all done.

Once you meet Mystic Flour Cookie, traverse the Ever-Changing Path of Apathy to claim even more rewards.

UI & QOL Improvements

A number of UI improvements have been applied to Cookie skill descriptions.

Cookie skill description UI on each Cookie’s page, on the battle preparation screen, and during battle has been improved.

The result screen will no longer be shown when leveling up a Cookie’s skill.

Skill descriptions for Cookies of Legendary rarity or higher will have their descriptions divided into paragraphs for easier reading.

These UI improvements will be applied to all Cookie skill descriptions gradually.

YEAST ORE

The chance of obtaining Yeast Ores for exploring Beast-Yeast has been doubled.

ARENA TIER ADVANCEMENT ANIMATION

You can now skip the Arena tier advancement animation.

Tap on the screen to skip animation.

Please note that you cannot skip the animation for the first time.

NEW BUNDLE ITEMS

- A total of 8 bundle items have been added.

· Jammery (Lv.8): Toffee Jam x5

· Bakery (Lv.9): Ginkgo Focaccia x5

· Artisan's Workshop (Lv.6): Shiny Glass x5

· Flower Shop (Lv.8): Happy Planter x5, Candy Bouquet x5

· Jampie Diner (Lv.8): Bear Jelly Burger x5, Candy Pasta x5

· Carpentry Shop (Lv.6): Acorn Lamp x5

[END OF REPORT]

CRWC - The Next Shelf

The following is a Patch Notes Report from the official Discord, compiled by our Witch’s House branch studio.

[BEGIN WITCH’S CASTLE PATCH NOTES REPORT]

1. MAIN EPISODE 4 CHAPTER 1

- The story of First Cream Cookie begins!

2. NEW MAIN PUZZLE LEVELS 1151-1200

3. NEW SEASON - FIRST CREAM SEASON

- First Cream Cookie is here!

- Season Special: First Cream Cookie's Bear Jelly Toy Decor

- First Cream Season Pass added

- New Season Collection, updated Season Relay

4. NEW GAME MODE - COOKIE PUZZLE CHALLENGE

Added challenges:

- GingerBrave's Puzzle Challenge

- Strawberry Cookie's Puzzle Challenge

- Cherry Cookie's Puzzle Challenge

- Vampire Cookie's Puzzle Challenge

- Witchberry Cookie's Puzzle Challenge

- First Cream Cookie's Puzzle Challenge

- New Gimmick: Candy Canes

- New Gimmick: Strawberry Popping Candies

- New Gimmick: Jelly Bat Missiles

- New Gimmick: Cherry Bombs

- New Gimmick: Sacred Brooches

- New Gimmick: Juice Barrels

※ Requirement

- Puzzle Level 100 Reached

- Challenge Cookie Obtained

5. COOKIE SKILLS

- Cookie Skills now become available twice per Puzzle Level after reaching Cookie Level 3

6. PREMIUM SEASON PASS

- Enjoy the improved Premium Season Pass with double rewards!

7. AUTO-DECORATE FEATURE IMPROVEMENTS

- Added Recommended feature

- The Auto-Decorate feature is now easier to use

BUG FIXES

1. Fixed an issue where the in-game volume would reset after watching an ad

2. Fixed an intermittent issue where it would not be possible to close an ad after watching

3. Fixed an issue where the game would default to incorrect resolutions on certain devices

4. Fixed an intermittent issue where the participation screen of the Sheriff's Hoard event would not display properly

[END OF REPORT]

The Witch’s Castle update is already live.

Coupon Codes

UPDATEFIRSTCREAM (Eligible for both CROB + CRK)

CROB - 500 Crystals

CRK - 500 Rainbow Cubes + 1,500 Crystals

[nerdomancer]

candy poll sitting 2 days in at 8,200 votes and like 1,400 notes

that absolutely breached containment

[yerbamansa]

Trader Joe's fruit licorice taste test

[ID: two open packages of Trader Joe's soft licorice twists from New Zealand with a piece of each flavored candy in front of them. On the left is a red package of strawberry flavor. On the right is a trio of flavors, raspberry (in magenta), mango (dark yellow), and green apple (kelly green). End ID.]

I've been buying the strawberry flavor for...ever, and it's pretty good, but why not try the trio of flavors?

strawberry: firm and chewy, mild but good strawberry flavor (not too artificial-tasting).

raspberry: SMELLS like raspberry, nice strong raspberry licorice flavor, firm and chewy. probably my favorite, but that's just because i like raspberry the best.

mango: not a strong smell, but good mango flavor (like dried mango?). much softer than the others. not too sweet.

green apple: not much smell. chewy and a bit softer than raspberry. tastes kind of like granny smith apple peels without the bitterness/tartness (which is missed).

honestly they're all pretty good!

[cleolinda]

Licorice, feat. Hypnotic Poison, Lolita Lempicka, and more

PREVIOUSLY ON:

HYPNOTIC POISON, briefly (Dior, 1998)

Black Opium (YSL, 2014) and Black Opium Extreme (2021) retried

You don't wear Hypnotic Poison perfume, it wears you: that is the credo of this magnetic eau de toilette. The sultry fragrance bathes the skin in a mysterious and irresistible scent, like a bewitching elixir. (dior.com)

I forget how I recently came across this fact, but I found out that Hypnotic Poison, eau de parfum concentration, has licorice in it, which I most certainly had not perceived in the original eau de toilette, nor is it listed as a note. So I got myself a sample of that to compare to my bottle of the EdT. (It's the only Fancy Perfume I have an entire bottle of: a birthday gift.) I've tried them both multiple times now, but last night I actually wore one on each hand, and I wore A FULL SPRAY of the EdT, which is absolute madness compared to a single molecule just about choking me out five months ago. Apparently, I really am starting to tolerate perfume now.

The thing about EdPs and EdTs is that sometimes, it's not just a different concentration; they can actually be formulated with different notes. Curiously, in the case of Hypnotic Poison, the eau de toilette came out in 1998, and the parfum concentration didn't come out until 2014—a pretty wide gap there. Looking at the notes, we have—

Annick Menardo and Christian Dussoulier's original composition: Coconut, plum, apricot, Brazilian rosewood, jasmine, tuberose, rose, lily of the valley, caraway, vanilla, almond, sandalwood, and musk

and

François Demachy's EdP concentration: Licorice, almond, jasmine sambac, orange blossom absolute, vanilla, and tonka bean.

Somewhat hilariously, it's the EdT that smells simpler to me. I actually was not smoked out of the room by the tuberose this time, which is a massive plot twist in my personal development; the perfume had more of a jasmine-angel food cake vibe. Like, specifically the almondy meringue lightness of angel food cake, not a heavier almond-coconut-vanilla pound cake. (My mom bakes a lot, what can I say.) I don't see licorice listed in the notes, but I swear to you, I can smell it now. There's a—licorice connotation? It's there, somehow, so I'm going to guess Dior is using jasmine sambac in both concentrations—as I mentioned last time, jasmine sambac and licorice seem to blend amazingly, and the jasmine (and maybe the caraway?) is managing to imply an anise-type note, if one isn't really there.

As I also mentioned last time, the reason you (I) kind of want to be like, "you know, licorice/anise/whatever fragrances" is because we're actually talking about a compound called anethole; it's in star anise, fennel, and magnolia flowers as well. (As a side note, I have three magnolia trees in my neighborhood, and the scent has been floating through the air this past week. It's not the most anisic smell in the world, but it does remind me of my jasmine sambac/mogra sample, and it's been really nice.) So, "licorice fragrances" may also throw in a little aniseed here and there (and vice versa), because we're really talking about the more general scent of anethole.

(Bonus fact: anethole also causes the "ouzo effect," or "louche effect," which famously makes absinthe cloudy when you add water. My understanding is that absinthe generally gets the anethole from anise and fennel, not licorice root, but a perfumer might make a different judgment call there. I'm almost certain I have an absinthe-themed perfume oil around here somewhere, so we'll see.)

Now, something that's really interesting here is that Annick Menardo also created the eponymous Lolita Lempicka perfume in 1997, and as Bois de Jasmin says, that's the fragrance that "brought licorice notes to the mainstream." Hypnotic Poison arrived only one year later, and even though it doesn't have licorice listed, you can smell something, I swear.

While we're here, let's have a dance break for Lolita Lempicka (the 1997 original, not any of the do-overs called “Premier Parfum” or “Original”), which I bought last year when I first dipped my toe into the world of Fine Fragrance Samples:

If you were reading fashion magazines in the late '90s, you most likely know this one, and you know the bottle. Which I still covet.

When I first got the sample a year ago, I tried it... and just kind of got a watery green (ivy, I guess) with some cherry, maybe a slight licorice, deep in the background. But the notes include star anise and licorice, ivy, cherry, violet, iris and orris root, amaryllis, vanilla, praline (someday I am going to have to write a post about wtf "praline" means in perfume), tonka bean, vetiver, and our old friend white musk. Like. Surely it can't just be "green"?

After what happened with Black Opium Extreme, I tried it again last week. Yeah. !CHERRY PRALINE LICORICE! Anything "green" was incidental on me, although the vetiver probably provides a bit of enchanted forest. Completely different from my first wear. And it's easier to see a family resemblance to Hypnotic Poison when those gourmand notes come out.

Let's jump back to Hypnotic Poison—this time, the newer EdP concentration. Much like Black Opium Extreme, it's not just a higher ratio of perfume to alcohol. It's actually a simpler yet woozier composition: licorice, almond, jasmine sambac (for sure this time), orange blossom absolute, vanilla, and tonka bean.

There's no coconut or fruits or rosewood or extraneous flowers. This is ANETHOLE and WHITE FLORAL and ALMOND VANILLA. It is not fluffy or angel-foody. This one, I actually get why you would call it "poison"; it's almost cloying, not in the sense that it's sugary-sweet, but in the sense that it's very deep and very heady. It feels like you could spray it on a handkerchief and chloroform somebody with it. I actually like it, but it's A Lot, and the fluffy eau de toilette with its smoke-and-mirrors suggestion of licorice feels more wearable to me. Which is a wild thing to say, given that I started writing about perfume on Tumblr by saying that a single whiff of it nearly made me pass out, but here we are.

When you set the Black Opiums next to the Hypnotic Poisons next to the Lolita Lempicka, you start to see why you'd use anethole notes in a fragrance. Even though people talk about how sweet licorice root is—and it is; I made myself eat some very fine Australian licorice candy for this post—the scent is sort of dark and... I don't know how to describe it. Like mint going through a goth phase? Aniseed seems more herbal-spicy to me, more like fennel (goth mints going out to get pizza). (Aniseed was also in the Australian soft licorice, but I had licorice-only jellybeans to compare it to; this is the attention to detail that you can expect from Cleolinda Industries.) I can see how you'd also put anise into Lolita Lempicka to keep the cherry-praline a little wild, a little sylvan, and why you'd only put licorice into the Hypnotic Poison(s) to underline something dizzyingly smooth. And yet, again—it's not that the 2014 Hypnotic Poison is sugary; it's that it's darkly, swooningly overwhelming, with a goth candy jasmine that somehow pulls it back from being saccharine. That's why you'd use licorice, to put a little bit of wicked queen into it—into Hypnotic Poison, into Lolita Lempicka, into Black Opium.

Offhand, I do have two other fragrances with anethole notes, although they deserve further entries of their own: Pink Sugar (Aquolina, 2004) and L'Heure Bleue (Guerlain, 1912), which COULD NOT BE FURTHER APART on the prestige scale. And both of those are stories for another time, but I'll say that Pink Sugar tries real, real hard to tame its ethyl maltol with some grown-up raspberry, licorice, and fig leaf notes, and it fails. Utterly. I was already a grown-ass woman when I chose to buy a full bottle of the stuff 10-15 years ago; I am not a snob. I love sugar perfumes! I defend them! You could actually knock someone out with this. It's Glinda with a glittering pink skirt so big that the Wicked Witch simply gets bowled over in the first act.

Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue (1912), on the other hand, is the pre-WWI sister to their golden post-war Mitsouko (1919). I would rather write more fully about L'Heure Bleue in the context of iris or even citrus, but the hidden darkness of its anise note, I think, contributes a lot to its famous sense of melancholy: "the blue hour," with war on the horizon.

As vastly different as these perfumes are—two femmes fatales, one enchanted princess, a sugar bomb, an elegant rumination—you start to see how anethole notes can add an olfactory "minor key" to fragrances. Whether you use an herbal anise or a more candied licorice (or both), you can add something more serious, wistful, or vampy to your fragrance, depending on what you combine it with.

Meanwhile, I have washed my hands a dozen times and also showered since last night, and I can still smell Hypnotic Poison, both concentrations, on my hands. Let’s hope Santal 33 goes well with licorice.

Perfume discussion masterpost

[softgrungeprophet]

an insight into the hypocrisy of my taste buds is that I generally don't like black licorice at all. like, it's not nauseating or whatever, I just think it's gross and I don't want to eat it, including other licorice flavored candies, etc. (like cough drops)

BUT

when the german american librarian from minnesota brought in homemade springerle, which had a very strong anise flavor, I was one of the only people working who ate them lmao

[quibbs126]

I think you might’ve already done one, but could I ask for a Dark Choco and Licorice fanchild please…?

Buddy I’ve already done THREE

This is another case of “I plan to redesign”, but that’s also because I made the three of them over the course of multiple months and with each new one I made up new stuff that doesn’t align with the others (and also I came to the realization Gancao’s colors don’t fit her ingredient)

The idea now is that age wise, Licorice Cream is the oldest, Gancao in the middle and Black Choco’s the youngest

But yeah, I don’t think I need to make a fourth. I’ve been trying to curb my desire to make more over the course of several months

[yournewfriendshouse]

happy for you OP! there *is* a limit to how much cassia cinnamon (not ceylon) or nutmeg you can have in a day, but I’m quite sure if you’re brewing it in tea it should be fine, because you’re straining it and not consuming the stuff of it, so you’re having very small amounts

but just like…tea and spices can actually have limits to them, they are medicinal and so some of them can be dangerous in certain amounts, so I don’t want to be all ‘lolololol it’s spices so it’s harmless!’ because it can be good to check these things

people take too much nutmeg on purpose sometimes and trip balls. having said that, the amount they take to do that is like…a lot! and the amount where it’s harmful for you is an even greater amount, so you’re probably never going to accidentally partake and can enjoy your tea and spiced food without stress.

the reason you’re probably feeling nice after this lovely tea is that the warm water itself is quite soothing, but also spices such as cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg all have really great anti-inflammatory properties! and they can also help with stress. and the vitamin c in citrus fruit can help brighten your mood, and honestly the flavours themselves are so lovely, and you’re holding the cup and breathing in that lovely smelling steam, and it’s just a really lovely experience! this is why hot drinks are so great 🥰

so I’m not surprised that it helped your tummy ache. if you want to add some honey next time, it tastes really nice, and also has soothing, anti inflammation properties. you can choose how much you put in to make sure it’s not too sweet for you.

but honestly, I have all of those spices in my coffee every single day, because they help just a bit with my chronic illness stuff. spices not only taste great, but it turns out they are hella good for you!

so i made a potpourri with cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and cloves and orange peel and anise and i have boiled it all day and it smelled so nice i took a sip and the sip was actually wonderful so now i have drunk four cups of potpourri juice and i am only now going to the internet to ask if i am going to Experience The Torments. or if i may have a fifth.

(i cannot quite explain it, but it’s like my entire low i have had a low grade stomachache, and normally i just deal but This Juice helps a little. i am unreasonably fond of it.)

[handlewithcharacter]

People really be out here like "I need sanitized and desexualized media!" and then refuse to watch the Hallmark Channel

Girl it's literally designed for you

[mildmayfoxe]

over 20k votes and almost 5k notes on my candy poll... i wouldve done so much different if i had known

[cathackz]

do not listen to speedcore at 4 am.