Why send smells in the mail?

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  • Опубликовано: 24 янв 2025

Комментарии • 141

  • @cheekychappy1234
    @cheekychappy1234 Год назад +115

    In one of my first jobs I worked in IT for a printers who would sometimes create scratch and sniff cards for clients. I didn't experience this, but a colleague did, and he said the entire building would smell of whatever was on the scratch and sniff card. So, the poor printers who were contracted to print these would have had a print shop that just smelt of a gas leak.

    • @NeonDripKitty
      @NeonDripKitty Год назад +10

      imagen if a safety inspecter came and didn't believe the were making gas leak cards and just thought the had stepped into a bomb waiting to happen

  • @susannicolasheehan
    @susannicolasheehan Год назад +115

    Interesting! Love that you have Jenny Draper on the show again.

    • @JasperJanssen
      @JasperJanssen Год назад +4

      I wonder if she worked at Jorvik or a smaller variant. I remember visiting Jorvik as a kid and it was by far the most scent heavy historical museum I’ve ever visited (although I’ve experienced a couple of much smaller scale variants on a similar theme).

    • @Phreak0matic
      @Phreak0matic Год назад +1

      Jenny is hard not to like. Super intelligent and knowledgeable as well as incredibly good looking. However she did use an Americanism and say 'poop' ugh

    • @alveolate
      @alveolate Год назад +2

      wouldn't museums just smell... old? musty?

    • @JasperJanssen
      @JasperJanssen Год назад

      @@alveolate Jorvik is a sort of experience-museum of the Viking age in York. Explicitly aimed at small kids, with lots of walk-through dioramas of daily Viking life. And *of course* those recreated Viking streets smell like poo.
      en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorvik_Viking_Centre

  • @SirExal
    @SirExal Год назад +82

    The instant she says "It's not a good smell," I got it at the same time Becky and Tom got it. Sometimes hints are big.
    Also I like the "Yes, absolutely," that Jenny says at the end, making it clear she's responding to some edited-out comment by Tom to the tune of "Hey, can you restate the answer so we don't go out on my "lemon mines" joke?

    • @loudwhitenoise_
      @loudwhitenoise_ Год назад +2

      My thought was something like a protest of 'this is what you will smell if you permit them to build factories nearby'

    • @olivier2553
      @olivier2553 Год назад

      Me too.

    • @murphygreen8484
      @murphygreen8484 Год назад +1

      I work for the gas company in WA State. I knew this one right away

  • @TorstenLif
    @TorstenLif Год назад +41

    I actually saw "Polyester" in a theater when we got the scratch n'sniff card to smell at specific points in the story.

    • @TorstenLif
      @TorstenLif Год назад +9

      Of course, after the first demo sniff (rose) most of the others were not as nice. I especially remember someone in the audience (who had obviously cheated and smelled ahead of the plot) shouting out "Don't try number X, it's terrible!" I suppose that was the skunk one. Lots of the "plot" focused on making up excuses why the smells on the card should appear to be relevant.

    • @tentaplayz3691
      @tentaplayz3691 10 месяцев назад +1

      nice

  • @timmcdaniel6193
    @timmcdaniel6193 Год назад +20

    My sister got COVID and lost her sense of smell. A while later, a neighbor came by for something, came into her kitchen, and said "you have a natural gas leak". (She got the leak repaired, and her sense of smell mostly came back after some months.)

  • @DaveG207
    @DaveG207 Год назад +30

    Several years ago there was an issue with the suppliers for the “gas smell” and a number of towns on the south coast had the smell wafting over for a day or so.

    • @DaveG207
      @DaveG207 Год назад +5

      I had to check my own facts here - it was Lubrizol France in 2013.

  • @OwlRTA
    @OwlRTA Год назад +12

    My scratch and sniff anecdote is about the fourth movie in the Spy Kids series. They advertised it was "4D", because they had 3D glasses and gave out scratch and sniff cards, and they would indicate in the movie when to scratch a certain smell. A friend of mine went to see that, and he said that most of the smells were of literal crap. In particular, the first smell was when a dog pooped, if I recall correctly.

  • @DFSJR1203
    @DFSJR1203 Год назад +1

    Our local gas company sent scratch and sniff cards so people knew what a gas leak smelled like.

  • @damrielkaari3718
    @damrielkaari3718 Год назад +5

    That smell they add, is most definitely one of those "Little goes a long way" things. I used to have a teacher who used to work at a gas provider and took some "empty" jerry cans with him. Was rinsing em out in his yard, and they shut down the whole neighborhood, due to the overwhelming gas smell.

  • @bjmgeek
    @bjmgeek Год назад +1

    When I was a kid I lived in the Minneapolis area, and our local natural gas service sent out scratch-n-sniff mailings. This was in the late 80s.

  • @thepersonwhocomentz
    @thepersonwhocomentz Год назад +1

    I instantly guessed this one correctly the moment I saw the question, and I feel so incredibly smart right now.

  • @freibier
    @freibier Год назад +7

    Scratch&Sniff cards would be a nice feature for patrons of a cooking channel 🙂

  • @erictaylor5462
    @erictaylor5462 9 месяцев назад +1

    I had loss of the sense of smell due to covid. The very first thing I smelled as I recovered was a skunk. Only time in my life I was so happy to smell a skunk.
    I kept taking huge snuffs because it really did smell wonderful to me at that time.

  • @aperitifs
    @aperitifs Год назад +1

    3 decades ago someone stole a 44 gallon drum of the liquid added to gas in Darwin Australia Power and water Authority. When they discovered it was not petrol or diesel, just horrid smelling liquid . they dumped it triggering a look for a gas leak in a area that had no gas pipeline.

  • @glossaria2
    @glossaria2 Год назад +8

    i *just* learned today that if you see a whole lot of turkey vultures hovering over an area where a natural gas pipeline runs, it means there's probably a leak in the line.
    Turkey vultures have an *extraordinary* sense of smell-- they can pick up the scent of carrion from over a mile away. And mercaptan (the smelly gas additive) smells like rotting things. Ergo... vulture magnet.

  • @edl5731
    @edl5731 Год назад +12

    I submitted the negative candle reviews as a proposed Lateral question, but apparently they are too well known, based on the comments in this video.

  • @thebiblioholic
    @thebiblioholic Год назад +2

    Con Edison in New York City also sends scratch and sniff cards once a year or so to its customers to warn them about gas leaks.

  • @trevorlaw128
    @trevorlaw128 7 месяцев назад +1

    My father worked at a print works, and had to send letters to their staff when they did some scratch and sniff products (I think they were for draw linings) as they were getting accused by their wives of possibly playing the field....

  • @peter-d9f3l
    @peter-d9f3l Год назад +3

    When I was young I had a book of "blunders and bungles", which mentioned the addition of the smell to natural gas. Apparently the company in question hadn't bothered to let any of their customers know when they started adding the smell. Then they got heaps of complaints from customers who had ripped up their floorboards trying to find the source of this stench.

  • @sstirley
    @sstirley Год назад +3

    My old Scout leader was an environmental health officer. He told a story when he worked in the Corby area of closing down the steel works because of gas leaks, which turned out to be old barrels of sodium mercaptan leaking. That is the chemical added to propane and hence the concern

  • @Mr.Unacceptable
    @Mr.Unacceptable Год назад +1

    Many towns in Canada only less than 20 years abo got access to natural gas by pipe. Previously they had tanks that needed refilling. Though everyone was familiar with BBQ gas.

  • @Kumimono
    @Kumimono Год назад +1

    "I'm in Gothenburg, Sweden, and I'm about to eat some surströmming. In your scratch-and-sniff card, locate number 7..." -Tom Scott

    • @Gun5hip
      @Gun5hip Год назад

      Oh gawd noooo

  • @BaggyTheBloke
    @BaggyTheBloke 4 месяца назад +1

    Snatch and Scriff sounds like a crime duo and I am using it next DnD session

  • @gorgonzola86
    @gorgonzola86 Год назад +9

    We once had a gas leak here. Was 2 kilometers away but sounded like a freight train going by. They broke a 100 bars long distance pipeline with a trencher. There was sirens all over the town for the whole day and the pipeline kept on roaring for two hours after they shut it down. But no smell.

    • @morganna8503
      @morganna8503 Год назад +1

      No fire? They were lucky then. I once heard/read about something like that in Belgium, except there was a fire in that case. Extremely hot. Terrible happening. People died.

    • @athompso99
      @athompso99 Год назад +6

      I believe the metcarpan(??) is only injected at the local distribution network, so the bulk gas wouldn't smell at all.

    • @gorgonzola86
      @gorgonzola86 Год назад +1

      @@athompso99 I would think so too

    • @Cillana
      @Cillana Год назад +2

      ​@@athompso99mercaptan

    • @RFC3514
      @RFC3514 Год назад +1

      @@athompso99 - Mercaptan.

  • @verdatum
    @verdatum Год назад +2

    Super common in the US. I've gotten well over a dozen in my life. It totally blew my mind as a kid when my dad showed me one and explained how the smell was specifically added to natural gas for obvious safety reasons.

  • @lightningwingdragon
    @lightningwingdragon Год назад +18

    I wanna hear that story about how New Jersey made New York smell bad!

    • @WyvernYT
      @WyvernYT Год назад

      I'm sure a lot of New Jersey residents would like to hear that.

    • @artbk
      @artbk Год назад

      This sounds like the beginning of a joke

    • @alveolate
      @alveolate Год назад +1

      hey i'm wafting over here

  • @JennaGetsCreative
    @JennaGetsCreative Год назад +9

    I want to know which province this was, now!
    Okay, looked it up. Manitoba. I've never lived there, so there's no chance I would have just tossed this out and missed out on this experience 🤣

  • @imwacc0834
    @imwacc0834 Год назад +4

    George Washington Hayduke has a story about a university accidentally released CH3SH, local fire department went crazy trying to find the gas leak.

  • @veggiet2009
    @veggiet2009 Год назад +1

    In the episode the 37 dogs question came up and my brain went "hold on! Matt Parker did a video on this!" 😅

  • @granograno
    @granograno Год назад +2

    Glade - Stank Division
    This episode was great!

  • @grandetaco4416
    @grandetaco4416 Год назад

    You bring up a warehouse that smells like gas leak, the answer is YES. I guessed this Lateral right at the title because, there was a story back in the 80s where they first tried the scratch and sniff in New York(not sure). The cards weren't very good and they naturally leaked out the smell. So people would leave their mail on their tables and would smell gas. The gas company received hundreds of calls about gas leaks. They must have perfected the cards.

  • @lagomoof
    @lagomoof Год назад +2

    I'm almost certain I once delivered scratch-and-sniff cards like the ones in the question along with a newspaper round I had as a teen. This would have been the early 1990s. As I recall, It was a _very_ well known British company that ultimately supplied them. The newspaper was a free local paper so literally every house in walking distance of where I lived got one.
    Anyway, that has to be how I knew the answer to this question, because it didn't feel like a brilliant guess so much as it did a sense of deja vu.

  • @syriuszb8611
    @syriuszb8611 Год назад +2

    I prefer my initial thought that it was just dogs sending their butt smells as a some sort of tinder for dogs.

  • @countertony
    @countertony Год назад +2

    I know Jorvik (the Viking museum in York) did specific smells at points round their ride-based tour - is that the one Jenny Draper's referring to?

  • @BraveLittlePixel
    @BraveLittlePixel Год назад +2

    My best before the answer: It was a scentless scratch and sniff for gas leaks. The only company's that would cold-sell in the mail are usually utility or home-themed companies and it's a very effective and way to remind people that gas is odorless.

  • @TheRoseAlmighty
    @TheRoseAlmighty Год назад +13

    Love to Jenny Drapper, A great lateral episode!

  • @strawberryskittle
    @strawberryskittle Год назад

    In the US in the 90s there was a show called Living Single. They put a scratch and sniff card...I want to say in the weekly newspaper and as you watch the episode there was an on screen prompt to smell the card. The smells correlated with what was happening on screen. This just reminded me of that...😂

  • @Chicken_o7
    @Chicken_o7 Год назад

    Yes! It's not often that I know the answer right away, but I did this time. I've heard of this before, though I have no idea where.

  • @Rogue136
    @Rogue136 Год назад +1

    I remember when I got this from Enbridge in the mail. Hilarious to see it on here! They did this several years before the pandemic but it would have been hilarious if they did it again in 2020

  • @jeran42
    @jeran42 Год назад +1

    i got it right away because our house received one of those kind of cards back in the mid aughts in maryland!

  • @DasGanon
    @DasGanon Год назад +4

    2:25 - actually should correspond to more people eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream I suspect. Part of the reason they're so texture focused unlike other ice creams is that one of the two (don't remember which one) is naturally anosmic.

    • @Elwaves2925
      @Elwaves2925 Год назад +3

      As a fellow anosmic, that would be the Ben part of Ben and Jerry's. Texture and strong tastes are very important. 🙂

    • @DasGanon
      @DasGanon Год назад +1

      @@Elwaves2925 same! I'm sure you had the fun "oh I can't smell, no it's not COVID" conversation a million times

    • @Elwaves2925
      @Elwaves2925 Год назад +2

      @@DasGanon Honestly not much, just a couple of times. I've had it for many decades, so those around me know about it. The one I get more often is "Surely you can smell something?" in an unbelieving tone. I respond sarcastically with "Ah yes, because the blind and deaf can really see and hear something." 😁

    • @economicprisoner
      @economicprisoner Год назад +1

      @@Elwaves2925 The Blind and deaf often CAN see and hear "something". It is not an all or nothing thing.

    • @Elwaves2925
      @Elwaves2925 Год назад +1

      @@economicprisoner True but often not enough to distinguish what it is by sight or sound alone. I could have made this clearer but I meant it's not an assumption most people make from the get go. For example, you don't assume a blind person simply has blurry vision when you're told they're blind. 🙂

  • @watcher314159
    @watcher314159 Год назад +4

    Something that was missing from this is that people don't know what rotten eggs smell like anymore, due to improvements in refrigeration and other such technologies, so the traditional comparison you'd make to tell people what a gas leak smells like is meaningless. Hence why they felt the need to ship the smell out to people directly.

    • @empath69
      @empath69 Год назад +2

      You've got a point - that's how I first learned 'how rotten eggs smell' is from smelling some propane that was accidentally released into the air. My da was hooking up a camp stove and one of the valves for the burners was open. I commented on the smell and he explained how they add it to natural gas and propane as a safety feature. It would be years later before I encountered an actual rotten egg...

    • @Gun5hip
      @Gun5hip Год назад +1

      True and it's the sort of smell you only need to smell once.

  • @JoeBleasdaleReal
    @JoeBleasdaleReal Год назад +2

    As Banksie once said: “Thank God you can’t smell me!”

  • @ajnormandgroome
    @ajnormandgroome Год назад +1

    We used to get natural gas scratch and sniff cards in USA

  • @NeonDripKitty
    @NeonDripKitty Год назад +1

    2:08 wait long covid affects taste not just short covid? is this why sprite now sometimes tastes bad to me?

  • @Sam_on_YouTube
    @Sam_on_YouTube Год назад +1

    When they launched Stacy Chips, they mailed a free sample to every Stacy in the US. My friend Stacy got hers. But if you spell it Stacey... nope.

  • @kf10147
    @kf10147 Год назад +1

    I knew this from John Green’s Anthropocene Reviewed Scratch and Sniff chapter!

    • @myladycasagrande863
      @myladycasagrande863 Год назад

      Me too! The question editor missed an opportunity to add "and what problem did it cause?" People called to report gas leaks because the cards were so convincing. That might have been a different time that a gas company pulled this stunt, though - I imagine it's been done many times.

  • @PaulASmyers
    @PaulASmyers Год назад +1

    I bet the gas company had a known leak or leaks, based on consumption versus billing, and couldn't figure out where it was due to lack of flow monitoring equipment. So they came up with a scheme to get a large number of population to find the leak(s) for them.

  • @FrostyButter
    @FrostyButter Год назад

    My mental image of rural Canada is now dominated by trees, gas leaks, and men chopping down power poles 🤔

  • @TraceUK
    @TraceUK Год назад

    British Gas did this exact thing in the 80s! I remember it coming and being horrified

  • @PersonalitySituation
    @PersonalitySituation Год назад +1

    I thought at first "It's not a good smell,", that it was referencing the John Waters movie Polyester, which did have a scratch and sniff card associated with some of the scenes. That was not two years ago, alas.

  • @ThePixel1983
    @ThePixel1983 Год назад +1

    TechDiff smell cards will have at least one "fart" field.

  • @erictaylor5462
    @erictaylor5462 9 месяцев назад

    My worked at an oil refinery and one day he had propane odorant spilled on him. The stuff is really concentrated, to the point that they add only 1 pint to a railcar of propane. It is a chemical responsible for a large part of the smell of feces and skunk smell
    When dad had it spilled on him, mom had to burn his clothes and he tried everything to get the smell out of his skin, but it was 2 weeks before it was completely gone.
    Another time an unliked supervisor got a brand new company car and he was rubbing everyone's face in it being a real asshole. Someone put a cap full of propane odorant in it, and even after everything inside the car was removed and the inside sand blasted the car was still underivable. They ended up having to scrap the car.

  • @dibenp
    @dibenp Год назад

    Living in PA, UGI (my natural gas provider) sends out mailers… oh that’s it. Cool. 😂

  • @TheVoidSinger
    @TheVoidSinger Год назад

    This one had me doubting myself because my first thought was natural gas, but then said two years ago and was like "oh right covid". I only knew natural gas could be a scratch and sniff because it's basically the same as the prank "fart" stickers that were popular around the "garbage pail kids" era. Fun bonus, there's now a smell test for Alzheimer's screening

  • @TurboLingaLanguages
    @TurboLingaLanguages Год назад

    Good on Molly to be wearing a hint of Tom's shade of red shirt.

  • @Sniffy1975
    @Sniffy1975 Год назад

    My first thought was marketing for a product that has a specific smell associated with it, as i remember reading that Disneyland generates smells in key locations throughout the park to influence behaviour, like making people feel hungry etc... which i guess means I was half right

  • @X22GJP
    @X22GJP Год назад +5

    Intuitively got this straight away - had to be either a marketing promo or a safety awareness thing.

  • @ThePandaKen
    @ThePandaKen Год назад

    This also came out in the States.

  • @VonOzbourne
    @VonOzbourne Год назад +1

    Not to completely disregard the relationship between loss of taste and having COVID, but one of the main reasons why many sweets don't taste the same as you remember is because they changed the recipe to use cheaper ingredients including swapping out real cane sugar for high fructose corn syrup.
    This is the main reason why Haribo gummy bears and cola bottles taste so much better than typical North American made brands and your Mexican Coke or Pepsi is better than the U.S. versions.

  • @peterstockhausen8806
    @peterstockhausen8806 Год назад

    I worked at a company that had a lab outline our door that occasionally had a leak of that chemical. Not pleasant

  • @MountainHawkPYL
    @MountainHawkPYL Год назад

    I remember getting these cards in the 70s.

  • @nomadicagent6311
    @nomadicagent6311 Год назад

    Whatever happens to the invention of smell-o-rama television? I heard about a smell-o-rama VR as well. Missed opportunity for Tom, darn it!

  • @134StormShadow
    @134StormShadow Год назад

    Ooohhh 🤔 there were so many opportunities to mislead with the explanation of 'mailshot'... 🤣😆

  • @georgesos
    @georgesos Год назад

    I am here for Jenny Draper.😊 ..ok,for Tom too....

  • @theartssocietyworcester7736
    @theartssocietyworcester7736 Год назад +1

    Yes to the smellovision gas episode.

  • @adrianwintle5284
    @adrianwintle5284 Год назад

    I remember getting one of these.

  • @no_genius
    @no_genius Год назад

    Not only was my first guess the answer, my second guess was the one everyone guessed that wasn’t the answer

  • @erumaayuuki
    @erumaayuuki Год назад

    I wonder what the smell actually is that they add to natural gas. I always found truffles smell similar, but haven't found any source to back this up

    • @teh-maxh
      @teh-maxh Год назад

      It's mercaptan.

    • @erumaayuuki
      @erumaayuuki Год назад

      @@teh-maxh what's that? 😅

    • @erumaayuuki
      @erumaayuuki Год назад

      @@teh-maxh nvm, I googled it, and it is in fact also the aroma of truffles, thanks

  • @athompso99
    @athompso99 Год назад

    Now I'm annoyed because i do live in Manitoba, and i never got this mailer!

  • @JACKHARRINGTON
    @JACKHARRINGTON Год назад +1

    Looking forward to the patreon video

  • @alexbrandes5114
    @alexbrandes5114 Год назад

    I finally got Covid and I never lost a single sense

  • @MadCatPerson1977
    @MadCatPerson1977 Год назад

    I'm gonna start a petition for a scratch and sniff version of Tom's bear test video 🐻🗑️

  • @myladycasagrande863
    @myladycasagrande863 Год назад +3

    Got it right away
    Spoiler
    John Green wrote about a problem after a gas company sent out natural gas scented scratch and sniffs; the smell was too accurate, so tons of people erroneously reported gas leaks!

  • @danchristoph2255
    @danchristoph2255 Год назад

    My first thought was maple syrup.

  • @Ralesk
    @Ralesk 11 месяцев назад

    Now I wonder if there are regional differences between the smells of the gas :D

  • @ninthundertow
    @ninthundertow Год назад +1

    Tom hanging with all the babes... what a g...

  • @madhatter2k
    @madhatter2k Год назад

    If the Patreon scratch and sniff happens - i'm subscribing

  • @addicted2caffeine
    @addicted2caffeine Год назад

    Wait what? I still can't taste peppers 🌶️ , chillies taste earthy and bell peppers just taste like sugar. And lots of other foods taste bland and all similar like I can taste but it feels diluted.

  • @MegaLokopo
    @MegaLokopo Год назад +1

    I read the title ten different ways all of them wrong. I am a little disappointed this isn't about sending emails or snails in the mail.

  • @kiro9291
    @kiro9291 Год назад

    that is honestly so clever

  • @nilo70
    @nilo70 Год назад

    Love j Draper 😊

  • @majorfallacy5926
    @majorfallacy5926 Год назад

    thinking about it, i have no idea why i know what residential gas smells like but i know somehow

  • @SamButler22
    @SamButler22 Год назад

    I'm sure there was a football game (PS1 or PS2) that had scratch and sniff on the label side of the actual disc. Reportedly grass scented.

  • @bubu1066
    @bubu1066 Год назад

    Dr. Ross Geller : [Ross is trying to flirt with the pizza delivery girl] Hey, uh... you know that smell gas has?
    Caitlin : ...Yeah.
    Dr. Ross Geller : They put that in.
    Caitlin : What?
    Dr. Ross Geller : The gas is odorless - but they add the smell, so you know when there's a leak.
    Caitlin : ...Well, OK.
    Dr. Ross Geller : A lot of other gas smells.
    Chandler : ...Oh, the humanity.
    Dr. Ross Geller : ...Meth- methane smells....

  • @tentaplayz3691
    @tentaplayz3691 10 месяцев назад

    smell of death 😂

  • @yessirge
    @yessirge Год назад

    got it right away, boom

  • @richardl6751
    @richardl6751 Год назад

    Actually called Mercaptan.

  • @beaniebro8368
    @beaniebro8368 Год назад

    before knowing what the answer is, im guessing its something to do with the smell of natural gas

  • @Cossieuk
    @Cossieuk Год назад

    Instead of Tom doing Things you might not know, he could do Things you might not have smelled

  • @bigsarge2085
    @bigsarge2085 Год назад +1

    👍👍

  • @jono6379
    @jono6379 Год назад

    I thought this was for dodgy Amazon reviews. I was wrong.

  • @Rollermonkey1
    @Rollermonkey1 Год назад

    Natural Gas company? Or, at least I remember getting that card as a kid in the United States late 70s.

  • @loddude5706
    @loddude5706 Год назад

    Change of gas supply smell? : )

  • @galacticmechanic1
    @galacticmechanic1 Год назад

    At least one person has called the gas company complaining they smelled a gas leak but it was just the card hidden under something.

  • @tentaplayz3691
    @tentaplayz3691 10 месяцев назад

    hes so handsome

  • @UserCommenter
    @UserCommenter Год назад

    Wonder how this show would do with a normie on it to balance the absolutely delightful and essential nerdiness :)

  • @scottperkins5038
    @scottperkins5038 Год назад

    "This is a new era of your channel." Oh I'm sad now.

  • @broderfoder9348
    @broderfoder9348 Год назад

    As a single male in a group of women, he sticks out like a sore tom?

  • @orccomputers2145
    @orccomputers2145 Год назад

    why are a host?