Too much or never enough? Meat-scented gift ideas

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/10/2021 (1701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was just starting to nod off the other night when my wife bolted upright in bed.

“I think I smell something,” she sniffed, flicking the light on in our bedroom. “It smells like smoke!”

Which is when she climbed out of bed and slowly began wandering around our bedroom, testing the air until finally she hovered directly over my weary head and inhaled deeply.

“It’s your… hair!” is what she chirped with surprise. “Your hair smells like a burning fireplace.”

Which is when I smiled a contented smile. “Yes, it does,” I agreed, bravely taking a whiff of my heady aroma. “But all those pizzas were certainly worth it.”

Having your hair smell like a raging inferno is the price you pay for spending several hours staring into the smoky interior of the brand new wood-fired backyard pizza oven you got for your 65th birthday.

You need to keep your head near the oven’s front door to ensure the pizza dough turns golden brown instead of being transformed into flaming lumps of blackened carbon.

But today’s column is not about overcooking pizza. It’s about the fact my wife — SURPRISE! — was not a big fan of the fact her husband went to bed smelling like a pepperoni pizza baked in a smoke-spitting wood-fired oven.

I personally could not have been more happy with the delicious aroma wafting from my curly locks. That is likely because I am a guy who has long dreamed of how amazing it would be if my pasty body was able to emit the mouthwatering aroma of smoked meat.

If you’re even remotely like me — and I feel sorry for you if that statement is true — you are going to be thrilled to hear that fast-food giant Arby’s has launched a line of sweatshirts and sweatpants that have been literally smoked to give off the fragrance of a Texas barbecue.

Seriously, Arby’s partnered with an actual Texas smokehouse to create a line of “premium sweats” that will smell as if you’ve been sitting next to a barbecue pit for hours bathing in the heady aroma of hickory smoke.

“When you’re sitting in a smokehouse, smoking the meat for Arby’s Real Country Style Rib Sandwich for hours and hours over real hickory wood, your brain starts to wander,” gushes a statement on arbyssmokedsweats.com. “You begin to wonder what a pair of premium sweats might smell like if they, too, were smoked over hickory wood for hours. Well, Arby’s found out.

“Arby’s Smoked Sweats are smoked in small batches in a Texas smokehouse and available in limited quantities.”

I’m aware that smelling like a smoked-meat sandwich is the kind of thing that could prove potentially disruptive in the modern pandemic-weary workplace:

Your boss (sniffing): “Before we turn to the Feebleman contract … does anyone else smell barbecued beef brisket?”

You (beaming with pride): “Thanks, boss. I got these hickory-smoked sweatpants for my birthday.”

As regular readers are aware, I am something of an expert when it comes to smelling like meat. Over the years, I have written countless groundbreaking columns about the burgeoning trend towards making everyone and everything give off a delicious meaty aroma.

For instance, last Christmas I was beyond excited when I unwrapped a surprise gift from my wife — one of KFC’s limited-edition $19.99 fried-chicken-scented firelogs, a product designed to ensure your home smells like the Colonel’s secret blend of 11 herbs and spices.

The fried-chicken fragrance was so intense my wife kept it in our garage, only sticking it under the tree at the last possible second.

I have also chronicled how, in 2017, KFC unveiled “Chicken Smell Bathing Powder,” a fizzy bath bomb shaped like a finger-lickin’ drumstick that you plop into your bath to ensure you emerge from the tub smelling like a bucket of greasy chicken. The year before, KFC introduced a line of edible nail polishes that tasted just like fried chicken. The lickable polish came in two flavours — “Original Recipe” and “Hot & Spicy.”

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Doug, those are the stupidest meat-scented items I have ever heard of.” Well, let me just say, and this comes from the bottom of my heart, you are an idiot.

I say that because I have also written in recent years about how the wonderful folks who make Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage have offered consumers the chance to get their meathooks on sausage-scented Christmas gift wrap, and candy canes that smell and taste like sausage patties sizzling in a cast-iron skillet.

The highlight for me came in 2015 when Burger King came up with the meatiest personal grooming product of all time — a cologne that allows the wearer to smell exactly like the fast-food giant’s signature burger, the Whopper.

I’d mention bacon-scented underarm deodorant, but we’re out of space for today. Sadly, Arby’s smoky sweats are currently sold out on their website. Hopefully, they’ll be back in time for Christmas, because they’d be the perfect gift for the meathead in your life.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca