Smells from the past: what aromas of Soviet childhood are almost never found today

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We rarely pay attention to this, but we are surrounded by thousands, if not millions of smells, each of which is absolutely unique and associated in our minds with a certain object or even a situation. However, over time, the usual range of smells changes: long familiar ones leave, and instead of them new ones appear, to which we also gradually get used. What smells have become a thing of the past and are practically not found today, Kramola found out.

Ink

Surely most of you remember what a characteristic smell the new books and textbooks had. Nowadays, printing products smell completely different, and all due to the fact that a completely different ink composition is used. There is only one US-based firm left in the world, which still makes printing ink by mixing equal proportions of ethanol and isopropane.

Polaroid Film

In the 80s and 90s of the last century, a Polaroid camera that produced images immediately after a photo session was a longed-for dream of many. Fresh Polaroid film, taken out of foil, had an original sweetish smell that everyone who has ever held a newly taken photograph will remember. However, the development of digital photography forced the American company to stop producing snapshot film, and its smell is forever a thing of the past.

Markers

In the 80s, markers familiar to everyone began to gain popularity. However, in those days they had a very peculiar, rather pungent smell, due to the use of toluene and xylene in the manufacture of ink. Markers are still popular these days, but they are made with alcohol based inks.

Diesel vehicle exhaust

For another one and a half to two decades, a bus passing by could be identified by the horribly unpleasant smell of diesel exhaust. Modern diesel fuel contains significantly less sulfur, and new chemical catalysts are also used in its production, as a result of which the smell has changed and became less noticeable.

New car

No, no one has stopped making cars, but their smell has changed dramatically. If thirty years ago, sitting in the salon of a new car, one could smell the smell of metal, leather and wood, today they have been replaced by the smell of plastic and other synthetic materials from which modern cars are made.

Pistons

The current generation of kids playing computer shooters has no idea what caps are. And in the 80s and 90s, it was they who were used in pistols for

street counter-strike, and those who did not have pistols blew up the caps, simply hitting them with stones. The smell of sulfur and gunpowder emitted by them evokes nostalgia among many eighties visitors to the Kramol portal.

Burnt leaves

Not so long ago, the courtyards and streets of our settlements in spring and autumn were enveloped in the smoke of burnt foliage, accompanied by a characteristic bitter aroma. Street cleaners and schoolchildren raked leaves into heaps and burned fires. Now such a picture can be seen less and less, since the leaves have practically ceased to be burned in the yards due to concerns about the environment and human health.