When we aren’t lighting candles, running aroma diffusers, or installing air purifiers in our bedrooms, we’re spraying everything down with chemicals as we try to make our homes and environments smell like… nothing. We want clean. We crave neutral and controlled, although that may be changing.

The War on Smell Wasn’t a Thing in the 1980s

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But during everyday life in the ’80s, other than maybe a Glade Solid air freshener with the wobbly gel inside that slowly dried up on the back of the toilet, we weren’t trying to erase the scent of everyday life. You could even say that the smells from back then were core to the experience.

Before screens took over our every moment, we walked through the world very differently. We would read the backs of cereal boxes at the kitchen table and the labels of shampoo bottles if there were no old copies of TV Guide available. We were just more aware of our surroundings, getting to know them without distraction, not just visually, but by touch, sound, and yes, smell.

Why Those ’80s Smells Still Stick With Us

Whether it was a freshly opened pack of Wacky Packs or the burning plastic smell of t-shirt transfers, these scents all became a backdrop to growing up.

And it’s not just the nostalgia talking. There’s actually real science behind it. Smell is closely linked to memory and emotion. A single scent can act like the DeLorean in Back to the Future and instantly take you back decades.

And that means for Gen Xers, those years were very formative. Many of the smells we absorbed during that time stuck, big time.