Gee, Your Hair Smells like the Seventies!

One of us is having a birthday this week. It's not a milestone birthday, like the ones that mark the acquisition of your learner's permit or finally getting legal permission to drink alcohol. It's just a regular one that simply means I am another year older. Ho hum, multivitamins, reading glasses, etc. etc.

But it hasn't been all bad. For the last week, a steady stream of brightly done-up bags and boxes have been arriving in the mail from friends and family back East that have distracted me from this whole aging business. And when the big day arrived and I allowed myself to tear into the packages, the bounty included a fragrant blast from the past that made me feel like a pre-teen again, reading glasses and all:

Say what?!?

Does anyone else remember Lemon up Shampoo? The bright yellow bottle...the simple yet powerful vertical graphic...the totally awesome plastic lemon cap? All so very mid-seventies.

But the best part for me was the smell. Now, the ads said that they used the juice of a whole lemon in each bottle. I'd describe the resulting scent as like a fresh cut lemon that, through some kind of chemical magic, was made even more fantastically fresher in the lab.  One whiff and I was nine years old again, begging my mom to please please please buy it for me in the health and beauty aisle of Shop Rite. Although I never could convince her to stray from her beloved Herbal Essence, I never lost hope that the distinctive scent and cool black and yellow packaging would someday be mine. 

And behold --  that day is now here, courtesy of a dear trend-savvy friend in Massachusetts. She's discovered that  a host of discontinued drug store classics from the 70's have been ressurected by an outfit called The Vermont Country Store. In addition to my beloved Lemon up, they appear to be producing/distributing the original formulas of such gems as "Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific", and Bonne Bell Ten-O-Six lotion. It's like the pages of Seventeen come to life!

Don't live in Vermont, you say? No worries. They are online at www.vermontcountrystore.com, ready to take your order. 

Can't you just smell it now?