The United States Patent and Trademark Office says that colors, sounds, and scents can be trademarked if it can be proved that consumers strongly associate things that we see, hear, and smell with certain products. In 2018, Play-Doh’s distinctive smell became the 13th brand aroma to be trademarked. Children have played with the iconic modeling compound since it hit the market in 1956, and Hasbro (its manufacturer since 1991) characterizes Play-Doh's scent as a “combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.”
That's a lot of dough:
- Between 1955 and 2005, more than two billion cans of Play-Doh were sold in 75 countries. For its 50th anniversary, a limited edition Play-Doh fragrance was created and marketed in one-ounce (30-ml) bottles.
- Play-Doh was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998, and in 2003 the toy industry named it one of the 100 most memorable and creative toys of the 20th century.
- The putty that later became Play-Doh was originally marketed as a cleaning product that could be used to remove soot from non-washable wallpaper.