Wordie drew my attention to mandles, meaning "candles for men," which was recently added to the Wordie word list. There are no citations, but my abiding affection for man-words compelled me to do some investigating.
First, please spell it MANdle™. It's a trademark registered to [updated] Eco Candle Company of Neenah, Wisconsin, which is embroiled in a trademark dispute over the name with Joseph Enterprises, Inc., of San Francisco. (You may not recognize the Joseph Enterprises name, but you probably know its most popular products: the Chia Pet and the Smart Clapper and also the Clapper Plus—"now with remote control.") (Shelley Nystrom of Eco Candle wrote to me after I published the original post, explaining that the Joseph product is "a candle that lights up in neon colors," whereas her company has been producing candles such as the one in the photo "for almost five years." Hope that clears everything up.)
MANdle Candles are made of eco-friendly soy, cost about $18 each, and have testosterone-drenched product names, including Wino ("a full-bodied red wine certain to please the snobbiest of pallets [sic]"), Italian Stallion ("the smell of a 'chick magnet'"), Dirtbag ("a smoke & odor eliminator to cover up your man smells"), and Frat Party (beer-scented). For the guy who isn't quite man enough, there's Mama's Boy, which smells like laundry washed and folded by Mom.
MANdle Candles doesn't have the market all to itself. One competitor is HotWicks, in Portland, Oregon, whose candles cost $8.95 and whose About Us page explains the company's raison d'être thus:
After searching for an "outdoor fire candle" online, we were surprised to find that pretty much every candle company offered the same assortment of crappy scents... french vanilla, apple blossoms, blueberry sunrises, autumn harvest... but nothing like what we were looking for.
In its effort to eschew crappiness, HotWicks offers the intoxicating aromas of Urinal Cake, Stripper, Pigskin, and, of course, Beer. The website has this to say about the Stripper scent:
After hundreds of hours of research and a lot of dollar bills we succeeded in capturing the legendary stripper scent. If you don't know what a stripper smells like just imagine the perfume counter at your local department store times a thousand... then add some glitter.
And to anticipate your question about Urinal Cake:
We're often asked if THE URINAL CAKE CANDLE smells like pee. It doesn't. It's a cinnamony floral smell that's modeled after a urinal cake our founder once relieved himself on at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. This candle covers both number 1 and number 2 odors and has become a regular contributor in the HOTWICKS world headquarters bathroom. This is the perfect gift for anyone that likes tacos, asparagus, and really hot chicken wings.
I dunno—"cinnamony floral" sounds suspiciously like "autumn harvest" crossed with "apple blossoms." If I were a guy, I'd just light a stogie and curse the darkness.
Nu, if it's a "MANdle," how come it doesn't smell like almonds?
Posted by: Q. Pheevr | August 27, 2008 at 08:42 PM
Other companies already make candles that have "manly", non-floral scents, like Tocca, and Archipelago. These candles with scents including combinations of tobacco, leather, musk, different types of wood, they already exist. Tocca even has an 007 named candle. I'm not really sure about the market for men and candles though. Is there maybe a nook for men's candles in Yankee Candle?
Posted by: mr radon | August 29, 2008 at 12:55 PM