When merchandising goes bad

I have been forced back into the blogosphere by an item I found and purchased yesterday. I buy a lot of dumb shit all the time, but never before have I been quite so compelled to share the ridiculousness.

So, yesterday I was at Priceline, and I would go so far to say that I blame Suzanne for the fact I was there in the first place. Her blog has opened up my eyes to the shiny appeal of the world of cosmetics, and Priceline is the primo place to go for said things.  So yes. All Suzanne's fault.

Anyway, I was in Priceline, walking past the perfume cabinets, and I saw this staring at me from the bottom shelf:

What. On. Earth.

Anyone who knows me well will know I have a 'slight affection' for boybands of the 90s, and Westlife are no exception. I liked them back when they were called Westside. Yeah! Look at me being all pop elitist! Yeah! Anyway, I saw this thing (whatever it was, I didn't even really look at it properly to be honest) was $12, so promptly tucked it under my arm and headed for the counter.

At home I opened it up. First the removal of the LUXURIOUS PLASTIC SLIPCASE:

Roses and a bit of a crap font. Nice! Time to pop the box open and see what treasures are inside:

Faux velvet, more roses, more crap font! I found an 'Eau De Parfum', a body lotion and a shower gel. Interesting. Upon spritzing some of the odour on my wrist (I'm having a hard time conceding and calling it a 'fragrance' at this point)  it was clear it was aimed at three groups of potential buyers.

• The Elderly, who would be happy with just about anything as long as it covered up the stench of Death.
• Little Girls, who just don't know any better.
• Twenty-Somethings, buying it for The Lulz.

I'll admit, when I first smelt it I thought 'Oh, it's not THAT bad!' It was quite dense, and tended to hang over you like a foggy cloud of odour as opposed to a subtle perfume, but I guess that's value for money? EVERYONE EVERWHERE WILL SMELL YOU! *shrug* The best way to describe it would be 'mature' (like the stinky perfumed talc that old people got from Avon about 20 years ago) but with a sickly sweet after-smell. Quite strange. Smelt the body lotion and the shower gel, they seemed similar, but much milder and a little sweeter.

Despite being something that I'd never wear myself, I did assume the perfume to be 'okay'. That is, until 4 hours later when I was headachey and nauseous and no amount of washing of my arm could remove the choking fog from my body. I'm wearing the jacket I was wearing last night and I CAN STILL SMELL IT. This is some potent crap. I'm far too terrified to use any of the other products now.

Sadly (or perhaps not), the Westlife fragrance set is destined to never again be worn by a human person, and will live out its days on a shelf in my bathroom. Cause it might smell like shit, but it sure does look nice!

"Why the fuck did I agree to this shiiiiiit?"

I give the Westlife fragrance set 1 Schnicky out of a possible 10.