PRODUCT REVIEW: The Scentbug™ (Bath & Body Works)

Since this is a product review and all, I wish I'd been able to take a better picture, with less glare on the Scentbug and the fragrance oils and all. Better yet, I wish I had the ability to upload a scratch-n-sniff feature. But I am neither a professional photographer (or even a photo-taker of mild competence); nor am I some kind of computer wizard. So this is my offering, with the glaring off the shiny surfaces.

However, my review is going to be glowing, so that kind of makes up for the crummy photography, right? Er, anyway....Meelyn and Aisling each got a Scentbug for Christmas from Bath & Body Works. I knew that these little cuties had something to do with home fragrance, but I'd never really paid much attention to them: I am a candle kind of person. The big Christmas sales at Bath & Body Works piqued my interest, however, and when I was in the store making an absolute KILLING buying gifts for the girls and Angie, I picked up one for our house.

We've had an artificial tree for the past few years and I thought it would be fun to get a Scentbug so that I could put festive fragrances in it that would give our house the aroma of a piny woods. I purchased two fragrance oils -- Spiced Cider and Balsam Fir -- and carefully dripped ten drops of each oil onto the little cotton pad that live inside the Bug: that white band around its middle is actually a drawer that opens to reveal the pad's hiding place.

Once the fragrance oils are on the cotton pad, the mini-drawer closes and you push that button there in the middle -- it lights up green to indicate that the unit is turned on. Pushing the button activates a tiny, whisper-quiet fan that gently wafts the scent through those holes in the top. Within minutes, our living room and dining room, a fairly extensive area of square footage, smelled lovely. Not overwhelmingly strong, just very fresh and subtle. I imagine if you wanted the scent to be subtler still, you could put, say, five drops of each oil on the little pad.

The Scentbug is a nice thing for three reasons:

1. Scentbugs are very inexpensive and they even comes with batteries. Their regular price is $12.50 and the fragrance oils are normally $7.50 each, but if you wait for a coupon or a sale or BOTH, you can get one for much, much cheaper, as I did. And the bottles of fragrance oil look as if they'll last a long time.

2. It makes your house smell lovely without the dangers associated with candles. True, the Scentbug, while cute and chubby and available in a wide range of colors, does not have the ambiance of candlelight. But for house with small children or curious cats, this isn't such a bad thing.

3. If you live in a house with two stinky dogs, as we do, the added assistance in masking the odor of wet dog at this time of year is crucial. Wimzie and Hershey like nothing better than to go out and blissfully roll in the snow (or worse yet, the damp, muddy grass) and then come in and overpower us all with their penetrating stench. I am thinking about duct-taping a Scentbug to each of them, which is not the recommended use for one of these clever devices, but you gotta do what you gotta do.