Audiences who saw the horror film Dead Lover in cinemas earlier this year were given scratch-and-sniff cards, in a revival of a gimmick first used by John Waters for Polyester in 1981. Waters called the format Odorama, and the producers of Rugrats Go Wild used the same term (and logo) on their scratch-and-sniff cards in 2003.
In 2011, the fourth film in the Spy Kids franchise was also released with scratch-and-sniff cards, in a format that was renamed Aroma-Scope. In 2023, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was rereleased with scratch-and-sniff cards branded as Stink-O-Vision, and Dead Lover has now borrowed that name for its black scratch-and-sniff cards.
The first experiments with scented cinema occurred sixty years ago, when smells were wafted through cinema air-conditioning vents to accompany the documentary Behind the Great Wall (via the Aroma-Rama process) and piped to cinema seats during the thriller Scent of Mystery (using the rival Smell-O-Vision system). Like Cinerama and 3D, they were Hollywood’s attempts to lure audiences away from television.