smiley®: “happy therapy”.

This made me happy. Maybe not for the reasons it intended to, but the end result was still joy. Brightly laughing yellow-coloured joy.

The iconic smiley face has expanded into the world of aromatherapy and fragrance with Smiley®. This isn’t your normal cologne. It’s a “happiness factor” claiming to be the “very first anti-stress perfume”. It’s literally bottling happiness. Smiley offers a full range of olfactory upers; the unisex fragrance is filled with an ”olfactive substance with euphoriant bio-mechanics”. It contains two chemicals derived from cacao extract: Phenylethylamine (a hormonal joy booster) and Theobromine (an adrenaline blocker and stress reliever) help get you pepped up and then keep you that way. The top notes are bergamot, orange, and pimento. The heart is cacao, pralines, and curaçao, and the bottom notes are musk, patchouli, and myrrh.

I’m not sure if this would physiologically actually affect your mood, but I’m pretty sure that psychologically it could – and as long as you’re happier, who really cares how you get there?

The packaging design is killer. I suppose the whole concept would naturally steer them away from that sort of ubiquitous Calvin Klein-esque sleek crystal obelisk we’re sused to seeing frangrance bottles in, but Smiley has really run with the whole pharmaceutical cuteness vibe. Bright white and sunshine yellow, each product has it’s own medicinal function-first sort of bottle – the body wash comes in old-skool Wizard of Oz type oil can, the perfumes in a pill-shaped spray bottle, and bath powder in single-use tablets. If you’re in desperate need, then you can get a whole bunch of happy in their First Aid Kit.

Designed by Ito Morabito of ora-ïto, whose previous work is for style-heavy brands like Nike and Swatch, the entire line is brightly and perfectly on-brand.

But that’s just the beginning. Smiley’s website is a written playground. The English section of the site is a lost in translation dream (or nightmare, depending on how you look at it). I honestly can’t tell if all the grammar nonsense is supposed to be intentionally funny or if French directly translated into English just comes out hilarious. I’m hoping it’s intentional because, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, just reading the descriptions on the site made me really… yes, you guessed it… happy.

It sounds like everyone working at Smiley mush be high. I challenge you, dare you in fact, to read the following quote and not smile. Guffaw even. Perhaps chuckle:

“These two cardio-tonics associated together dope the vitality and sets up the moral. It’s that simple! What were we waiting for to flood these benficial molecules on everyone?!!!”

I’ve totally been looking for a new way to dope my vitality. And of course, once your vitality is doped your moral is set up too.

Smiley’s online store, called the “Happy Therapy Centre”, sells the whole range of smiley products – including Smiley Rubbing Body Friction, an“epidermal stimulating massage oil with micro-nutrients to activate happiness”. The site also ships worldwide and has a store locator in case you want to go pick up some happy in person. I need this stuff. Not to use, just to have for the pure comic value.