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Post office in France rolls out croissant-scented stamp
- n1b0m 1y agoDo they taste buttery when you lick them?
- westpfelia 1y agoI maintain that croissant's are just sticks of butter someone accidentally spilled flour on.
- wvbdmp 1y agoUnfortunately, WebSmell-o-Vision has not yet been unilaterally pushed by the dudes at Google to do this news justice, but as a croissant connaisseur I would have at least appreciated a webp of the thing instead of some random archive image. It’s a stamp, for christ’s sake. There is a pic here and it’s quite nice imo: https://www.wopa-plus.com/en/stamps/product/&pid=105515 https://www.wopa-plus.com/en/stamps/product/&pid=105515
- xattt 1y agoHere I was misreading the article that it was croissant-shaped, not scented, until I saw a picture.
- valeena 1y agoI was initially reading that it was a croissant with a stamp scent and I was confused...
- bogzz 1y agoI'm holding out for a <smell> HTML tag.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago<bouquet>
- ben_w 1y agoWhich any English person over 40 will spell <bucket> for reasons that likely make no sense to anyone outside the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances
- _kb 1y agoAnd of course the `olfactoryFactory` component for Enterprise™ frameworks.
- layer8 1y agofunction olfactory() { return document.createElement("ol"); }
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- classified 1y agoI bet the next version of Chrome will have that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ghssds 1y agoI can't wait for nasa.gov to let everybody smell Uranus.
- usr1106 1y agoBut wopa-plus does even mention the essential detail? https://www.laposte.fr/pp/c/timbre-croissant-au-beurre https://www.laposte.fr/pp/c/timbre-croissant-au-beurre
- carbocation 1y agoFriendly counterpoint (I know, not actually responsive to your comment, but tangentially related): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4401 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4401
- tempodox 1y agoI can almost smell breakfast…
- amelius 1y agoYes, we also need a cappuccino smell stamp.
- squigz 1y agoHas there ever been any sort of even-remotely-successful smell-o-vision? We can recreate input for many of our other senses - music, visuals, touch - so why not smell?
- nativeit 1y agoPresumably the volatility inherent to “volatile chemicals” makes it challenging to reproduce on-demand. I’d imagine you’d need something like dozens of base compounds, alcohols and acids to create esters and carrier media, some way of protecting all of it from oxygen, a hyper-accurate mixing device that can then by hyper-cleaned between each scent, since our noses would be too sensitive to allow even a small amount of cross-contamination…and then, why stop at smell? You basically already have everything you need for taste as well. Insert some lab-grown tissues and/or fibers, and we’ve invented the Star Trek replicator!
- refurb 1y agoBack in the 1980s, there was a movie that was released where you could purchase a scratch and sniff card. It was dubbed “Odorama” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester_(film) As the movie played, a number would flash on the screen, you’d scratch that number and smell the spot on the card.
- estimator7292 1y agoIsh. Our level of technology is limited to mixing a small set of base compounds on demand. That gives a range of possible scents about as small as you'd think. The problem is that your sense of smell is a complex chemical detector. There are a lot of unique molecules that you can detect. We'd have to synthesize molecules on demand to get any reasonable range of scents, basically.
- amelius 1y agoIt's kinda odd that the first sense that evolution gave us will be the last we can record/playback using our devices.
- bowsamic 1y agoTry and find a good one in France. Harder than you’d think
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Try and find a good one in France. Harder than you’d think In Paris? Sure. You're competing with tourists. Almost any rural bakery? No. You'd have to try to find something shitty.
- jjgreen 1y agoIn Paris, look for the little old ladies carrying half-baguettes and go in the direction they're coming from.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoYou also want to know when they’re fresh. Good bread, particularly in the unseasoned French style, stales rapidly once cool.
- jraph 1y agoYeah, buy one baguette once for the folklore, and then buy good (whole, optionally levain-based) organic bread that lasts days.
- williamdclt 1y agoLike many people, I like baguette and I don't like whole bread (especially levain-based). Baguettes aren't for show/tourism, it's a staple of french food. It does mean you want to buy it on the day, which is fine for many people.
- jraph 1y ago> Baguettes aren't for show/tourism, it's a staple of french food Indeed. So much so it's often a pain to find good whole bread outside cities. I was being a bit facetious. More seriously, the issue with baguette / white bread, aside from drying very fast, is that it's rapid-absorption carbohydrates that are not very healthy and not very filling. Add jam and you have it all. Taking white bread for breakfast every day is not a very good habit. It increases the risk of having a crash in the middle of the morning and of making you nibble. For this reason, it's a shame it's so spread. Bread used to be whole in France in the past. White bread and baguette appeared in France only at the end of 19th / beginning of the 20th century apparently. So, it's been a French staple, but only quite recently. Of course I won't argue with taste. Especially that I understand both "sides" here. I used to prefer baguette / white bread and now I largely prefer whole bread (and like anything whole, you should buy it organic; if you don't, white bread might still be the lesser evil). It took some time to get used to whole bread. I still like the taste and the texture of white bread very much, but I don't like the consequences.
- _9ptr 1y agoCan't wait for the cheeses
- Scoundreller 1y agonot before the RATP series!
- jraph 1y agoLa Poste might have invented the first non-vegan stamps in history. I hope they don't turn rancid.
- hansvm 1y agoGiven the normal process for making glue I wouldn't be so certain.
- tux3 1y agoMost modern glues are synthetic. Super glue is usually cyanoacrylate, regular glue sticks might be Polyvinyl Acetate (PVA). Outside of specialty glues that are intentionally going for old school methods, it's not really a thing anymore
- hammock 1y agoHow recently were stamps with glue invented?
- mminer237 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamp_gum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamp_gum Apparently 1837, and the original adhesive was made from potato starch and gum arabic.
- hansvm 1y agoIIRC, envelopes still use adhesives derived from gelatin. Maybe stamps have modernized at some point?
- LtdJorge 1y agoThere’s also PVA used there
- ch-one 1y agoNice, we got 4 fruits in Switzerland: https://shop.post.ch/en/stamps-philately/philately/single-stamps/stamps-series-summer-/p/550139 https://shop.post.ch/en/stamps-philately/philately/single-st...
- derelicta 1y agoI miss my concrete stamps... A bit rough on the tongue but still lovely
- mihaaly 1y agoI am holding off for the red wine flavoured one.
- fisherjeff 1y agoNow this is the future I’ve been waiting for
- cultofmetatron 1y agoI wish we had croussants here in teh states (tiny speciality shops not withstanding). They are a rare. instead we get a weird butter flavored croissant shaped bread with nothing of the texture or aroma of the real thing.
- dismalaf 1y agoBecause most in North America are made with margarine or a mix of margarine and butter, so much of the butter "taste" is fake. That's also why the lamination is worse.
- esperent 1y agoIt's not just the states, pretty much all of Europe and even in France you'll find cheap croissants made with margarine. You always need to go to a real small bakery (tiny specialty shop as you say) to find real, freshly baked croissants. That's just a bit easier in France. The problem isn't where you live, it's where you shop.
- righthand 1y agoThis is correct, croissants are best the closer they are to the time they were pulled from the oven. A specialty bakery will have croissants made that day. Sometimes cafes will carry a local bakers goods, just ask.
- globular-toast 1y agoIt's not just about that, though. Some places make awful croissant-shaped things, for example just next door in Spain. You can get better croissants from Tesco Express in the UK, and I doubt they are made with butter.
- righthand 1y agoRight that’s why you would ask.
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- bvan 1y agoLa Frenchtech at its peak.
- wakawaka28 1y agoHow are they going to discourage roaches from eating your mail?
- SoftTalker 1y agoHas science gone too far?
- genter 1y agoBetter than the time that a utility company mailed out a gas-scented flyer to teach people what a gas leak smelled like. 911 was inundated with gas leak calls. (Search is so fucking useless these days that I can't find anything about it, but pretty sure it was in New York.)
- eichin 1y agoI remember a scratch-and-sniff version, rather than just scented (in western CT, in the 1970s - they must have bulk sent them, noone in the neighborhood actually had gas service so it wasn't in with gas bills.) That's enough to find https://hackaday.com/2024/12/03/scratch-and-sniff-stickers-and-the-gas-panic-of-87/ https://hackaday.com/2024/12/03/scratch-and-sniff-stickers-a... and the search https://www.google.com/search?q=scratch-and-sniff+mercaptan&udm=14 https://www.google.com/search?q=scratch-and-sniff+mercaptan&... actually turns up a bunch of present-day gas vendors that will send them to you on request!
- dmurray 1y agoNatural gas is odourless, so the smell of a gas leak is artificially chosen. They could have just made all the piped gas smell like croissants instead.
- rendaw 1y agoOr is it that they made all croissants stamp-scented instead?
- tempodox 1y agoWonderful, I want one! Say what you will, the French have good taste. Naturally, this also poses some serious questions: - Will this lead to more croissants being eaten? Everyone within reach of such a stamp could be affected. Will bakeries have to brace themselves? - How will this affect the stamp collector scene? Will they flip upside down to get one of these? Will they eat more croissants? Only time can tell!
- wiether 1y agoYou can order them here: https://www.laposte.fr/pp/c/timbre-croissant-au-beurre https://www.laposte.fr/pp/c/timbre-croissant-au-beurre
- batterylake 1y agoWho said Europe can't innovate
- classified 1y agoWho said we can't have nice things?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- buyucu 1y agoI want one! Seriously, this should be a thing with more scents.
- _ZeD_ 1y ago> artisan croissants [...] “emblem of French gastronomy,” and yet italian cornetti are better grin
- modo_mario 1y agoI'm quite sad that here in Belgium companies now often use stamps that aren't actual little bits of paper anymore but ink stamps on the envelope. I hope that doesn't spread. I have a generational stamp collection that I'd love to keep expanding.
- ElevenLathe 1y agoIn the US businesses that send any significant amount of mail have used "postage machines" (which print right onto the envelope) for decades. Physical stamps (though they're self-adhesive now, no licking) are for very low volume mail users, like individuals.
- wkjagt 1y agoIn The Netherlands you can buy digital "stamps" online. They're nine characters you write in a square pattern on the envelope.
- amelius 1y agoDoes the IRS use stamps too?
- seydor 1y agoAlso stamp-scented croissants?
- sunshine-o 1y agoThe sad part is France annihilated most of the last small independent bakers a few years ago when they they jacked up energy prices. It is now quite hard to find a really good croissant there. On the bright side the new Renault 5 looks fantastic [0] - [0] https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/r5-e-tech-electric.html https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/r5-e-tech-electr...
- sofixa 1y ago> The sad part is France annihilated most of the last small independent bakers a few years ago when they they jacked up energy prices. What? Source? "Last small independent bakers" What? France is full with bakers. There are bakeries everywhere, even villages have a bakery. Most are mom and pop shops. And what do you mean "they" jacked up prices? There was a war that severely impacted energy markets, and France had to nationalise the national electricity provider to cover the massive gap because most of that price difference was passed on to consumers. From what I recall, France was one of the countries that isolated the most.
- samzub 1y agoAnnihilated is very much exaggerated, even if the bakery sector is changing for sure and is facing the same issues of inflation as everyone. Number of bakeries is stable around 33 000 in 2025, down from 36 500 in 1990 [0][1] Revenues are up for both independant and franchised, and while the franchises grow faster than independants, they represent >90% of the total bakeries. [0] article and data from 2025: https://boulangerie.org/economie/ https://boulangerie.org/economie/ [1] article from 2023, data from 2022: https://www.artisans-gourmands.fr/project/la-boulangerie-patisserie-en-pleine-mutation/ https://www.artisans-gourmands.fr/project/la-boulangerie-pat...
- sunshine-o 1y agoI don't know, The Hill reported [0] that: > The renegotiation — brokered by the French government — comes as many of France’s 33,000 bakeries face financial ruin amid spiking energy costs spurred in part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. > > Energy suppliers like TotalEnergies and EDF have agreed to allow the country’s bakeries to renegotiate their contracts if they struggle to pay their bills due to rising energy and crop prices, according to Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. > > These companies have agreed in principle “to dissolve contracts when prices have risen prohibitively high and unsustainable for some bakeries,” Le Maire told reporters. The precise number of 33 000 bakeries would mean that all of them faced financial ruin? That's a bit much. I remember this was at the time when there was this EU rule which mandate to align the price of electricity on gas. Only Spain and Portugal did not apply it. We have to remember those oven use enormous amount of electricity and in fact many bakeries do not produce much of what they sell on-site. It is often made in factories. Funny enough there is a better chance that bread you buy in a supermarket have been cooked on-site than in a small bakery. - [0] https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/3797376-equilibrium-france-calls-on-energy-firms-to-save-baguettes/ https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/379737...
- colangelod 1y agoNext up... "French officials baffled as to why raccoons are attacking mail trucks"
- krmbzds 1y agoA story about a stamp with no picture of the stamp. Great journalism. Here's the first search result with the actual picture of the stamp: https://www.thelocal.fr/20251009/french-post-office-rolls-out-croissant-scented-stamp https://www.thelocal.fr/20251009/french-post-office-rolls-ou...
- geldedus 1y agoNot a new thing. French Post already issued chocolate or perfume scented stamps in the past.