So *that's* what a frog's tongue smells like

The other day, Kiddo had such an great day at school that she was rewarded with not one, but TWO stickers at the end of the day. One was a sticker that said "AWESOME" and the other was a scratch-n-sniff sticker with a frog on it. Kiddo was quite excited about the frog sticker in particular, and was wearing it on the back of her hand when she climbed off the bus.

Kiddo: "LOOK at my frog sticker, Mommy! It SMELLS, you have to smell it!"
Mommy: "What does it smell like?"
Kiddo (in a "duuuuh" sort of way): "Like a FROG'S TONGUE!"
Mommy: *snort*

I bent down and dutifully scratched-n-sniffed. Apparently, frog tongues have a generically citrus-y smell. Who knew? Kiddo told Hubby the same thing when he got home, proudly showing off her sticker that smells "like a frog's tongue" and making him smell it as well. Hee!

All her excitement about stickers reminds me of back when I was in fifth and sixth grade, when stickers were all the rage. Kids actually collected them in special albums, as well as decorating the fronts of our Trapper Keepers and anything else we could stick them upon... I remember that along with Kiddo's beloved scratch-n-sniff stickers, which were always hot commodities (the weirder or more exotic the smell, the better), the best stickers to get were the "puffy" ones, and the most prized off all the puffies were the ones with googly eyes. I would beg my mom to buy me a strip of the puffy googly-eyed stickers, so I could be cool like the other kids at school, and how she thought they were a waste of money. (We didn't get an allowance in my family, and this was before I was old enough to babysit and therefore have disposable income of my own, so other than money received from the Tooth Fairy or a benevolent grandparent, we were pretty much outta luck.) Thankfully, there was constant sticker trading going on at school, so I did manage to score some googly-eyed puffy stickers that way. (And eventually, they'd get old and split and sometimes a teensy piece of foam would fall out of the middle... I'd try to do repairs with glue whenever that tragedy befell one of my precious, puffy stickers!) When I did have a couple of dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I'd stand there at the counter, gazing at the rolls of stickers (while the poor clerk waited impatiently for me to choose, scissors in hand ready to cut my selection from the huge roll) and figure out exactly which was the best sticker selection and value for my money. I certainly didn't want to squander my cash on a less desirable sticker - it was always quality over quantity for me!

Does anyone else remember the big sticker craze of approximately 1980-82? Was this just a regional thing, or was it more widespread? Perhaps I'll google it when I have a few moments (ha, more like a few hours) to kill... Speaking of which, I'm working on a post about the google searches that have brought folks to my humble blog, so stay tuned - some of them are really.......odd.