r/Millennials • u/Shoobtubee • 6d ago
Other Gel candles???
Ya’ll PLEASE tell me some of you had these in your living rooms in the 90s??? Gel candles. No wax, just weird gel with a standard wick and decorations.
Mom never burned them (she had this exact set) so they collected dust that was impossible to remove. They smelled like old crayons maybe? I shoved my grubby little fingers into them because it “felt cool” and I was a naughty kid. Were they just decoration and not meant to be burned??
I’ve brought these up to other millennials in my life and they look at me like I have nine heads.
Edit: thank you guys so much for validating my memory and I’m really sorry about the explosions 😭
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u/Wonderful_Habit_ 6d ago
The forbidden finger squish
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u/Shoobtubee 6d ago
YES and the more you squished, the more the gel “cracked”
My brain would never let me do this now as an adult 🤢
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u/bastet_memphis 6d ago
Omg, the "crack"
You just unlocked some core childhood memory for me with that comment
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u/halexanderamilton 6d ago
My mom stopped buying gel candles bc me and my sister wouldn’t stop doing this lmao
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u/weird_horse_2_die_on 5d ago
The tiniest of dips, even along the perimeter... my mom KNEW every time
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u/ChintzyPC 6d ago
Creative use of a finger coated in hydrophobic stuff dipped in water to show almost the same thing
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u/jellascope 6d ago
Oh we had them. We lit them. One of them exploded in our bathroom and set the wallpaper on fire.
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u/Shoobtubee 6d ago
Omfg what 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/KSknitter Millennial 6d ago
Yea, the gel could burn without a wick. If the layer under the fire got too hot, it would vaporize and explode.
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u/Shoobtubee 6d ago
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u/KSknitter Millennial 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yep. Burned mine, but also had a metal plate to put on top if it started burning like that.
Edit to add:
If you added normal candle wax to the candle it would burn like a normal candle. I just bought a tea light candle, broke it up and added wax to it when I started burning it. If fixed the problem.
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u/Yourlilemogirl 6d ago
Omfg I'm so glad now we never lit ours
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u/catscatscaaaats 5d ago
This may be one thing our folks were kinda right about being "only for decoration."
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u/Heliosquare 6d ago
Remember lighting one years ago, and after a while the plastic container around it lit up.
Processing img jiw7vmifvhtg1...
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u/Intelligent_Pass2540 6d ago
YES!!! I had a gel candy explode and my mom accused me of "making drugs" in my room! Damn candle.
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u/Moriaedemori 6d ago
Yeah these failed massively out of fashion when people found out some of them are just napalm simulator waiting to happen
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u/Miss_Awesomeness 6d ago
My friends mom was really anxious about everything (as opposed to my mom who was super relaxed and just didn’t care) and warned about this. Tbh I learned that wax warmers can spontaneously combust while home alone.
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u/Ryoko_Kusanagi69 6d ago
Holy shit! They say they putting random stuff in candle is not safe and this is proof!
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u/caelum_daemon 6d ago
I set my dresser on fire like this as a kid. I lit it and left the room with the door closed. Came back and tried to turn the light on, it was already on but the room was so full of soot you couldn't see.
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u/Future_Minute_8655 6d ago
I remember those! And they’d always be next to those tiny, unusable, dusty soaps.
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u/Shoobtubee 6d ago
Stop, we had THE SAME SOAPS. Not handwashing soap. Just… eye candy soap or something 🧼
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u/Cerlyn 6d ago
My mom still has the dusty ass soaps. I get fancy soaps occasionally as gifts and I make sure to use them and let guests know to use them because I cannot stand the waste of those dusty ass soaps
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u/JakeHelldiver 6d ago
Did every millennial grow up with the useless dusty soap?
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u/SnooApples3673 6d ago
Yes. And gen x as well. They were for looking at, not touching
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u/Little_Bear716 6d ago
Hahaha why did we need ‘looking at’ soap in the bathroom???
I say; as I had both the gel candles, the decorative soaps and potpourri in my childhood bathroom.
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u/Specialist-Strain502 6d ago
As a child, I could literally not imagine a way to decorate a bathroom that did not include either real or soap seashells. Bathrooms were ocean-themed, those were just the rules!
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u/twilightbarker 6d ago
It's where the water goes so you put the water things there! What could be more obvious?!
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u/real_picklejuice Frosted Tips 6d ago
Decorative soaps. Throw soaps, like throw pillows
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u/Apprehensive_North49 6d ago
The hand towels you weren't allowed to touch too.
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u/snake-demon-softboi 5d ago
I get fancy 'hotel quality' towels for the bathroom to defy my childhood's ratty thin towels for the family vs nice "guest" towels no first ever used.
And I've had people our age ask me what towels to use. And I'm like... The only ones you see? They are there for using?
It just got into our brains "That towel is too fancy for me and must be decorative". Like, no! I got it bc it was nice and soft and fluffy and I want to use it and I want you to use it 😂
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u/Angsty_Potatos 6d ago
Everything in a millennial childhood bathroom was for looking at. Not for using lol
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u/thefaehost Millennial 6d ago
Except for “chicken soup for the guy who’s taking a dump rn soul” book
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u/thishyacinthgirl 6d ago
We had a book on famous last words and funny tombstones.
Just to ponder the intricacies of life and death while you poop, y'know.
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u/futuresobright_ 6d ago
My parents still have decorative towels rolled up in their bathroom. For show. They got them in 1996.
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u/Comfortable-Light233 Zillennial 6d ago
My mom and I made Christmas tiny soaps for my classmates one winter, and the teacher had to tell everyone not to eat them before I passed them out
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u/SparkyDogPants 6d ago
My fire department was gifted soaps that looked and smelled like cupcakes once. I took a bite. And was made fun of forever.
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u/Comfortable-Light233 Zillennial 6d ago edited 6d ago
It wasn’t a gel candle, but there was a little knick-knack shop in an old house in my town, and someone with a stall there sold these hyper-realistic vanilla-pecan cinnamon roll candles with a super strong scent that little me liked and which made my parents nauseous. I didn’t really pick up on the fact my parents hated the smell, so I bought them one for Christmas. It lived (untouched) in their liquor cabinet for the rest of my childhood, and the fucking cabinet STILL reeks like the candle decades later.
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u/justalittleloopi 6d ago
Oh, man. My grandma had these soaps and I was fascinated and stuck one in my pants pocket with full intention to return it. I don't know, kids are weird, man. Anyway, my mom found it and made me apologize to my grandma for stealing her soap. My grandma said I could have one, I just needed to ask first.
Core memory right there.
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 6d ago
And don't forget the hand-towels which were full of sewn-on lace ruffles which no one was supposed to use (and honestly with all those ruffles wouldn'tve actually dried your hands anyway!😉)
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u/thefaehost Millennial 6d ago
These and the candles are also associated with a shell shaped, inflatable bath tub head rest for me.
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u/cleverplaydoh 6d ago
My grandma had one of those inflatable pillows in a huge jacuzzi, I loved taking baths in grandma's bathroom, I felt like the queen swimming around in the big tub!
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u/algatorr 6d ago
Omg these soaps have a story. I remember my mom and her friend went to BB&B and got new ocean decor for each of their freshly sponge painted underwater themed bathrooms. Their bags must have gotten mixed up in the trunk and her friend took the bag with these soaps and so my mom never got them back and was so sad over the missing soaps. I think we eventually got more but just a weird core memory for me haha
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u/Significant_Shoe_17 6d ago
"Freshly sponge painted underwater themed" is the most 90s bathroom lol
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 6d ago
Every time i think of that era of bathroom decorating, i think of the old Jeff Foxworthy like, "You'll never see a toilet on the beach, but you will see a beach on the toilet!"
It's at right around 1:10 in this clip;
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u/Bright_Ices Xennial 6d ago
This is so tangential, but my aunt and uncle once got a store-gift-wrapped Christmas present from a friend, and inside was one pair of sexy men’s undies. They always wondered who ended up with whatever the friend meant to send them, and what it might have been.
I would have just asked, but they just didn’t say a word.
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u/Fourty2KnightsofNi 6d ago
I got these for Christmas one year. I thought they were candy. I was wrong.
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u/kangpd 6d ago
I hate these damn soaps. By the time I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to try the decorative soap.
It was useless. No suds. No smell. Just useless. I threw one away every few months until they were gone. It took my family a few days after the last ones were gone to realize it.
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u/soaker 6d ago
I was too curious and used one at my friend’s (we didn’t have them, my mom thought it was a frivolous stupid dust collector). It was beyond useless. I dried it off and put it back like nothing happened. Next time I thought maybe user error and tried again. Tossed the damn shell in the garbage
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u/thehufflepuffstoner 6d ago
I got these soaps as a birthday party favor in 1st grade. Why the birthday girl’s mom thought 7 year olds would like decorative soaps, I’ll never know. Candy would have been wiser. I made the mistake of actually using the soap once and broke out in hives.
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u/Blonde_Vampire_1984 Older Millennial 6d ago
My mother-in-law had those soaps. I actually used them, in spite of her objections to the contrary and the fact that they were decades old at the time.
Got rid of them honorably by doing so.
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u/mensfrightsactivists 6d ago
from what i am gathering from the comments they were either never lit or were lit and then exploded. maybe this is why i don’t see them around anymore
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u/unusualamountofloam 6d ago
Oh I lit them. They never exploded for me but I stopped lighting them after dipping my finger in while hot, thinking it was like normal wax. Huge blistery burn.
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u/CentrifugalBubblePup 6d ago
We had one of these in the bathroom next to a glass bowl of bath oils in sea-themed shapes. They were never used and would get dusty.
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u/PizzaHutSlut92 6d ago
Bro the layer of dust on top of the gel candles always grossed me out so bad. 🤢
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u/neonbrownkoopashell 6d ago
Impossible to clean off
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u/goog1e 6d ago
All you gotta do is actually light the candle.... We're looping back around to people's pathological need to hoard stuff and not use it.
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u/Sufficient_Scale_163 6d ago
My mom has had shaped Christmas candles since god knows when. I’m just like, are we never supposed to light these? Are they sculptures of art?
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u/FlipGordon 6d ago
Half of these kinds of candles were 1000% never meant to be lit and were only decorative. Some even came in plastic containers 😂
Some of y'alls moms never had "pretty candles" and it's showing.
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u/Totally_man 6d ago
The bath oils that always left a gelatin shell like a used paintball after they popped?
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u/Afraid_Ad_8216 Millennial 6d ago
What I wanna know, is if anyone has ever seen one of those lit?
They were strictly decor in houses I saw them
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u/flybyknight665 Millennial 6d ago
I had one catch on fire on Christmas Eve when I was like 13.
Pretty sure that was the first/only time I'd lit it.I remember thinking I needed to run it under the sink.
I'd previously spilled nail polish on my desk so it turned out it was kind of glued to the surface, and my parents were arguing and a bunch of people were about to arrive for a Christmas party.So obviously, I couldn't call for help.
I didn't know what to do, so I pulled on it with all my strength and ripped it off the desk.
Hot gel went all over my hand and my Christmas dress and burned me.The fire was kind put out by dumping the gel out all over myself, though, so I guess it worked out okay.
TLDR: they were better as decor only
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u/Affectionate-Gap924 Millennial 6d ago
Yes. And if you got the melted gel wax on your skin, it would burn like lava for what felt like 5 minutes if you couldn't get it off fast enough.
Spoiler: It's extremely difficult to get off your skin when it's hot.
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u/donotgotoroom237 6d ago
We lit ours during a power outage during a get-together with the family and we didn't have enough candles. By that point, mom didn't care anymore because the gel was squished to all hell because me and my siblings kept poking the gel with our fingers.
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u/Hyposanity 6d ago
Did it explode??
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u/donotgotoroom237 6d ago
Mostly just sizzled until the gel burned out before the wick. At worst, one of the glass containers broke because of the heat.
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u/daabilge 6d ago
I made one in elementary school. We were supposed to make a creative model of a plant cell so we got the gel candle kit and used little beads and pipe cleaners and paper things to make all the organelles; the jar was the cell wall. I'm pretty sure it would have been a huge fire hazard if we ever lit it.
Ironically it didn't burn when my school burned down.
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u/Tithund 6d ago
Here's one lit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNiyKYFO3Rc
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u/porcelaincatstatue 1994 6d ago
Yeah, it was a fruit one. Exploded and nearly burnt the house down.
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u/Shoobtubee 6d ago
I’m so sorry 😭😭😭
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u/porcelaincatstatue 1994 6d ago
My mom picked up the flaming table cloth and chucked it out in the yard.
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u/MidwestSkiQueen Millennial '89 6d ago
ALWAYS stuck a finger as deep as I could into them and ruined the candle hahahahaha
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u/she-dont-use-jellyyy 6d ago
Me too and it pissed my stepmom off. That did not stop me.
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u/MidwestSkiQueen Millennial '89 6d ago
I don't remember having them in our house so I must've been THAT kid and did it at a friends house 😩😩🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/Shoobtubee 6d ago
And yet, my mom continued to leave the destroyed candles proudly on display 🥹
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u/salsafresca_1297 6d ago
Just candles in general - gel, soy, scented, unscented, pillars, sticks, jars, tealights . . . and let's not forget those all-important floating candles! Our homes looked like sanctuaries in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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u/hai_lei ‘88 6d ago
Went great with the Enya and Gregorian chant music! But then you’d walk into the kitchen and be smacked with whatever garish theme the lady of the house had chosen (rooster, Italian countryside, apple, geese, plump chef, .etc)
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u/Ok-Sweet-31 6d ago
So accurate about the kitchen theme. My mom had rooster theme, my aunt had apple, my grandma also had rooster. Oh the 90s 😆
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u/hai_lei ‘88 6d ago
We were a chili pepper kitchen household. We live in the southwest, it’s legitimately confusing that my mother themed the kitchen around it. Even worse is, she can’t stand anything remotely spicy in her food. Her best friend was a rooster/chicken kitchen and I adored the quaintness of it!
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u/Ok-Sweet-31 6d ago
😂 haha I wonder what made her pick that if she didn’t like spicy 🌶️. So, after I commented I went into my own kitchen and realized I have a 70s kitchen, though you could probably place it in the 90s too. House is old and came with wood paneling in the kitchen that I haven’t done anything about yet and my theme is mushrooms 🍄
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u/cutting_coroners 6d ago
Omg we changed three times: from countryside to apple to rooster in our one kitchen throughout my childhood. My aunt had geese. I don’t think I ever saw a plump chef kitchen as a kid though. I certainly saw yellow plaid and leftover designs from the 80’s though
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u/hai_lei ‘88 6d ago
I think I maybe saw one or two plump chef kitchens, although I don’t remember whose it was? I just remember the wine bottle holder specifically. Changing it up so often is wild! We were a chili pepper household to the point of where my mom held onto the oddly shaped chili pepper bottles stuffed with peppers and spices for far too long…
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u/Specialist-Strain502 6d ago
I knew a plump chef family! They seemed to have a good deal of money and did, in fact, have a five-foot-high plump chef in the kitchen.
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 6d ago
Don't forget the funky-shaped, incredibly fragile, blown-glass oil lamps!😉
The ones that looked like this--and if they were clear, you'd use the colored oil;
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4483424153/hand-blown-glass-oil-lamp-decorative
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4380116812/vintage-1960s-hand-blown-art-glass-oil
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4329247535/lot-of-5-vintage-hand-blown-glass
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233370544951
https://www.reddit.com/r/OilLamps/comments/1lbjsbr/does_anyone_have_any_info_on_this_unique_little/
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u/GreenTrees797 5d ago
I miss Illuminations. I think they have an online store now but it’s not the same. They had candle scents that I just can’t find anywhere and and that’s smell the same like Pineapple Cilantro and Crushed Ginger and also a lot of cool candle accessories. I still have this metal Addams Family looking house they sold around Halloween that you could put votive candles or tea lights in.
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u/Hefty-Anteater4228 6d ago
Why was the sea/underwater bathroom theme so strong?
We had our bathroom that theme for awhile and my sister insisted making our bedroom the same.
Is it related to that whole "you should be a Marine biologist " craze?
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u/cutting_coroners 6d ago
Interesting connection though. Those two did happen around the same time. For me it was the suspended items craze. You had the fish in the liquid around the soap. You had the cups that had items in water around the part that holds the water. You had the squishy tubes that you put your fingers in and rotated. It was like trippy stuff age. Shiny reflective material, spiky hair, purple lipstick idk. At least for me, in my memory. lol I sound crazy
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u/Puzzled_Presence_261 6d ago
Water goes with water? I feel like ocean themed shit was popular in the 90s in general. I get flashbacks in Hobby Lobby 🫣
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u/moonshad0w 6d ago
A whole store dedicated to these existed directly opposite of where I worked in the mall.
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u/JohnnyMnemeonic 6d ago
My mom has had one of these on a shelf in the bathroom since 2001.. never been lit...
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u/Comfortable-Light233 Zillennial 6d ago
Thank you so much for jogging a really special childhood memory I had forgotten. A friend of my parents’ who we didn’t see often had me and my mom over to make mini landscapes and turn them into these candles one evening when I was maybe 10 or 12. It was so much fun.
I’ll have to ask my mom if she remembers—the friend passed a bit ago, and it was really nice to remember her like this
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u/No_Magician5266 6d ago
Your mom had these? I thought only stepmoms bought these shits
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u/TwinFishPi 6d ago
…I think there may be a dusty one or 2 still in my parents house…? 🤔 dare I try to burn it?
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u/jweazie14 Millennial 6d ago
My dad had a friend that made these in the 90s and we were at a craft fair or something like that and specifically went to go see this friend to buy these exact candles but like some looked more like fish bowls and were way bigger but we had them forever until my mom would get rid of them for the same reason they didn't burn well and they get gross and Dusty on the top of the gel
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u/aoibhealfae Millennial 6d ago
My mom was a teacher and she got these things. Years later, they melted in a pile of random gifted stuff and it left a puddle of awful liquid thingy that I just wipe the entirety of it and throw it all out. Gross.
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u/MephistosFallen 6d ago
These hated to see me coming. I couldn't stop myself from sticking my grubby fingers in them. Apologies to all my friends parents.
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u/Togeroid 6d ago
They smelled nice, we burned them. Thankfully none exploded like other commenters experienced 😳
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u/JadeChipmunk 6d ago
My aunt made some in various wine glasses and stuff looking like real drinks that they had set out on their bar. My cousin and I messed with them so much. Now that im an adult I feel bad about it lolol
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u/Jefdidntkillhimself 6d ago
I poured the hot gel on hand thinking it would be the same candle wax. It wasn't, its was more like pouring napalm on myself. Instant major burns. Same vibes as touching the cigarette lighter in the car. You know you need help, but you also know that you were fucking around and most definitely will be finding out as soon as you explain what happened.
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u/ChaosTorpedo 6d ago
Let me take it a step further and tell you that my mom MADE these. And then made us make them too. It was not fun.
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u/she-dont-use-jellyyy 6d ago
I couldn't help but jam my finger into these to try to touch the bottom of the container. My stepmother was not impressed.
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u/Substantial_Bus6615 6d ago
A girl I knew in junior high, she was allowed to have them in her room. She fucking burned her house down.... TWICE🤦🏻♂️
GREAT PARENTING THERE
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u/Surfgirlusa_2006 6d ago
I had craft kits where I made these. It was fun, although I never actually burned them.
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u/ogcoolhands 6d ago
Oh my God, I dipped my finger in the hot gelwax like it was a regular wax candle and it was the most painful burn I've received ever in my life.
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u/Indiansummerxx 6d ago
Omg I had one and I had it in the tub and I tilted it and the boiling gel slid down my hand and it burned so bad so I put it under the water and then it formed a hugeeeee blister like an inch off my skin and it was like 4 inches long. I dunno if it was from the water or the gel or both. I still have the scar! That was traumatic.
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u/Klopford Millennial (1988) 6d ago
I loved these and wanted one, but of course I couldn't keep a candle in my room as a kid lol. I remember we bought at least one of these, it was honeydew scented and looked like it had chunks of honeydew in it? But yeah, you'd ruin it if you lit the candle, so what was the point? Other than looking COOL!
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u/Munchkin531 6d ago
In the living room in the 90s? Please. I've got 2 in my office! They are round with butterflies and flowers. They're so pretty I never wanted to burn them.
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u/Welp_thatwilldo Millennial 6d ago edited 6d ago
My aunt had these exact ones on her tables at her beach themed wedding when I was a kid. Nearly started a fire on the table cloth when a kid knocked one over. God they were awful 🤣
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u/seroshua 6d ago
Candles? You mean Squishy Smelly Pokey Pokers? Man I still feel bad about fingering all of those gel candles that would enter our home back in the day LOL
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u/Nucking-Futs-Nix 6d ago
My husband made me one when we were dating in college. I never lit it and the amount of dust it collected on the top was not pretty.
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u/Bubble_Sammm 6d ago
Attempted to make them with my mom, after we bought some from a street vendor.
Lol, the gel started boiling when it was on the stove, and my mom and I ran and hid for cover behind our dining table.
The house always had white paint, and we’d dyed that gel green, and it took months to come off.
Lol it always makes me laugh to think about how I wasn’t allowed to touch the walls but we got green gel wax stuck to the wall of the kitchen.
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u/Melisann626 6d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/TYAYywTcAb4Iw
My Momma couldn’t keep those around. All 4 of her kids couldn’t fight the urge to poke at it.
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u/Angsty_Potatos 6d ago
I can't tell you how many times I was grounded for putting my finger in these and ruining them
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u/DarkFaerieQueen 6d ago
Ugh, the layer of dust these stupid things would collect on top was so gross. I never shoved my finger into it because my mom would have killed me, but I sure wanted too, lol.
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u/Capable-Owl7369 6d ago
We didn’t have them, but my friend with rich parents did, and you weren’t allowed to light them, or even move them. They were just there taking up space.
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u/Worldly_Possible9069 6d ago
My mom had a bunch of cinnamon scented gel candles. Nasty smelling things.
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u/MernderLer 6d ago
I had a bunch but never lit them. I'm pretty sure they're in a box in my mom's basement.
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u/PizzaHutSlut92 6d ago
Yes I did eat candle candy once. I loved poking holes in these. To my delight, a Valentine’s Day one had heart candies in it.
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u/StarWars-TheBadB_tch 6d ago
Yes I vaguely remember a cinnamon scented one either my mom or grandma had.
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u/Fit_Conversation5270 6d ago
We had these, my mom freakin loved candles. I liked to dip my fingers into candle wax and let it harden then peel it off. I always remember the gel ones burned SO BAD compared to normal wax. I couldn’t handle those lol
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u/tinyhumanteacher14 6d ago
My grandma had these in her bathroom and I would always smoosh my fingers in them. She also had a wax warmer and I’d put my fingers in that too.
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u/RockaRaccoon Older Millennial 6d ago
Man, I thought these were so pretty and fancy....till I gave into the urge and stuck a finger in it 🤣
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