Want to smell the donuts? Beauty Brands Think You Do

But in 2023, we have moved from an aesthetic inspired by food to a real desire to look like food, with trends like cinnamon cookie butter hair, blueberry milk nails, and glazed donut skin. Today, everything is allowed: Velveeta Hair Dye, pickle flavored lubricantAnd Hellman’s mayonnaise flavor– the rule seems to be more unbalanced, the better.

For millennials and zillennials, these products are a sensory trip down memory lane, bringing back to life the candy-scented mall staples of our youth. For Gen Z, it’s a clash of highs and lows: a clean beauty brand like Native rubbing shoulders with a fast food institution like Dunkin’.

So happy together

TikTok, with its algorithmic obsession with the absurd, thrives on these edible beauty launches. The marketing strategy borrows liberally from streetwear’s scarcity model, implementing limited-edition designs designed to create urgency and exclusivity. But unfortunately, these products are not designed to last. These are hot spots for FOMO-prone shoppers and sentimentalists looking to romanticize their routines. For Gen Z, the weirder the concept, the faster it seems to circulate.

Food and beverage (F&B) licensing is a lucrative avenue for these partnerships. According to Licensing International’s 2023 Global Licensing Industry StudyF&B is up 5.3 percent and the cosmetics industry is putting its manicured fingers in the pie. Everyone benefits from these symbiotic relationships, as food franchises use shared #BeautyTok to disseminate their brand image to new markets.

The result is a syrupy cocktail of millennial nostalgia and Gen Z irony that generates free publicity via memes, TikTok reactions, and social media discourse.

So what’s next? A Crunchwrap-scented cologne? Warm toothpaste that tastes like Cheetos? Maybe a McRib collagen serum? As brands push the boundaries of absurdity, the question is not whether they will go too far, but when we will reach our breaking point. Novelty has a shelf life.

Without significant innovation, the joke risks wearing out, just like some of these the franchises themselves. In the meantime, however, there is a caveat: here, the throughline is the consumer, not the product. We don’t want to wake up tomorrow to the smell of Cheetos and pickles and realize the joke is our fault.