Media | Articles
Little Trees Are Way Older Than You Think
“I got the trees on my mirror so my car won’t smell,” rapped Michael “Mike D” Diamond on the 1980s Beastie Boys cut “Slow Ride.” I don’t know why this line stuck out to me as a teenager, but as the 808 kick drums rattled the speakers in my 1994 Mazda Miata, I decided I needed to shell out a couple of bucks for a three pack of Black Ice Little Trees to hang on my rearview. If it was cool enough for the Beastie Boys, it was cool enough for me.
Mike D got the basic concept but might not have been aware of the science behind the ubiquitous Little Tree. It’s born from the work of Julius Sämann, a German–Jewish chemist who fled the Nazis and had studied the aromatic oils in Canada’s pine forests. In 1952, some 30 years a milkman in Watertown, New York, complained to Sämann about the spilt-milk smell in his truck. Two years later, Sämann filed a patent for blotter paper infused with “odor-destroying, air-perfuming substances.” In the patent drawing, the air freshener took the shape of a buxom pin-up, but he ultimately landed on the familiar tree design. With the post-war boom in car ownership and Americans’ love of puffing Pall Malls (more than half of the U.S. adult population smoked in the mid-1950s), Sämann’s pines took off. The company is still family-owned today, and has expanded upon the original Royal Pine sent with 25 more fragrances, like Black Ice, New Car Scent, and Vanillaroma.
While that sounds like a lot smells to permeate your automobile, it’s only a fraction of the fragrances that have been available over the years, as Little Trees is constantly updating its lineup. According to the company’s website, “To continue releasing new and exciting fragrances year after year, we unfortunately have to say goodbye to some that may not be as popular as they once were.” For lovers of less popular trees, like Heat, Dew Kiss, and Bouquet, this statement is less than encouraging. Kevin Fielding, a reader from Utah, writes that the discontinuation of Bouquet is “one of the greatest travesties ever cast upon car culture.” When he heard the bad news after contacting Little Trees, he bought one of the final remaining boxes of Bouquet Little Trees available on the internet.
It’s a good thing Fielding stocked up when he did. Automobilia collectors get into bidding wars over rare and discontinued Little Trees, and the going rate today for a single Bouquet freshener on eBay is about $40. Like with many aspects of the automotive landscape these days, fans of the diminutive pines show off their collections on online spaces like Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube. You might question the point of stashing vintage air fresheners, as it’d be reasonable to assume that fragrance would dissipate over time. But someone in the subreddit r/LittleTrees claims that new-old-stock fresheners from the 1980s still retain some smell when released from their cellophane wrappers.
Also unmentioned in that Beastie Boys song: the cellophane wrapper the Little Trees come in is not supposed to be immediately tossed in the garbage. According to the patent, the air freshener is supposed to be removed incrementally from the cellophane because “If the extent of withdrawal of the porous device from the pouch were left entirely to the judgment of the user, he might waste much of the volatile substance by excessive withdrawal of the member from the pouch, and the resulting strong odor might be displeasing to him.” No wonder my Miata reeked of Black Ice.
***
Marketplace
Buy and sell classics with confidence
This story first appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more.
I remember Little Trees in my dad’s ’55 Chevy 3100 when I was a kid. I had no idea that people actually collected (and hoarded) them, but I’ve heard of stranger things so no surprise, I guess.
B-T-W: Writing “he might waste much of the volatile substance by excessive withdrawal of the member” ought to be prohibited on a family website…
My mind did not go there when I first read that, but…
Uhhh, yeah… Mymind went there immediately. 🙁
Yup!
Good eye DUB6! But I maintain it clears the censor since it isn’t explicit and can be read both ways. Of course, I prefer reading it your way.
I’d be very surprised if that copywriter didn’t phrase that on purpose. Typically you only find less than plain English on products from overseas, particularly Asian countries.
Ahhh, ok. Took me a second, but hey! All good here.
Back in 1974 my brother took over as a manager of an auto parts store that also had been a parts warehouse that dated back to the 1930’s. They never ever threw anything out and the second floor of what had originally been a Nash dealership was full of new \old stock items including a full case of the original “Little Trees”. Unfortunately they had all long since dried up leaving a lingering smell of pine only.
Vanilla Roma is still my favorite
I wonder if people actually *pay* $40 for these “collectibles” or if that’s just the price people on eBay are asking and hoping for.
I always felt like those car fresheners were owners trying to cover up a foul smell, so I rarely use them. Part of the problem could have been people unleashing the full brunt of the freshener instead of following the directions.
Your first sentence speaks volumes to almost any “collectible” on eBay. Now I am certainly not putting down eBay as a platform to buy and sell collectibles of this nature, but the asking prices are usually pipe dreams and actual selling prices are way lower.
In school we pranked a girl who had just bought a new Subaru. We must have planted 20 trees in that car-all different scents. I think she found about 16 of them. For some reason, she wasn’t amused.
🤣😂🤣
I have been labeled as a tree hugger as the vent pull handle in my convert holds over a 100 trees from 20 years
The buxom beauty on the display card always caught my attention as a wee lad. She seemed to be everywhere!
Just here to leave some appreciation for the Beastie Boys connection
I always thought that the trees were the last step before the junkyard. That’s the only place that I have seen them…
Very cool story and background! It’s one of those stories I would have never thought of where or how it was created. Whenever I see one of these, it makes me think of Chris Farley giving himself a dose of Royal Pine tree scent before his big meeting with Dan Akroyd in Tommy Boy, haha.
I’ve always heated the smell of those trees back when i was a teen and post teen. Everybody had those things and always removed the wrapper entirely so their cars had a very, very strong, obnoxious smell. I personally never bought them for my cars. I’ve always felt that the cars should always be clean. If moisture was a problem, then that needed to be resolved.
After working for a decade refinishing, my body succumbed to the effects of toxic solvents and I developed some serious health issues. At the time, a doctor told me that I “would never get cancer” as my NOSE wouldn’t let me. In other words, my new strong sense of smell causes me to find harmful substances intolerable. In addition to the off-gassing of synthetics in most car interiors, perfumes, deodorants, and “air-fresheners” make most cars an intolerable space for me. I think of myself as a canary in modern societies’ coal mine, and so I would caution against these “fresheners” in such a confined space.
My mother’s Dodge 600ES sprang a leak in the heater core. It was replaced under warranty, and they cleaned the carpet, however the antifreeze smell lingered. On the way home from picking up the car, she bought a pine scented Little Tree. She didn’t know about pulling it only part way out of the cellophane. A few miles later, it was overwhelming and it was too hot outside to drive with the windows down. Eventually she had to stop at a red light. She removed it from the mirror, opened the door and laid it in the street. She said she hated to litter, but it was making her sick. She said the antifreeze smelled better. LOL
An overdose of little trees formed the “Chemical Ali” penalty at The 24 Hours of Lemons for a while. The miscreant had to race with two dozen unwrapped trees hung from the roll cage.
Back in the early seventies my friends and I exclusively used a red tree which I believe was “spice”? (A little foggy on that). But I can clearly remember the scent if not the name. I would pay dearly to smell one of those again, nothing can take you back like a certain smell!
So true about a scent bringing back memories. My Aunt Pearl always had air fresheners in her cars. It was a little block of what looked like particle board about an inch thick and a couple of inches square, and saturated with what I think was a raspberry scent. If I could find them today, I would buy them for a couple of my cars. Good memories.
I agree with some of the comments that you don’t need them if you keep your car clean, but sometimes a pleasant scent is just nice. Some of my cars still have the nice leather smell. I love that and wouldn’t use an air freshener in those.
They are cute, but I see more clip on vent things now than the trees.
Mmmmm, if you keep your car interior clean, you won’t have any bad smells that need masking – Simple!
Sometimes you can’t control it-I had detailed the family mini-van just before a trip, then took it to the dealer for a code that suddenly popped up. I got the van back reeking of BO. No time to re-detail. 2500 miles of BO or Little Tree. Little Tree won. Shampooed the seats at my destination and returned without either scent.
NOT that simple. For example, if you have a mouse problem in your collectible car that you do not catch soon enough, it is VERY hard to get the mouse-poop smell out (especially if the vehicle has cloth seats). My wife is very good at car interior cleaning, and even she could not get it all out. So, a Little Tree was used, until the mouse smell eventually dissipated.