Massachusetts Lottery Introduces Scratch N’ Sniff Scratch-Offs

I’m pretty sure I managed to swindle Hayley Kotlowicz back in fourth grade when I dished her a puffy rainbow sticker for the treasure: a pepperoni pizza scratch n’ sniff sticker.

I wanted that pepperoni scratch n’ sniff in a bad way. Everyone was collecting stickers back at Rockaway Meadow Elementary in 1980, and the scratch n’ sniffs were all the rage. Strawberry was a hot ticket. But I wanted that pepperoni. Looking back, I probably wanted it because it was forbidden: I grew up in a kosher household, so pepperoni was not exactly on the menu.

But yes, I wanted it, I traded for it, and now … now I became concerned that if I brought it into my kosher home I would be banned from a future in heaven and would, quite possibly, bring misfortune upon my family.

Basically, in my congenitally anxietal mind, this pepperoni sticker might actually kill my father.

So I stuck it inside my glasses case (yes, I was already wearing glasses at this age). The glasses stayed at school, in my desk, and so every time Mrs. Hook would write something on the chalkboard, I’d go into my desk, grab my soon-to-be-forever-associated Jeffrey Dahmer and David Koresh glasses,  and — every time — sneak a surreptitious sniff of the wafting pepperoni pizza sticker. 

It was a long time before I had a girlfriend.

But to this day, some 45 years later, I can still recall the smell. It’s burned into my brain.

Which is why I feel uniquely qualified to discuss the latest innovation from the Massachusetts Lottery: scratch tickets that smell like peppermint.

Sniff n’ win?

According to NBC Boston via the State House News Service, the Massachusetts Lottery rolled out $5 and $10 Candy Cane Cash Blowout tickets on Oct. 6 as its first scented holiday tickets.

“And I have to report that our players are indeed loving them,” lottery marketing specialist Kate Sutton told the Lottery Commission.

Well, of course they are. I’m sitting here waxing poetic about a pizza sticker I smelled during the Carter administration. These things have staying power.

State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg was apparently sold, too.

“I could almost smell the peppermint from here,” she said after a virtual presentation of the scratchers.

There is an actual business story underneath all this peppermint. Massachusetts scratch ticket sales are down 6% this fiscal year, including a 7.3% decline in September, according to the report. And while scratch tickets accounted for roughly 70% of lottery sales as recently as fiscal year 2021, they’re down to 52% so far this year.

Some of that shift comes as the state’s new online lottery business takes off. Its eInstant games — essentially digital scratch tickets — account for 18.5% of sales so far this fiscal year.

More sniffing please

Now, I have no idea whether adding a whiff of candy cane will get anyone to buy a ticket they otherwise wouldn’t have bought, but I like it. I just love the idea of high-level lottery officials sitting around a giant conference table hashing out just how much peppermint is just enough peppermint. 

My only real complaint is the choice of scent. Peppermint for Christmas, sure, I get it, it probably tested well.

But this one-man product tester has to think there’s a market for a pepperoni pizza scratch ticket. Adults of a certain age who spent their childhoods negotiating sticker trades with Ms. Kotlowicz might appreciate a little consideration here.

I’d certainly be tempted.

And this time, I’m a grown man. Married. Three kids. A mortgage nearly paid off. I can bring a pepperoni-scented sticker into my own house without hiding it in my glasses case.

Just don’t tell my parents.