Shine Tries It: Yankee Candles New Man Candles

Yankee Candle's new Man Candle line.Welcome to "Shine Tries It," a new feature where we try things so you don't have to. Every Friday our editors will road-test unusual products and unbelievable promises to find out what lives up to the hype and what doesn't. Warning: don't try any of this at home until we do.

I love candles as much as the next girl (maybe more), but my guy was getting tired of the constant parade of florals and pastels. I had a couple of subtle sandlewood-scented pillars that we had used up, so when I saw that Yankee Candles was coming out with a set of candles made especially for guys -- Man Candles -- the time seemed right to restock.

I sent my husband out to buy some -- it seemed fitting -- and he came home with three gigantic jars: "First Down", "Riding Mower", and "2 x 4". (The fourth in the series, a silver-gray "masculine" blend of musk and spices called "Man Town," was out of stock at our local store.)

We set them up on the counter, picked one, and opened it.

"This just smells like spruce," my husband says, sniffing the glass jar filled with green wax. It's labeled "Riding Mower," but it while it's slightly reminiscent of the outdoors, it doesn't smell like a freshly cut lawn. It does smell fresh and clean, though, so it's a keeper.

The one that's billed as smelling like "freshly planed wood and sawdust" -- "2 x 4" -- instead smells faintly like sugar cookies, perhaps with a little more vanilla, evoking not "a sense of confidence and quality," as Yankee Candle describes, but more of a sense of snack time. And "First Down"? No masculine scent of leather here. "It's like that bayberry candle," my husband complains. Is it a little like sandal wood? I ask, hoping to salvage the situation. "Maybe," he hedges. Which means, "Maybe not."

And he's right. The ingredient list for "First Down" includes orange, Vetiver, leather, and… patchouli? When I tell him this, he is reminded of John Cusack in "High Fidelity": "Get your patchouli stink outta my store!" Vetiver, on the other hand, is a popular scent in many men's fragrances, he tells me, totally serious. Which means this candle, too, can stay.

Each 22-ounce jar ($27.99) burns for 110 to 150 hours, so it's a good thing that they do smell nice, even if they don't evoke manly thoughts of lawn mowing, football playing, wood sawing, and man caving. My husband is holding out hope for a bacon-scented Yankee Candle, though. Hey, a man can dream, right?

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