Imagine the worst smell you can think of. Now imagine the scent of "butt crack…with a hint of dead animal." That's how Allen Wittman, 45, describes his creation, Liquid ASS—a smelly spray initially intended to be used in pranks. "We package Liquid ASS in a bottle small enough to hide in the palm of your hand. The bottle dispenses our nasty elixir in a thin, invisible, silent stream, thus equipping the prankster with stealth and speed," reads a product description, per the 99% Invisible podcast. Available for $10 on Amazon, it’s now used by the US military to harden medics to the smell of a torn intestine leaking waste. Yes, it's that bad. Metro describes the scent as "the most appalling smell known to humanity," adding the product lets you "recreate the smell of festival toilets, a soiled [diaper], or a burst sewer in the comfort of your own home."
Who goes about creating such a spray? A teenager, obviously. Wittman was playing around with a chemistry kit in high school when he invented a "kind of sewer smell" and used it to prank his English teacher, a visiting basketball team, and even his future wife, per the product website. For the next 10 years, his invention went mostly unused, per Oddity Central. Then, when they were fired from a truck manufacturing company, Whitman and his co-worker Andrew Masters spritzed the office with "an eighth of an ounce" of the stuff, reports NextShark. Engineers fixed the water main, replaced the microwave, removed the carpet, and blocked off the bathrooms without discovering the source of the smell. After that, the pair spent $36,000 to offer Liquid ASS to consumers. It's now flying off the shelves along with Whitman and Master's other products: BARFume, Tex-Ass, and Fake Dog Poop. (This town smelled like cat pee.)