KFC is launching an unexpected new product: fried-chicken scented sunscreen.

    Starting Monday, the chicken chain is giving away 3,000 free bottles of Col. Sanders’ Extra Crispy Sunscreen.

    “Suntan lotion always smells like lotion,” KFC CMO Kevin Hochman said. “So we thought — why not make it smell like fried chicken?” The sunscreen follows the June launch of an ad campaign starring George Hamilton as the “Extra Crispy Colonel,” promoting the chain’s Extra Crispy Chicken.

    In May, KFC debuted edible nail polish in Hong Kong, as a play on the chain’s “finger lickin’ good” slogan. The promotion quickly went viral, providing an example of the marketing power that the limited run of a weird product mashup can have in the connected world of social media.

    But the real question is, how does the sunscreen actually smell?

    It has a very distinctive smell, quite different from the scent of a typical sunscreen.

    Sniff-testers described the sunscreen as smelling like everything from maple syrup, to savory spices, to Milk Bar’s cereal milk. One person said it smelled just as intended — like fried chicken’s crispy outer coating. Others found themselves at a loss for words, reduced to babbling after getting a whiff of it.

    This may not be the end of KFC’s venture into creating mashups between fried chicken and everyday products. While Hochman says the chicken chain is probably not going to release an entire line of male grooming products, he hints the chicken chain may be releasing similar products in the future.

    “Why wouldn’t you want to smell like fried chicken?” he asks.

    (SD-Agencies)