In 2015, Melcher Media was approached by Vapor Communications—creators of the oPhone, a device that emits different scents via small chips placed inside—to collaborate on the world’s first oBook, an e-book that would incorporate different smells at certain points in the story. We agreed that a classic children’s fairy tail would be fun to translate into the realm of scent, and so we set about adapting the classic children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We teamed up with a talented children’s illustrator, Julissa Mora, to bring the story to life, and then we created and programmed a special “scent button” and added it to the pages where the scents would appear. Tapping on the button causes the oPhone to emit the scents via small chips inside, which include everything from flowers and cedar in the forest where Goldilocks begins her journey, to berries and honey in the bears’ porridge, to coffee and hot chocolate in the cups by their chairs. We also animated the illustrations to bring them even further to life.

The Goldilocks oBook made its premiere at Sensory Stories, an exhibition at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image curated by Future of StoryTelling and featuring new forms of sensory storytelling such as virtual-reality experiences, interactive films, participatory installations, and new touch-responsive interfaces.