Happy Hari – King of Amber
This 5mm thick incense stick was part of the Happy Hari sample set from Padma Store, which I bought in 2022. The set contains one stick of each scent (13 in total) and was €14.95. (The price has now risen by €1.)
A 10g pack of King of Amber currently costs €4.25. The burning time per stick is given as 80 minutes.
King of Amber is very similar to King of Myrrh, but, unlike them, it’s a Soft Masala.
King of Amber are surprisingly low in smoke and almost reserved for their diameter, but the latter could also be due to their age. They burn extremely slowly. The aroma is pleasant; ambery, balsamic-sweet, rather dark and deep. It has a subtle spiciness and a very distinct perfume note; floral but unspecific. This note reminds me a little of orthodox incense in general. There is also a slightly resinous note, which is a little better notable in the aftersmell.
I feel like I should like these incense sticks more – after all, they’re a very popular variety from the legendary Happy Hari brand – but every single time I light King of Amber, I write down some variation of “good, but kind of boring.” in my notes.
Since its olfactory character is similar to King of Myrrh, which I compared to HEM‘s Masala Myrrh, I wonder how King of Amber would compare to Masala Amber. It feels a bit like a sacrilege to compare Happy Hari – who have achieved the status of THE Indian quality incense sticks – with HEM; the brand that is virtually synonymous with mass-produced cheap incense sticks. But since HEM‘s Masalas have made me curious anyway, and I still have enough of King of Amber left to compare, I’ll probably commit this crime again, eventually.
I don’t know if it’s perhaps the perfumey note of King of Amber that bothers me because I actually don’t find it unpleasant. It seems, King of Amber is simply an example of “just not quite my cup of tea”.
Ah, yes. I was thinking you had some left, but of course, like me, you got the one stick sample from Ashok.
Yep, comparisons for me are only genuine if you actually have both sticks. There is only so far one can go with memories and notes. If you pick up a scent or a weakness, you haven’t got the other stick to check out to see if it is there as well. Notes are always going to be somewhat selective and limited. And memory is unreliable, and more so the further away from the event. In my memory, when I played rugby for my school I was awesome. But in truth I only scored one try!
Yes, I agree in general with your review. It is surprisingly average. And somewhat vague. Pleasant enough, but remarkably unremarkable. And it’s the same stick as Temple of Incense’s Amber.
There are subtle differences between the Padma King (and ToI Amber) and the original Paul Eagle King of Amber. Paul’s stick is longer, thinner and 1g lighter. The scent is similar – it has the same profile, but Paul’s original is richer, brighter, deeper, with more weight on the musk and sharper and more delightful on the fruity/floral notes. But it is highly likely that all three are made by the same incense house, with a change in machinery and recipe between the original and what Padma and ToI have.
I’ll keep one of my original sticks for you, so you can compare for yourself. I have never regarded the original as a particularly great stick – it’s always struck me as a fairly decent mainstream amber style incense. And that is the case with much of the “legendary” Happy Hari. The quality across the range was highly variable – what was consistent was Paul’s somewhat pushy marketing and enthusiasm.
Yes, it seems to be (I never had a stick to confirm myself). I read your recent post on it and there’s also an old ORS entry which connects TOI and Absolute Bliss varieties, which were sort of Happy Hari’s successor, if I understand right.
I’m not surprised, as it’s the same with King of Myrrh and Myrrh.
That’s nice but TBH, it wouldn’t be much of a comparison, as I have no memory of the smell of these Amber sticks. There are, as you say “remarkably unremarkable”.
That comparison list is interesting. I think I’ve seen it before.
There’s a lot there that they feel are the same. I know Cory was concerned about the list he got from Paul. He kept wanting me to check, and I wasn’t that interested. I think my attention was elsewhere at the time. He was also worried about other Happy Hari lines that started to turn up.
I’ve been told that Paul passed on his sources to the ToI girls, and they seem to hint at that on their website. I’m not sure that’s true, but it is possible. Especially if at that point he had already determined to kill himself.
But it’s also possible that everyone is simply dipping into the same HMS well, and drawing up the same incense, but giving it different names.
I guess no one with a bit of insight into Indian incense would have needed Paul Eagle to tell them HMS as source. There are so many brends selling them with no connection to Happy Hari at all.
I think only a fraction of the TOI assortment are HMS. (IDK how many HMS sticks HH had.) There’s Purple Rain, a Patchouli one (“Patchouli Woods”, posibly) and maybe a few more.
I think Paul Eagle’s soures were interesting for everything but the open secret that is HMS. But maybe it was different at that time.