Now, I don't know much about making gum

I found an email I sent to Wrigleys in 2002 when they did random market survey mail drop. I got home from school one day and there was two new brands of gum to try. There was the new 'Sweet' extra as well as the "super strong x-cite mint gum". Obviously neither of these products are available today.

However they offered $50 for the best suggestions and comments about their products. My logic was if I wrote a freaking essay about their gum I would surely win the money just by gauge of effort. I was very poor back then and this seemed as good a way as any to fund my chronic Yowie habit of the time.

Quote:

Firstly, cheers for the free sample, I also received a packet of chips that day so It was quite a haul. I trialled most of your two products and also got my family and mates to try some, we all had similar opions.
The X-Cite gums were indeed powerfully minty, although just one or two did not do much compared to a complete handfull. I think that writing the exact number of mints is a good idea however although i did not count out how many mints i received exactly no doubt there will be people out there that will count out the exact number of mints in their packet so hopefully your packaging machines will do a consistent job. The actual packaging looks good and is certainly different and looks high techish with the colour scheme helping this. However, my only complaint about the box is that the whole is just a tad too small and the mints often have a problem getting out. The other problem was that when i took the box out of my pocket, it slid open on occasions. The actual mints themselves did not lack any flavour or mintyness but the amount of mint to gum didn't seem right. There was too much mint coating the gum so that by the time you chewed your gum was filled with crunchy pieces of mints. This problem is fixed by eating more than one at a time because when you chew them in your mouth the gum from each mint joins together. There was one way I found, when eating the mints, to get an extremely powerful jolt of hot, mintyness is to press the recently chewed mint against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Even with just one mint it's quite difficult to hold it there without feeling the heat of the mint. I believe this could be quite useful in marketing for you as it made eating the mints quite enjoyable.
The new 'sweet' extra, however was a dissapoint for me. Granted, it was 'sweet', and not overly so which meant that the taste was not lacking, if not a little plain. Unfortunately the flavour ran out so quickly, unlike your spearmint and other flavoured gums, and after only a few minutes of chewing it was flavourless and not at all sweet anymore. Every piece I tried ran out of flavour quickly and two of my friends also tried it and found it to run out of flavour quickly also. Now, I don't know much about making gum, but the long lasting flavour of extra is what makes me choose it, so when something doesn't taste as good as your other flavours and doesn't last as long either, I would be inclined not to purchase it. Your packaging of the gum is in the same taste as your normal packaging and the white does help acheive the look of sweetness. One thing I did think while I chewed the sweet gum is that it tasted similar to milk bottle lollies that you can buy. I think that if you could capture a taste similar to milk bottles and made it so that it would last like your other flavours, then that could be a really big seller (I would certainly buy a lot of it). Overall I thought that both products were average although innovative, but neither were great. The mints were close though, I think that perhaps making them a little bigger (adding more gum) could make a difference. I hope this information has helped you.

I use mints to freshen my breath without being left with used gum to get rid off. They are good for filling your mouth with minty freshness by just chewing them into powder quickly. You can also acheive a massive mint burst by eating many mints at once and you can play mouth games (the best way to describe it). By doing things like eating as many mints in one go as possible or eating mints then drinking orange juice straight away. Fun Fun. Perhaps you could make a page on your website called "Fun things to do with mints" (or perhaps something more professional) if you end up producing more mint products.

I think that if you build on your idea behind X-Cite and introduce an extremely minty gum with the power of a couple of X-Cites. Market them similar to War-Heads, red packaging. If you put instructions similar to what I wrote in Question 1 about pushing them against the roof of your mouth and really hype up the extreme 'hotness' of the product it may sell well, especially with a younger market.

Well... I wasn't going to post anything else today... Except maybe my story about how I curiously craved chocolate custard this afternoon; left work and bought 600ml of it from Woolworths; got back to work and drank it all at around 4pm. Then 2 hours later I broke my bench press record.

Any comments in the above about sharing gum with my friends or family is a blatant lie because I ate every single piece of those gums no matter how shitty they tasted.

Comments

tristan

D'ya get the fifty?

March 7 2007 - Like
Brad

No, but I did get a laxative effect.

March 7 2007 - Like
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