Nerds Gumballs

Flavor: I only chewed the red one and the purple one, because I don't think my teeth could handle 5 gumballs in rapid succession. Everyone knows what a gumball tastes like. Super super sugary with very little actual "flavor." The red one has a slight cherry taste, while the purple one is somewhat grapey. The nerds do very little to enhance the flavor...

Texture: However, the nerds add a cute little crunch to the first few chews. They dissolve quickly, and the remaining gum is really hard and tough, like any gumball. You can get a decent bubble, but when it pops it sticks to your lips, skin, everything. Meh.

Presentation: 5 gumballs in a plastic pouch, nothing too crazy in the way of graphics, a couple cute Nerd-guys hanging out, but otherwise, it's pretty plain.

Overall: Pretty much the only redeeming quality about this gum is the first couple of chews, but once the nerds dissolve, it's just a gumball.

Rating: oo (two gumballs)

Think Gum

This review is sponsored by our friends at Think Gum!

Flavor: You can definitely tell that this is an herbal-infused gum. While not as offensive to the sense as Eclipse Breeze's cardamom flavor, the herbs in this gum at the forefront. It's not completely foul, but I wouldn't call it a delicious chew. Certainly not something I'd reach for to freshen the breath, but I don't think you're supposed to.

Texture: It's a pellet gum, but doesn't really have any candy shell crunch to speak of. The chew itself is firm enough, not too annoyingly soft.

Presentation: Nothing too special here. A cute little light buld graphic and brand logo on a stark white background. Standard punch-through-the-foul pellet gum presentation.

Overall: Since this is supposed to be a "Brain-Boosting" gum, I decided to do a little experiment. The back of the pack states, "Think Gum contains Gingko Biloba, Bacopa, Guarana, Vinpocetine, Rosemary & Peppermint. Together these brain-boosting herbal ingredients are proven to enhance concentration & improve memory." It goes on, "For best results, chew while learning or studying & again to recall information." My personal annoyance at the overuse of ampersands aside (personal pet peeve, sorry Think), I thought that it would be interesting to use the product as directed. I wrote down the 6 above brain-boosting ingredients, and studied them for a few minutes while chewing the gum. I spit out the gum and threw out the paper, and went about my morning. Three hours later, I popped 2 more pieces of the gum and attempted to recall the ingredients. Out of the 6, I recalled 4 correctly, misspelled 1 (Bacoba, as opposed Bacopa.) and I missed 1 entirely (Vinpocetine.) So, I dunno. Maybe I should have studied longer or perhaps chewed for a longer period before studying/recalling, but I expected a better results. I guess it's a cute novelty product, and if I were still in college, I'd be all over this. Worth a try when cramming for finals!

Rating: ooo (three gumballs)

Big League Chew Outta' Here Original

Flavor: This is what Bubble Gum is all about. No frills, no burst of sour, no crunchies. Just pure, all-out sugary bubble gum goodness.

Texture: If nothing else, being a gum blogger has taught me that I have absolutely no idea how to chew Big League Chew. It's never been a gum to me, it's always been a game. The only time I've ever chewed Big League Chew in my life is when my sister or best friend and I have picked up a couple packs and had a contest to see how much we could fit in our mouths without gagging. (We always ended up gagging. It was disgusting.) As a result, it's really difficult for me to objectively blog about the texture - I've never had any idea how much of it I'm supposed to eat. I've had a few wads of it in preparation for this review, and no matter how small of an amount of shreds I chew, it always seems to be too much. From what I think I can gather, this gum starts off really soft. Like really soft, to the point where I feel like it's going to liquify. After a good 45-60 seconds, it starts to firm up and become a more enjoyable chewing experience. Bubbles with Big League Chew are fantastic. I've always maintained that BLC was the best gum for bubble blowing, and although recent gums like Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape Triple Treat give BLC a run for their money in the bubble-blowing category, BLC still remains tops in my book for bubbles.

Presentation: What can be said about Big League Chew's packaging? It's flawless. Now that I'm sitting here analyzing it, I don't understand how Big League Chew is still being manufactured, what with all the overprotective parents out there. BLC is shredded to look like chewing tobacco, and packed in a foil pouch... like chewing tobacco. It was created in the early 1980s to discourage the use of chew and provide a fun alternative. I can understand the mentality and the reasoning in the early 1980s, but in today's "Joe Camel Must Die" society I'm surprized that this has slipped through the cracks.

Overall: C'mon. It's Big League Chew. Who doesn't love Big League Chew?

Rating: ooooo (five gumballs)

Clark's Teaberry Gum

Flavor: Clark's Teaberry is an old-timey looking gum with an old-timey, mild flavor. It's a super smooth, easy-to-chew minty stick. It's a pretty generic mint flavor, though if I had to classify, I'd say it's closest to a wintergreen. The flavor fades quickly, and after you remove your wad, you're left with the standard bitter aftertaste you get with most sugar-based gums.

Texture: It starts off a little tough, but quickly softens up to a perfect softness. Unfortunately, it's a little sticky to the teeth, and it has one of the worst squeaks I've experienced since Wrigley's 5 Flare.

Presentation: Clark's Teaberry gum has been around since 1900, and it looks like the packaging has remained the same since. It's a no-frills, retro packaging that warms the heart and reminds one of easier, simpler days. The sticks themselves are wrapped in coordinating paper sleeves with the simple Clark's tree logo.


Overall: Check out this advertisement from the 60's:

That about says it all. Teaberry gum is such a cute, sweet throwback to the days of old. While I don't find my feet running away with themselves and doing a little shuffle every time I pop a stick in my mouth, I do find myself reaching for it more often than other soy-free gums I've purchased.
Overall: ooo (three gumballs)

Stride Mega Mystery

Flavor: One of Stride's two new flavors for Winter 2009/2010 is the gimmicky "Mega Mystery." Stride must really have a lot of brand confidence, as they're expecting consumers to buy this gum on brand alone, without even knowing the flavor. I've never been good at "Guess The Flavor" games the products play (Doritos is famous for this,) but Stride Mega Mystery isn't really a mystery at all. On first chew you're blasted with a fantastic fruity medley that I would describe as Tropical Punch. It's a lot less melony than Trident's tropical varieties, but very heavy on the pineapple. Blended with hints of mango and citrus, it's like a tropical drink in stick form. Delicious. Unfortunately, Stride's claim of being the longest lasting flavor falls short with this one, and it becomes bland and tasteless within 10 minutes.

Texture: Soft and smooth at first bite, never disintegrating or softening. Perfect for cracking and snapping, and even blowing pretty decent bubbles (especially if you're a two-piece chewer like I am.) This is a great chew.

Overall: A friend of GumAlert alerted us to this new flavor a couple months ago, and since then I'd been on a frantic search to find it. Imagine my joy when, in the checkout shelves in A&P the other day, a rogue pack of this was stuck in with the Stride Nonstop Mint. I snatched it right up and have loved it since, and it's pained me to save the two sticks to do this review. I'm generally pretty neutral when it comes to Stride, but this one is a home run, and I hope it sticks around.
Rating: oooo (four gumballs)

International Spotlight - Thrills Gum

Flavor: The packaging of this Canadian gum boasts "It still tastes like soap!" and yes, yes. It certainly does taste like soap. However-- it's not terrible. The flavor is hard to describe, somewhere between a Choward's Violet, a Clove, and black licorice. We were requested to review this gum some time ago, and just got our hands on some as Christmas gifts (thanks Sandy!), and to be honest I'd been dreading doing the review. I can't say that this is my new favorite or anything, but I certainly can see it being an acquired taste. Downside is that the flavor fades really quickly - really quickly.

Texture: Here's where it all goes downhill. I don't know if we got stale packs or something, but it starts off way too hard and it stays way too hard. Too hard to chew for any length of time, if even at all. It's like the gumballs in the little machines at the supermarket that you begged your mom for a quarter to buy when you were 7 years old, only to find yourself at the dentist the next day because you cracked a molar. Not a good texture at all. It's a pellet gum so there is a candy shell, but the rest of the gum is so hard it might as well all be the same makeup.

Overall: This was a fun gum to review if only for the anticipation and the novelty of it. If I were Canadian I certainly wouldn't buy and try this again, but as a Gum Girl by trade it was absolutely worth the chew. I thank our friend for requesting this gum, and Sandy for seeking this out and picking up a couple packs for us. The gum itself really probably only deserves 1 gumball, but the "It still tastes like soap!" on the packaging made me smile enough to throw an extra one in there.

Rating: oo (two gumballs)

Sugar Free Fruit Stripe

Flavor: Yikes! Stripes! Fruit Stripe Gum! In new Sugar Free Fruit Stripes, there are five flavors: Wet N' Wild Melon, Cherry, Lemon, Orange, and Peach Smash. I don't know what's so special about Melon and Peach that they deserve descriptive adjectives, but whatever. In an effort to get rid of this gum sooner, I'll review all five flavors here, despite the fact that this high of a dose of Aspartame in one sitting may give me cancer. (PHENYLKETONURICS: CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE.)

Wet N' Wild Melon: This is the Green-wrapped stick in the pack. I don't know which of the other flavors would be green... so I'm assuming it's supposed to be melon. Starts off with a tart blast and fades into a nice sweet-tart flavor. However -- I don't really taste much melon at all. Fades to nothing very quickly.

Lemon: The yellow-wrapped stick actually tastes like lemon. A really nice lemon, in fact! Lemon isn't a flavor often seen in sugarless gum, so I was pleasantly surprized by this. It tastes a lot like Country Time Lemonade, and it's actually hard to beleive that this lemon is sugarless. Also fades quickly.

Orange: Again, great orange flavor from the get-go that doesn't at all taste sugarfree. This could be a cube of Hubba Bubba. It's great. Fades fast (notice a pattern here?)

Peach Smash: The stick itself is blue and yellow. Why? It's an adequate peach, but certainly not as fantastic as the Lemon or Orange. This one fades away to nothing much faster than either of those two, as well. Not one of the better flavors in the pack.

Cherry: Decent news for our cherry-loving gum friend out there - this cherry is pretty darn good at the get-go. None of that horrible mentholy cherry we've seen in other cherry sugarfree gums. Fruit Stripe got this one spot-on, but unfortunately the quick-fade and the 4 other flavors in the do not warrant a purchase of this if all you're looking for is cherry. Look elsewhere.

Texture: This is where Fruit Stripes loses me entirely. The texture of this gum is absolutely horrible. It starts off bad and gets worse, eventually resembling the feeling of chewing those horrible tasteless Halloween was lips, or what was leftover after you sucked the juice out of those little bottle-shaped wax things. You can't blow bubbles or crack it in any way - if you try to spread it out over your tongue it thins out into an indistinguishable web of grossness. If it held its own texture-wise, this gum could have been great.

Overall: Texture completely ruins it, but one positive thing about this gum is that every wrapper has a temporary tattoo on it. Bonus! Having just chewed 5 pieces of this gum for this review, my desk is now strewn with little multi-colored Zebras playing sports. If I wasn't wearing a short-sleeved shirt and/or didn't work for a company whose mascot IS a Zebra, I'd be proudly wearing a sleeve of Zebra tattoos, because I am 5 years old and that would be awesome. So while the texture of the gum negates any positives in the flavor column, the addition of the tattoos on the wrapper adds the extra gumball to the rating.

Rating: oo (two gumballs)

Hubba Bubba OUCH!

Flavor: What does it matter? It's bubblegum. I'd even go to far as to call it a superior bubblegum. (Most sugarfree versions of sugared brands of gum are superior, as a general rule. I long to find sugarfree bubbletape again.) But, big deal. It's impossible to rate this gum objectively.

Texture: Good. Great. Fine. Awesome. Who cares?

Overall: Okay, here we go. I'm hoping that anyone over the age of, say, 25, can feel me on this one.

I vividly remember OUCH! gum when I was a kid. It was most definitely sugared gum, of the fruity variety (though it wasn't a very strong fruit flavor - I actually think it was more bubblegum than fruit.) It came in a band-aid tin which made it completely awesome to a kid. It was an actual metal tin that I remember re-using for other gum, candies, change, whatever.

The gum itself was wrapped in a paper wrapper that had a printing of a band-aid on it. Why this was awesome, I have no idea, but it was indeed quite awesome. I remember feeling like I was the shizz when a classmate would be all, "Got any gum?" and I'd whip out my band-aid tin of OUCH! gum and hand them a piece of band-aid wrapped sugary goodness. Oh, it was awesome.

Apparently, Hubba Bubba bought the rights to OUCH! gum years later and redesigned the package. I feel like this redesign was after my time, as I don't remember seeing it or tasting it. I can't tell you much about it, but I found this picture online:

So what we can deduce is: OUCH! went corporate, but Hubba Bubba had the brains to, at the very least, continue packaging it in its signature metal band-aid tin. I can't speak to the sugar content (anyone know if the new verson was sugarfree?) or the taste (it looks like there are three flavors in the pack - grape, watermelon and strawberry) but the look new look was fun, whimsical, and nostalgic.

But now. Now! Oh, Hubba Bubba. What have you done??

It's just a friggin' pack of gum! It's a pack. of. sugarfree. bubblegum. Who cares? The only thing reminiscent of the OUCH! gum of my youth is the band-aid on the front of the package, and the OUCH! logo. And that's where it ends. The front of the package proudly declares, "Games INSIDE!" and you open up the pack to reveal:

Oh, big WHOOP. "How Many? How many crutches are outside the emergency room?" And you have to search through the crudely drawn picture to find the 5 obvious crutches. There's a little bubble "LOOK FOR MORE GAMES IN PACKS OF OUCH!" as if the 0.4 seconds of fun I had searching for crudely drawn crutches would be enough to draw me back to buy more OUCH! gum. Hardly. There's not even any band-aid printing on the gum wrappers. It's JUST. GUM. Katie and my husband both think that the "OUCH!" logo on the front of the package actually works as a reason NOT to buy the gum - that it's some kind of super sour gum that will hurt you by chewing it.

Oh, I have been hurt by chewing OUCH! gum, Hubba Bubba. But not on my tongue, in my heart. No matter how flavorful this gum may be, no matter how perfect the bubbles it blows or how long the consistency lasts, Hubba Bubba has struck out big time with this one. They haven't even tried. I implore you to boycott OUCH! gum, and just buy Extra Classic Bubble if bubblegum flavor is the hankering you have.
Rating: o (one gumball)

Bacon Gumballs

Flavor: I cannot believe I have this in my mouth right now. (That's what she said.) It's definitely bacon, but kind of a faux bacon-bits kind of bacon. It's sickeningly sweet and not at all salty. Dear God.

Texture: Very soft, loses shape and size quickly.

Overall: This may be one of the most disgusting things I have ever had the displeasure to experience. I'm feeling really nauseous as I type this - I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm 5 months pregnant and easily nauseated. I apologize for the length of this review but I just don't have it in me to chew it long enough for anything more substantial. I fear I actually might vomit. I can't even see a true bacon connosseiur finding this gum palatable.

Rating: o (one gumball)