Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Time to kick ass and chew bubble gum!

If you remember a few months ago, Warren Buffett invested a bit of cash to help the candy maker Mars Inc. purchase the company that makes Wrigley's gum. (Juicy Fruit is gonna move ya! The taste so soft, it gets right to ya!) At the time, I was wondering why the world's greatest stock investor was putting big money on chewing gum. For my demographic, chewing gum is used for 3 main purposes:

Primary Uses for Chewing Gum
  1. Hiding bad breath.
  2. Masking alcoholism.
  3. Fending off the craving for a cigarette.
Well, Mr. Buffett... it seems you win again. The eggheads at chewing gum research and development have revamped Wrigley's gum with their 5 packs. It's slick packaging with new flavors*. Not boring flavours like peppermint and spearmint, but flavours like "Rain" and "Cobalt". If you're ever in my car, you'll notice that we keep a regular stock of Lush (a Juicy Fruit kinda citrus gum) and Elixir (a berry flavour gum). Lush is my favorite of all the Wrigley 5 flavours! It kicks Juicy Fruit's butt, in my opinion.

The story about why we only keep Lush and Elixir in the car is kinda serious though. When I first starting going out with Royal Pinguo, I noticed she would go into a sneezing fit whenever she had mint gum. I thought it was kinda funny. Unfortunately, over the last few months, the reaction became more serious. Royal began to develope a stronger allergic reaction to mint gum, especially spearmint. Thankfully, the reaction is not life-threatening yet... but I don't want to tempt fate. Both her and I are boycotting mint gum, in case she is tempted to have a piece of gum that is lying around the condo or in the car. We talked with Scarr and Jean, and Jean told us that allergies to spearmint gum is quite common, as spearmint is the most allergenic of the mint gums. I never heard of chewing gum allergies before, but it's good to know that it's not just Royal that's experiencing this.

* I recently was given a free sample of a prototype flavour called "Solstice" which is a blend of mint and cinnamon. Try to imagine what that tastes like... Well, I'll ruin the surprise for you... It tastes quite terrible. But kudos on Wrigley for trying to push the boundaries of gum flavours.