As part of my goal to try every type of gum and chocolate in shops, I ended up picking up a thing (take a look at the picture! what do you call that packaging? a plastic cylinder? certainly not a pack?) of mentos blast mint gum.
I thought that I would start off with the coolest looking gum they had in shops that i hadn't had before, and this was it. I quickly realized why I had never encountered it before...
The packaging is hit and miss. On one hand its aesthetically pleasing with its friendly curves and cylinder shape, but it is bulky and not very practical. I can't carry it in my pocket, which you should be able to do with a pack of gum, and even if you have a handbag, you WILL NOT be able to stand the rattling. Even just walking home from the store I could tell that this gum was to stay at home, chained up in the basement, and be given sedatives on a regular basis, just to make sure it didn't make any noise. The wrapper and packaging is all blue, with the word 'mentos' in its big, original copyrighted font and says all together "blast mentos chewing gum" which makes me unsure as to call it mentos blast or blast mentos... I should really get someone from mentos on to this.
It then shows a cross section of one of the pieces, with the liquid centre "blasting" out, with the flavour label, "sweet strong mint" and "28 pieces" are displayed below in almost unnoticeable small font.
I proceed to take off the plastic and a little cardboard circle they put on top with "blast mentos gum" on it. But before I open it, I wipe off the dust on the circle so I can see the writing better...
HOLY S#!*
There's a layer of DUST on the top! I check the best before date... It's fine, but theres only a few months left! Gum shelf lives are usually up to a year or two, so I suspect its been sitting on the shelves for quite a while...
While this is surprising, It doesn't actually affect my opinion on the gum, It just tells me that it's not very popular... a bad sign for such a 'hip' and 'new' gum.
After opening the lid with a satisfying POP, I smell the inside. It's a faint sour/sweet mint, quite underwhelming actually. Each piece is a little white mentos shape, only a little smaller and fatter, and with nothing left to do, I quickly pop it in my mouth.
The gum starts out really nice, a cracking outer layer of strong mint flavour gives way to the soft gum and warm liquid centre inside which is a much sweeter flavour. I did have some problems with the liquid though. I thought it had too much tang to it, and was a bit too sticky/syrupy for it to really work with the whole "super cool fresh" vibe the packaging gives you. On the other hand the sweet and cool flavours mix quite nicely, and while they aren't SUPER STRONG, they aren't weak either. It is also a nice size piece of gum to chew...
for the first 5 minutes that is!
The thing about this gum that I can't stand is that the flavour doesn't last for more than 5 minutes, which is a major deal killer for me. The sizing of the gum is also too small after the first 5 minutes because most of the gum mass is the flavourings which dissolve or are swallowed too quickly, for reasons which I will now explain.
After the first piece, I decided to investigate the cause of this lack of lasting flavour. I started by not chewing, and dissolving the shell of strong mint. This took only about a minute as I expected; after all these shells are usually there only to produces a quick burst of initial flavour. Once I get through to the gum, I realise that there is something seriously wrong with this gum... THERE'S NO FLAVOUR!!!!
It's as if they chewed all of the flavour out of normal gum and stuck it in between the flavour to give the gum some mass. In fact they probably send out shiploads of mentos's other unsuccessful gums to another factory in a third world country, and pay the workers to chew out all of the flavour one piece at a time, continuously chewing for 12 hours straight JUST SO THEY CAN SHIP IT BACK AND PUT IT INTO MENTOS BLAST!!!!
Of course I'm joking and quite enjoy many of the mentos brand gums, but thats just how surprised I was that it had no real flavour. And on a side note, Mentos really needs to up the advertising for their products, I had no idea that they had so many other gums...
I then open up the middle and see that the gel inside ISN'T EVEN BLUE!! It's in fact clear with a few tinges of blue on the inside walls... Not the colour shown on the front. Of course they don't really need to actually colour it bright blue; no one will notice except for gum freaks like me...
Now I realise that it is only the shell and gel (rhyme!) that give the gum it's flavour, and that truly disappoints me. I personally think that if they did 3 things:
1. Increasing the size of the gum to the size of a normal mentos
2. Adding some of the same flavourings they used in the "Pacific" flavour of Mentos Aqua Kiss gum to the gum in mentos blast
3. Creating a more portable package that didn't rattle
this gum would be unstoppable, but until then, It's gonna stay locked up in my basement where it will probably be happy to resume its dusty and untouched lifestyle.
I don't recommend Blast Mentos (or Mentos Blast) "sweet strong mint" gum to anyone UNLESS you dont like chewing for long and keep your gum at home.
And please remember to comment or send us an email at edibloggers@gmail.com if you like our reviews! Maybe you can tell us what to review next!
And until next review, this is Foster! EdiBlogger out!
No comments:
Post a Comment