Juicy Fruit - Original

Juicy Fruit dates all the way back to 1893 and is the gum that made the Wrigley Company famous! This review is for the bubble gum variety of Juicy Fruit, not the standard stick chewing gum. It’s one of the most iconic gums out there, but before we get to the review, let’s chew on a few fun facts.

Fun Facts

1. Barcodes Were Broken In With Juicy Fruit

You know those barcodes (technically UPCs, Universal Product Codes) on just about every product? The very first one was ever scanned on June 26, 1974, at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, and you can probably guess the product that slid across the reader. Yep: a pack of Juicy Fruit, for $0.67. Imagine how many “beeps” there have been at registers worldwide since then. It all started here (source).

2. Coach Sean Payton Loves Juicy Fruit

We already covered Pete Carroll’s love for Bubble Yum. Sean Payton, another pro football coach, is loyal to Juicy Fruit, and takes it to another level. He refuses to take the field without two packs in his pockets (one per half) and starts a fresh stick every offensive series, burning through at least two full packs a game. Think we’re making it up? Hear it for yourself:

3. Juicy Fruit Was Pulled During World War II

Ingredient shortages and high demand for Juicy Fruit in C-rations meant it was taken off the civilian market during the war. When it returned, Wrigley introduced the yellow packaging we still recognize today.

4. There Are Multiple Songs About Juicy Fruit

The most famous is by Mtume, such a stellar beat that it’s been sampled over and over, most notably by Notorious B.I.G. in the mid-’90s. Here’s the original:

And since we said multiple songs: Jimmy Buffett’s “Grapefruit, Juicy Fruit” isn’t quite worthy of an embed, but you can give it a listen, “Juicy Fruit” gets a shout-out about 35 seconds in.

5. Juicy Fruit Made It Into the White House

Sort of, here’s Jenna Bush in 1988, sporting her Juicy Fruit costume. She’s the one without fangs.

History of Juicy Fruit

Master of the Business Pivot

The William Wrigley Jr. Company (now owned by Mars) was founded in 1891, to sell soap. They threw in a little bundle of baking soda as a bonus, and it turned out people loved the baking soda more than the soap, so they switched to selling baking soda. Then they added a couple pieces of gum as a bonus with the baking soda… and the pattern repeated: people loved the gum most of all. Juicy Fruit launched in 1893, two years after the company was founded, and became the hit that set Wrigley off toward massive success.

A Bold Bet on Mass-Mail Marketing

In 1915, Wrigley made a bold move: mailing a pack of gum to every household in the US listed in the phone book. Some call it the invention of direct-to-consumer mass mail (we’re skeptical, mail catalogs predate it). Either way, mailing gum to every house in the country was a big swing, and it worked: Wrigley gums became wildly popular and still hold 70%+ of the US market.

The Taste Is Going to Move You

Juicy Fruit’s jingle was lodged in a lot of heads through the 1980s and ’90s, built, naturally, around the taste it’s most known for. Here’s one of those classic ads:

By the way, a year-2000 Juicy Fruit ad featured a future Breaking Bad star, Aaron Paul.

Prizes!

Way back in 1902, Juicy Fruit packs came with certificates redeemable for all sorts of prizes, a tea set, a mirror, an umbrella, and more. Juicy Fruit has always been bold with its marketing.

Our Take

Time to review this legend (the bubble-gum variety, that is).

Juicy Fruit is famous for its mysterious flavor, the recipe’s a secret, with no clues on the packaging. Word is it’s a blend of peach, banana, orange, lemon, pineapple, and jackfruit. (The original flavor was much mintier until the distinctive taste arrived in 1914.) Our team definitely caught “hints of banana.” A few felt the flavor punch didn’t quite live up to the name, but most enjoyed it.

The old Juicy Fruit stick gum was infamous for flavor that vanished fast, even the cashier told us “that’s some good gum, but the flavor doesn’t last.” Wrigley knew it, and reformulated the gum in 2016 to last longer. Reputations take a while to shake, but in our tests more than half the flavor was still going at about ten minutes, a real improvement.

Texture is nice overall, though a couple of the Bubble Bunch found it a little too soft. On bubbles, everyone managed a solid tennis-ball-sized bubble, with the bigger ones coming well into the chew session, though several of us noticed the bubble walls feel thin.