Juicy Fruit Original Bubble Gum Review

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. We were really excited to review this gum since it’s one of the most iconic gums out there, but before we get to that, let’s chew on some fun facts about Juicy Fruit.

Fun Facts

1. Barcodes were broken in with Juicy Fruit

You know those barcodes (technically called UPC, or Universal Product Codes) that you see on pretty much any product? The first time one of these was every used was June 26, 1974. It was at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio and I bet you can guess the product that was swiped across the reader. Yup, a good ol Juicy Fruit! Imagine how many “beeps” there have been at cash registers around the world since 1974. It all started with that first Juicy Fruit barcode for $0.67 (source).

2 – Coach Sean Payton loves Juicy Fruit

We already talked about Pete Carroll’s love for Bubble Yum. Sean Payton, another pro football coach, also loves bubble gum, but his loyalty it with Juicy Fruit and he takes it to another level. He refuses to take to the field unless he has two packs in his pockets (one for each half) and he starts a new stick every offensive series! He’s going through at least 2 full packs in a single game. You think we’re making this up?! Hear for yourself:

3 – Juicy Fruit was Taken Off the Market During World War II

There were ingredient shortages and there was high demand for Juicy Fruit to be included in C-rations during the war. So, it was taken off the civilian market during the war. When the war was over and it came back, Wrigley’s introduced the yellow packaging similar to what we recognize today. Here’s a look at the packaging over the years. ?

4 – There are multiple songs about Juicy Fruit

The most famous one is by Mtume. It has such a stellar beat, it’s been sampled over and over, most notably by Notorious BIG in the mid 90s. Here’s the original:

I said multiple songs, so I won’t leave you with just one. Jimmy Buffet’s “Grapefruit – Juicy Fruit” song isn’t worthy of an embed, but you can check it out here if you really want. “Juicy Fruit” gets a shout-out about 35 seconds into the song.

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 in the photo below.

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 would include a little bundle of baking soda as a bonus with their soap. It turned out that people loved the baking soda more than the soap, so they stopped selling soap and started selling baking soda instead. Next, they added a couple pieces of gum as a bonus gift whenever they sold baking soda and the pattern repeated itself: people liked the gum so much that Wrigley’s starting selling the gum as its main product. Juicy Fruit was introduced in 1893, two years after the company was founded and was the big hit that set Wrigley’s off for massive success.

A Bold Bet in Mass Mail Marketing

In 1915, Wrigley made a bold bet to mail a pack of gum to every household in the US that was listed in the phonebook. We weren’t about to confirm is that was Juicy Fruit gum or not, but I’m guessing so. You’ll hear some people say this was the invention of direct-to-consumer mass mail marketing, but we don’t think so because mail catalogs pre-dated this stunt by many years. Still, mailing gum to every house in the US was a big time marketing move. It worked, because Wrigley gums became wildly popular and still have 70%+ market share in the US (as of 2020).

The Taste is Going to Move You

Juicy Fruit came up with a nice slogan and jingle that was stuck in a lot of heads during the 1980s and 90s. Unsurprisingly, they chose a jingle related to the taste of Juicy Fruit, which is the characteristic that has almost made it unique. Here’s one of those classic 1980s ads:

By the way, in the year 2000, Juicy Fruit featured an ad with future Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul.

Prizes!

In 1902, Juicy Fruit packs came with redeemable certificates for prizes of all sorts, like a tea set, a mirror, an umbrella, and more (source). Juicy Fruit has always been bold when it comes to marketing.

Our Review of Juicy Fruit

It’s time! Let’s review this legendary gum (the bubble gum variety, that is).

Taste – 3.8 (of 5)

Juicy Fruit is famous for its mysterious taste. They’ve kept the recipe a secret and there are no clues on the packaging. We heard it’s a mix of peach, banana, orange, lemon, pineapple, and jackfruit. By the way, the original flavor was much different (mostly minty) until 1914 when the distinctive flavor was introduced (source) . Hey, maybe they did the big mass mailing in 1915 to get the word out on the new flavor.

Our review team gave Juicy Fruit’s flavor a score of 3.8 out of 5. The team detected “hints of banana” for sure. For those who didn’t love it, they said “the flavor punch doesn’t meet the expectations of the name and was kind of underwhelming.” Overall, 3.8 is not bad!

Flavor Duration – 2.4 (of 5)

The reputation of the original Juicy Fruit stick chewing gum is that the flavor doesn’t last at all. Even the lady at the cash register said “that’s some good gum, but the flavor doesn’t last.” Ouch. Well, the people at Wrigley know this too, so in 2016 they reformulated the gum to last longer! Reputations can take a while to shake. In our tests, “more than half of the flavor was gone” in about 9.9 minutes, which equates to a score of 2.4 out of 5.

Texture – 3.8 (of 5)

Overall, this gum has a nice texture, but a couple of our Bubble Bunch members thought it was a little too soft.

Bubble Blowing Ability – 3.0 (of 5)

Every member of the Bubble Bunch got a nice medium tennis ball sized bubble from this gum. Several people noticed that the ability to get a larger bubble occurred well into the chew session. One member commented that “the walls feel very thin when blowing bubbles.”

Conclusion

We really enjoyed the bubble gum version of this iconic 100+ year old gum*. We are glad the flavor didn’t extinguish in 2 minutes like the lady at the cash register said. Bubble blowing ability was fine and it’s a solid choice if you are shopping for a bubble gum. You might even get hooked on it like Sean Payton so watch out.

*100+ year history. The gum we put in our mouth was fresh!