Whatever happened to fruit gum?

I like to chew gum. I usually get sugarless gum instead of the Hubba Bubba, Juicy Fruit, and Bazooka varieties. I like the fruity flavors on occasion as minty gums can get tedious. But lately all of the sugarless fruity gums are always being mixed with mint. I don't know if it's because it extends the flavor or if one company did it first and then the rest are copycatting it because they were successful. Whatever the reason, I'm getting sick of it.

I was sick of the mint marketing mafia (which we will now deem MMM for the rest of this blog post) even before they infiltrated our fruit gums. Mint is mint, right? Personally, I think there's a subtle difference between peppermint and spearmint but I can't tell the difference between artic mint and ice mint. Apparently, there must exist a multitude of mint sommeliers because the list of mint flavors is exceedingly long. The MMM has come up with mint, sweet mint, peppermint, spearmint, ice mint, artic mint, velamint, cool mint, fresh mint, cactus mint, cinnamon mint, fire mint, hot mint, spicy mint, and doublemint. (what a predica-mint!!)

Perhaps the MMM has a huge surplus of mint stored somewhere because now they are pushing their mint products alongside the fruit flavorings. Want berry gum? Sorry, it's berrymint now. There's even a bubblemint, where they mix their mint with good old fashioned bubble gum flavor. I've had melon mint and cool colada. Both of which were equally disturbing to my palette. Damn it all! I just want to get my sweet on! I don't need to bring mint to the flavor party. If I want mint I'll just go buy one of those super strong mints that they sell now.

The MMM's mint campaign had a serious escalation at the turn of the century when they came out with those super powerful mints. It seemed that the smaller the mint was the more minty it would make your mouth feel. It was akin to putting a tab of acid on your tongue. We all looked drug users in 2002 when you could even put a strip of cellophane on your tongue that turned to super minty goo upon direct contact with saliva. I surmised back then that eventually mints will be microscopic and make one's breath be able to refrigerate your beer.

Perhaps the MMM should go back to pushing their super mints and leave my fruit gums alone. If we don't make a stand now and boycott the artic pineapple mint gums of the world then they will most certainly try to push their way into our entire grocery selection. If you want Cool Rice-a-Minty or spearmint potato chips then by all means, keep on buying.