Let’s start things off with a rant: I hate these fucking gum car packs. I don’t know why. I guess we all have an illogical hatred (or fear) of certain things, and for me, one of them are gum car packs. In thinking about it, I guess most of it comes down to personal preference: I prefer to take my gum with me wherever I go, so I like the individual packs that easily fit in my pocket. The other reason, though, I feel like comes down to common sense: If I were to leave gum in one place where I could easily grab it whenever I wanted, it would never be the fucking car. At no point have I ever had a pack of gum on me while sitting in my car and thought: “I’ll just leave it out here in case I want some later.”
It’s probably just me, but it’s a mind-bogglingly stupid idea. First of all, you’re exposing it to the elements. I’m sure gum can withstand anything, but the thought of leaving it in extreme heat, then letting it freeze during the throes of winter just isn’t an idea that entices me. At what point does it break down on a molecular level and turn to poison? (Or, you know, just lose its flavor, or something.) And then, if it doesn’t change from being in all that heat and cold, that seems kinda wrong too, like it’s some weird space-age technology that we’re just chewing for fun. I don’t know, but one thing I do know, is that I don’t want to find out.Let’s start things off with a rant: I hate these fucking gum car packs. I don’t know why. I guess we all have an illogical hatred (or fear) of certain things, and for me, one of them are gum car packs. In thinking about it, I guess most of it comes down to personal preference: I prefer to take my gum with me wherever I go, so I like the individual packs that easily fit in my pocket. The other reason, though, I feel like comes down to common sense: If I were to leave gum in one place where I could easily grab it whenever I wanted, it would never be the fucking car. At no point have I ever had a pack of gum on me while sitting in my car and thought: “I’ll just leave it out here in case I want some later.”
Curiously, this flavor of gum is only available in the car pack, at least as far as I can tell. That makes it an oddity, as the two other car pack flavors are also available in the 3-packs of normal, portable packaging that I prefer. Why can’t they put this in more “normal” packaging? I don’t understand the way things work sometimes, but it’s certainly frustrating.
Okay, so long-winded rant aside (thank you for listening, I feel much better), let’s get down to the business of reviewing the actual gum at hand, shall we? This was actually my wife’s purchase, which you can tell from the flavor variety: Bubblemint (which also explains why I would end up with a car pack at all). Sure, there’s technically mint in the title, but I rarely – if ever – buy anything that’s not just straight up mint. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of gum? If I wanted bubble gum, I’d buy bubble gum; not some kind with mint thrown in as an afterthought so that it can kind of almost freshen your breath.
Well, I guess we see that chewing gum is apparently a very large trigger for me. At any rate, let’s set aside our differences here and take a look at the task at hand, shall we? And that task is reviewing this chewing gum that I stole from my wife’s car, where it had been sitting for the better part of a year.
Like all car pack gum, this one is in a chiclet style, which presumably is much better at defending against the elements thanks to its hard, exterior. It’s also not a style I would pick for a bubble gum, considering they’re not typically made to blow bubbles with, unless you’re putting in three or four of them at a time.
Honestly…it’s got some surprisingly good taste right off the bat. It’s actually a very nostalgic taste for me, that I can’t quite put my finger on…is it Bubble Tape, perhaps? At any rate, it tastes a lot closer to bubble gum than I thought possible for a chiclet gum, which is quite a pleasant surprise. As the title alludes to, however, there’s more to this than just “bubble”…there’s also the “mint”. I still prefer my mint to be a lot stronger, but this follows up the strong bubblegum flavor with a trailing tail of mint that does whatever job it’s supposed to do. I mean, I don’t think it’s strong enough to really freshen your breath all that much, but it would moreso than regular bubble gum, so I guess that has to count for something.
In the end here, this is a pretty good gum, although the fact it’s in the packaging made for cars, ensures I’ll never grab this again (I technically never grabbed it the first time, as my wife bought it). I mean, why can’t they also package this up in the 3-packs
Overall: 6/10. This isn’t a gum I would get all the time, especially since it’s in packaging I can’t stand, but in terms of flavor, it’s surprisingly good. The bubblegum taste jumps out in the front, and then is trailed by a weaker finish of mint that might help your breath out a little bit, but not as much as a normal mint gum would. I usually want either bubblegum (very rarely), or mint gum (very frequently) and so the combination of both is a rather weird combination of two disparate worlds to me. Despite this, I would get it a little more often, if it weren’t for the fact it’s only available in a car pack (rather than the portable pocket-sized packages), which are too bulky to carry around. It’s a good change of pace from my normal gum routine, but not one I’d be interested in revisiting anytime soon.
