https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2024/01/11/fruit-stripe-gum-discontinued/72186601007/

Fruit Stripe Gum discontinued: Chewing gum to bid farewell after half a century

The iconic brightly colored Fruit Stripe Gum is being discontinued after more than 50 years.

Food and Wine magazine reported that the gum's manufacturer, Ferrara Candy announced this week, that it will discontinue the gum.

Ferrara Candy did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment but in a statement told Food and Wine magazine: “We have made the difficult decision to sunset Fruit Stripe Gum."

The company added that they did not take the decision "lightly" and “considered many factors before coming to this decision, including consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns.”

According to CNN, Fruit Stripe Gum has been around since the 1960s and came in five flavors: Wet n’ Wild Melon, Cherry, Lemon, Orange and Peach. The brand's mascot was Yipes the Zebra and each pack came with a temporary tattoo of Yipes.

Ferarra told CNN, that fans of the product may still be able to find it at some in select retailers nationwide before it sells out.

On Sun, 14 Jan 2024 21:51:57 -0800 (PST), Big Mongo
<bigmongo1963@gmail.com> wrote:

>https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2024/01/11/fruit-stripe-gum-discontinued/72186601007/
>
>Fruit Stripe Gum discontinued: Chewing gum to bid farewell after half a century
>
>The iconic brightly colored Fruit Stripe Gum is being discontinued after more than 50 years.
>
>Food and Wine magazine reported that the gum's manufacturer, Ferrara Candy announced this week, that it will discontinue the gum.
>
>Ferrara Candy did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment but in a statement told Food and Wine magazine: “We have made the difficult decision to sunset Fruit Stripe Gum."
>
>The company added that they did not take the decision "lightly" and “considered many factors before coming to this decision, including consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns.”
>
>According to CNN, Fruit Stripe Gum has been around since the 1960s and came in five flavors: Wet n’ Wild Melon, Cherry, Lemon, Orange and Peach. The brand's mascot was Yipes the Zebra and each pack came with a temporary tattoo of Yipes.
>
>Ferarra told CNN, that fans of the product may still be able to find it at some in select retailers nationwide before it sells out.

Does anyone except baseball players still chew gum? I haven't had a piece
of gum in forever. I'm sure I see less than one person a year chewing it.
I never see it advertised on TV, either. The ads used to run constantly.
Remember the Doublemint Twins?

Yeah, David, it seems gum has gone the way of the landline (a technology which I still hugely prefer for numerous reasons, incidentally). I, for one, never was a gum chewer, as I find saturating any substance with saliva to be, er, distasteful.

And isn't it true that baseball cards don't even include the slab of bubble gum anymore?

ON ANOTHER SUBJECT: Did you ever see the private message I left on your website a month ago or so?

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
===================
reply privately, if you prefer, to: RadioactiveSeattle["AT"SIGN]gmail.com

I'm surprised Fruit Stripe lasted as long as it did. The gum tasted great but the flavor only lasted ten seconds.

On Sun, 14 Jan 2024 22:53:49 -0800 (PST), "radioacti...@gmail.com"
<radioactiveseattle@gmail.com> wrote:

>Yeah, David, it seems gum has gone the way of the landline (a technology which I still hugely prefer for numerous reasons, incidentally). I, for one, never was a gum chewer, as I find saturating any substance with saliva to be, er, distasteful.
>
>And isn't it true that baseball cards don't even include the slab of bubble gum anymore?
>
>ON ANOTHER SUBJECT: Did you ever see the private message I left on your website a month ago or so?

You mean an e-mail? My web site doesn't have any messaging features.
In any case, no.

On 1/15/2024 1:10 AM, David Carson wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Jan 2024 21:51:57 -0800 (PST), Big Mongo
> <bigmongo1963@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2024/01/11/fruit-stripe-gum-discontinued/72186601007/
>>
>> Fruit Stripe Gum discontinued: Chewing gum to bid farewell after half a century
>>
>> The iconic brightly colored Fruit Stripe Gum is being discontinued after more than 50 years.
>>
>> Food and Wine magazine reported that the gum's manufacturer, Ferrara Candy announced this week, that it will discontinue the gum.
>>
>> Ferrara Candy did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment but in a statement told Food and Wine magazine: “We have made the difficult decision to sunset Fruit Stripe Gum."
>>
>> The company added that they did not take the decision "lightly" and “considered many factors before coming to this decision, including consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns.”
>>
>> According to CNN, Fruit Stripe Gum has been around since the 1960s and came in five flavors: Wet n’ Wild Melon, Cherry, Lemon, Orange and Peach. The brand's mascot was Yipes the Zebra and each pack came with a temporary tattoo of Yipes.
>>
>> Ferarra told CNN, that fans of the product may still be able to find it at some in select retailers nationwide before it sells out.
>
> Does anyone except baseball players still chew gum? I haven't had a piece
> of gum in forever. I'm sure I see less than one person a year chewing it.
> I never see it advertised on TV, either. The ads used to run constantly.
> Remember the Doublemint Twins?

I have a friend who chews gum. Seems like she's the only one. She is
always offering some to me, not noticing that I politely refuse. I
remember the Doublemint Twins, too.

On 1/15/2024 11:16 AM, Libbie wrote:
> On 1/15/2024 1:10 AM, David Carson wrote:
>> On Sun, 14 Jan 2024 21:51:57 -0800 (PST), Big Mongo
>> <bigmongo1963@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2024/01/11/fruit-stripe-gum-discontinued/72186601007/
>>>
>>> Fruit Stripe Gum discontinued: Chewing gum to bid farewell after half
>>> a century
>>>
[balance snipped, just for space]
>>
>> Does anyone except baseball players still chew gum? I haven't had a piece
>> of gum in forever. I'm sure I see less than one person a year chewing it.
>> I never see it advertised on TV, either. The ads used to run constantly.
>> Remember the Doublemint Twins?
>
> I have a friend who chews gum.  Seems like she's the only one.  She is
> always offering some to me, not noticing that I politely refuse.  I
> remember the Doublemint Twins, too.

My father (almost 95) still regularly chews Juicy Fruit gum.
(Not a baseball player but until a month ago co-owned a
minor-league baseball franchise for over 30 years.)

While Ferrara may be retiring this venerable Beech-Nut brand,
other companies have revived others, notably Gerrit J. Verburg
(best known for its licorice). See https://vintagegums.com/
[they also make Teaberry but for some reason it's not
included in that website, only in their main one, probably
because they're not using its original package design]

I remember the Doublemint Twins, too.

I tried Teaberry a couple times, but only so--as again, I'm no gum guy. Still, I did find the spritely taste to be honestly advertised.

But what REALLY was memorable was their long-running TV advertising campaign; the Teaberry Shuffle was always more fun to watch than any of those look-at-me! styles of dancing littering so many 21st Century commercials.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

And of course, the "Teaberry Shuffle"
was a new arrangement of "Mexican
Shuffle", composed by Sol Lake and
performed by Herb Alpert's Tijuana
Brass (A&M, 1964). The first song
recorded for their "South of the
Border" album, when originally released
as a single it charted only 5 weeks,
peaking at #85. However, the later
popularity of the commercial likely
helped the album end up charting for
163 weeks, peaking at #6.

On 1/15/2024 5:05 PM, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> I tried Teaberry a couple times, but
> only so--as again, I'm no gum guy.
> Still, I did find the spritely taste
> to be honestly advertised.
>
> But what REALLY was memorable was their
> long-running TV advertising campaign;
> the Teaberry Shuffle was always more
> fun to watch than any of those look-at-me!
> styles of dancing littering so many 21st
> Century commercials.
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

You say "of course", Sir Barr...but alas, I was NOT aware that the Teaberry Shuffle was derivative of Herb Alpert and the Marij--er, TIjuana Brass.

Now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall that Alpert & Co. tune. As it happens, I WAS however intimately familiar with their considerably-less-celebrated hispanic sister act on A&M Records, Julius Wechter and the Baja Marimba Band. My musician older brother was seriously into them, and I as a consequence started hearing them circa 1966. (But it never occurred to me while spinning their LPs back in St. Louis that Wechter might in fact be Jewish, rather than Latin American.)

And decades later, celebrity-hound yours truly was stunned and delighted by this only-in-Hollywood development during in the mid-1980s:

Twice I found myself working in a two-man law office on Santa Monica Blvd., in West Los Angeles; it was just good ol' paralegal me under old-school, veteran Los Angeles Jewish community solo-practitioner attorney Francis Mintz. But imagine my surprise that the late Wechter--who died Monday, February 1, 1999--and his charming and stylish wife Cecile were longtime clients of Francis Mintz Professional Corporation!

Got to know each of them fairly well during my two stints under Mintz; they lived in a fancy Beverly Hills home with all sorts of celebrity neighbors but a block or so away, yet the couple always nonetheless seemed flattered that a longtime Baja Marimba Band devotee was backing up Mintz. And of course during their periodic office visits, I always endeavored to not be too obvious in regarding them like the showbiz royalty I considered them.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida