Trident Vitality Vigorate

It's not often that my regular grocery store gets new candy products (which makes me think I should find a new regular store), but recently, they started carrying Trident Vitality gum. When I brought Vigorate home, my husband thought it was a pack of cough drops.

Trident Vitality seems a bit like the Vitamin Water of the gum world. Was anyone really crying out for vitamin C in their gum? Still, even if I'm not using it as a health supplement, I did buy the gum, so the marketing strategy must be working.


The liquid center reminded me of the gel in Gushers fruit snacks. Right away, the citrus (mainly orange) flavor was very strong. Although the box also lists strawberry as a flavor, it was only hinted at. There was also a bold cooling effect, so strong that my throat burned a bit every time I had a piece. In fact, they were very much like orange cough drops.

The gum chewed very soft, and the flavor tapered off after about 5 minutes to a mild, sweet, and slightly tart fruit. The cooling rush hung around for much longer, and it reminded me a little too much of medicine to make me want to buy this flavor of Trident Vitality again.

C+

Trident Website

Trident Layers Contest Reminder

This is just a quick reminder that my Trident Layers Cool Mint & Melon Fresco gum giveaway ends Wendesday, January 12 at 9:00 PM. Thanks to everyone who has entered so far!

Click here to enter!

For those who have already entered, if you have your Blogger profile set to private or don't have a profile set up, I can't get to your email address. Please send it to me (ebidebby@gmail.com) if you haven't. I think this only applies to 1 person, actually.

Here's a modern conversation heart to get everyone in the mood for Valentine's Day candy.

End of the Year Trident Layers Giveaway

This giveaway is now closed! Winners are being notified.

Where I work, everyone gets a gift certificate for a fancy ham at the end of the year. It's just a nice little bonus that makes a holiday meal a little easier. For my readers, here's a little end of the year bonus giveaway - but it's not a ham - this bonus is paid in gum!


You guessed it, it's Trident Layers! Thanks to a kind PR representative, I've got 4 sealed boxes, each filled with 12 packs of Trident Layers Cool Mint + Melon Fresco gum to give away to 4 lucky readers! It was definitely one of my favorite gum flavors of 2010.

Entering the contest is simple: just comment on this post about the best candy you had this year. Also, be sure you leave an email address for me to contact you if you're not a Blogger/Google member. I apologize, I know Blogger's comment system isn't the best for this. If you would rather not leave an email address publicly, you can send it to me at ebidebby@gmail.com and let me know which comment goes with it.

From the comments, 4 winners will be selected at random to each receive a sealed box of 12 packs of Trident Layers Gum! The contest is open to all readers (as allowed by your state or country’s laws).

The deadline for entries is 9:00 PM EST on Wednesday, January 12, 2011, at which point the winners will be randomly selected and notified. I will make periodic reminder posts up to the deadline, and post again when all winners have responded.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!

Trident Layers Cool Mint + Melon Fresco

Sometimes, a gum just sounds right from the get-go. Cool Mint + Melon Fresco called out to me in the check out lane, as gums often do, and I answered. I love a good fruity mint, and melon is a great companion for mint. Maybe I wouldn't mind getting paid in this flavor...

For any readers in the New York city area, Trident is doing a bit of exciting non-traditional marketing in Times Square today from 6:30 AM until 2:00 PM. At Broadway and 42nd street, a fleet of taxis will give rides in exchange for a pack of this gum. There will also be celebrity appearances (Bethenny Frankel and Wendy Williams), free samples of the new flavor, and chances to win prizes instantly, or by snatching as many mint leaves in a "Grab for Mint" cyclone booth. It sounds pretty refreshing!


The gum smells like mint, and if I had to nail it down, I'd say spearmint. As I chewed, the melon flavor came out from the sticky center. It was like an extra tart almost honeydew, and it went very well with the mint. The sourness made the melon come off a bit like lime, but it was very subtle.

It's definitely my favorite of the Trident Layers flavors, and it's something I would buy again. The refreshing flavor lasted a very long time (probably around 20 minutes), and the gum had a good texture throughout the chew. If fruity-mint gum is not your thing, you may not like this one, but this gum was really well received by my friends and coworkers when I shared the pack.

A

Trident Website

Note: A PR company representative provided information about the promotional event, but I had already tried the gum, and this contact did not influence my review (not that it would have if I hadn't tried the gum). On a side note, I wish cool promotional events took place in the midwest...

Trident Splash Orange Swirl

I can never pass up a new gum flavor, and this one spoke to me in particular. Who doesn't love an orange Creamsicle? Of course, that's a trademark, so Trident has called their gum Orange Swirl. It's been around for several months, but I only noticed it recently.

I'm not sure I love the "splash" type of gum. A liquid center is great in a fruit snack (like Gushers, my favorite brown bag lunch dessert), since it's just going to be swallowed soon anyhow. But with gum, it seems like a gimmick. Typically, the liquid gives a burst of flavor at the beginning, but it just doesn't last. Orange Swirl was no different.


The gum started with a liquid burst of tart orange, and then the cool and creamy flavors started to emerge. It wasn't a minty gum by any means, but there was a little bit of a cooling sensation. Within 30 seconds, it tasted like a watered down Creamsicle.

The initial juicy orange flavor was gone within a minute, but it still had some weak notes after 5 minutes. Throughout the chew, the texture of the gum was softer than I prefer. After 20 minutes, there was still a faint orange flavor, but I spit it out anyhow. I had no trouble finishing the pack, and while it wasn't a great breath freshener, it was a decent gum.

B

Read more reviews of this gum at Candy Addict and Gum Alert.

Trident website

Trident Strawberry Twist

Sometimes, fruity gum can be overpowering. It takes me back to the days of gigantic mouthfuls of Bubblicious or Bubble Tape, when I didn't mind that my gum started to taste like a rotten banana after a few minutes.

These days, I've developed a taste for fruity gum with a hint of mint, but I still like to venture back to fruit gum every now and then. During one such mood, I bought a three-pack of this Strawberry Twist gum from Target. I'm still not sure what the twist was.

It smelled strongly of tart, sweet, fake strawberry. At first, the gum was very sour on the tongue, but there was an overpowering sweetness that masked the fruit flavor. Once the tart flavor was gone, there was really no point in chewing this gum.

This gum wasn't really bad, but it was so artificially sweet that it was quite a chore for me and my husband to get through the whole three pack. It didn't take long for both of us to become sick of this flavor.

The ladies at Gum Alert also reviewed this gum.

C

Trident website

Trident Layers Green Apple + Golden Pineapple

While grocery shopping, this gum called out to me in the checkout, as new things often do. I've had some bad luck with non-Orbit fruity gum, but the idea of layered gum was too intriguing and gimmicky to resist.

If you take a look at the picture below and compare it with the picture above, you might notice that the actual gum is not green-yellow-green like the cover, but yellow-green-yellow. I'm not sure if the layers are actually flavored differently, or if it's just for show, like an Andes mint. The discrepancy wasn't really upsetting, just an odd marketing choice. In fact, I hoped it meant that the gum would be heavier on the pineapple side. I was completely wrong.


The green band in the middle of the gum made it look neat, but it was very sticky and soft, making the gum a little messy to take out of the wrapper. As for the flavor, the pineapple was completely undetectable unless I used my imagination, and I never would have thought it was there if the package didn't say so.

The gum was a little on the soft side for chewing, and although it was very juicy, it was a basic sour green apple gum that reminded me of children's bubble gum. After a while (maybe 10 minutes), the flavor became stale, and wasn't doing my breath any favors. This gum was disappointing, since it tasted like fake apple and nothing else, but I can't say I hated it. I won't buy this flavor again, but I'd be willing to try others.

For more reviews, check out Gigi-Reviews, The Impulsive Buy, and Gum Alert.

C-

Trident website