Juicy Fruit

Juicy Fruit is one of the oldest brands in any American pocket, and it exists because of a giveaway that ate the business. William Wrigley Jr. arrived in Chicago selling his father's scouring soap, offering baking powder as a free premium — until the baking powder proved more popular and he switched products. Then he attached sticks of chewing gum as a premium on the baking powder, and the gum won again. After two early brands called Lotta and Vassar, Wrigley launched Juicy Fruit in 1893 — alongside Wrigley's Spearmint that same year — and rode gum to one of the great American fortunes.

The brand's defining mystery is the flavor itself, which Wrigley has never officially disclosed. Chewers have long sworn it's jackfruit; the ad agency BBDO once characterized it as a mix of banana and pineapple; a popular reference book made the case for peach. Officially, it just tastes like Juicy Fruit. The gum's history has some surprisingly heavy footnotes for a candy: it left the civilian market temporarily during World War II, when ingredient shortages and demand for gum in soldiers' C-rations diverted supply — and on June 26, 1974, at 8:01 a.m. in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit became the first product ever scanned with a UPC barcode at a retail checkout, ringing up 67 cents. A facsimile of that pack sits in the Smithsonian.

For anyone who grew up with a TV in the 80s and 90s, though, Juicy Fruit is a jingle. The great outdoorsy campaign — skiers carving powder while the song commanded "Take a sniff, pull it out, the taste is gonna move ya when you pop it in your mouth" — ran through the 1980s and into the early 90s, and lodged so deep that most people can still sing it on request, usually as "the taste, the taste, the taste is gonna move ya." The ads were technically an 80s campaign, but they lived in 90s heads rent-free: the yellow pack in the checkout aisle came pre-loaded with its own soundtrack.