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The intense-mint pellet gum in the push-through foil blister pack — and the flirty, close-quarters ads that came with it. Launched in the late 1990s, Dentyne Ice built its whole identity on ice-cold breath and the nervous seconds before a first kiss.
Rainbow-striped sticks of gum fronted by Yipes the zebra, whose wrappers doubled as temporary tattoos. A childhood staple you unwrapped as much for the tattoo as for the gum itself.
Bubble gum whose entire point was dyeing your tongue neon — you chewed, you stuck your tongue out at your friends, that was the product. It came loose as gumballs and, most memorably, in a miniature paint can promising to paint your mouth "with a splash of color."
The sugarless gum that practically owned the drugstore checkout counter, and the slogan everyone can still recite: "Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum." Trident had been around since 1960, but its color-coded flavors — spearmint, cinnamon, bubble gum — were a '90s pocket-and-purse staple.
Wrigley's blue-wrapped wintergreen stick gum, launched in 1994 and pitched entirely on the promise of icy-cold, long-lasting breath. The foil sticks were a fixture of the gas-station and grocery-checkout racks all decade — the cool-blue pack sitting right beside Wrigley's fiery-red Big Red.