Trident
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.
Trident was introduced by the American Chicle Company in 1960 as one of the first mainstream sugarless chewing gums — sweetened without sugar and, in its modern form, with the tooth-friendly sugar alcohol xylitol. American Chicle was bought by Warner-Lambert two years later, in 1962.
What cemented the brand was an ad line, not a flavor. "Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum" — reportedly drawn from a survey of dentists in the early 1960s — became one of advertising's most quoted and most parodied slogans, and it followed Trident for decades.
By the 1990s the color-coded wrappers were a fixture of every checkout counter and glovebox. The brand kept moving through corporate hands — Warner-Lambert to Pfizer to Cadbury to Kraft/Mondelez — and in 2023 Mondelez sold its gum brands, Trident and sister brand Dentyne among them, to Perfetti Van Melle. Newer spin-off lines followed, including liquid-center Trident Splash (2005) and multi-layer Trident Layers (2009).
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Winterfresh
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Fruit Stripe Gum
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