As Hershey debuts the biggest innovation for its Ice Breakers gum brand in five years, a top executive isn’t shy about the company’s outlook for the new offering: “We expect it to be a pretty big deal.”
The product, called Flavor Shifters, changes taste while the consumer chews it, going from Wild Berry to Coolmint or Wintergreen to Coolmint.
For a category that has largely depended on new flavors or packaging as its primary sources of innovation to attract consumers, Flavor Shifters, which hits shelves this month, tries something new.
“We’re targeting people whose gum and refreshment routine has just gotten boring. How do we invigorate it? How do we deliver some excitement?” Dan Mohnshine, Hershey’s vice president of marketing, U.S. confection, grocery and protein snacks, said in an interview.
Hershey described Flavor Shifters as a “big bet” on the Ice Breakers brand, which has been growing 9% annually since 2020. Mohnshine said the innovation “pushes the boundaries” in gum by extending the category beyond the single-flavor experience for which it is known.
“We’re targeting people whose gum and refreshment routine has just gotten boring. How do we invigorate it? How do we deliver some excitement?”
Dan Mohnshine
Vice president of marketing, U.S. confection, grocery and protein snacks with Hershey
Gum sales sputtered during the pandemic as home-bound consumers no longer needed to freshen their breath at work, while dating or around friends and family.
In 2020, sales plunged 22% to $2.5 billion, according to data analytics firm Circana. Rankin Carroll, Mars Wrigley’s chief brand officer, told The Wall Street Journal in June that lockdowns also reduced impulse buys at stores, which are responsible for half of gum sales.
But as more people have returned to the office and resumed socializing, gum has rebounded to surpass its pre-COVID total. Sales jumped roughly 15% in 2022 and 2023, and they have increased 7% for the 52 weeks ended June 16 of this year to $3.4 billion, the Circana data showed.
Despite the uptick, gum has been losing popularity for years since peaking more than a decade ago. In 2011, 178 million Americans said they chewed gum, according to data from Statista. This year alone, 157 million people are expected to put a piece in their mouth.
“A traditional stick of gum, no one going to be excited about that,” said Tim Lawdan, brand manager with Ford Gum, the maker of shredded gum Big League Chew.
Goodbye Fruit Stripe, hello caffeine-infused gum
The decline in gum has prompted several companies to abandon it altogether.
Mondelēz International, which struggled for years to grow brands such as Bubblicious and Trident, sold the business in the U.S, Canada and Europe for $1.4 billion in October 2023 to focus on its thriving chocolate and biscuit operations. Ferrara also quietly discontinued production of Fruit Stripe and Super Bubble gums in 2022.
This “was not taken lightly, and we considered many factors before coming to this decision, including consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns — and overall brand trends,” Brian Camen, a Ferrara spokesman, said at the time.
For companies such as Mars Wrigley that remain, it has created an opportunity.
Mars Wrigley, the world’s top gum maker, owns more than a dozen brands, including Hubba Bubba, Extra, Big Red and Orbit.
Mike Gilroy, vice president of trade development and sponsorship at Mars Wrigley, said the New Jersey company recently introduced a Hubba Bubba gum that incorporated flavors from its popular hard-shelled candy, Skittles. With Skittles’ high popularity among Gen Z consumers, Mars Wrigley was able to tap into that notoriety and bring its original flavors to gum, providing people with a reason to try Hubba Bubba — some of whom may haven’t chewed it in several years.
“As the clear market leader in gum, it's important for us to not only innovate within the gum space to attract new users in but it's also important for us to take a leadership role for the health of the category,” Gilroy said.
For the gum category to obtain any meaningful growth, it must embrace other value propositions like caffeine or the improvement of teeth and gum health, said Dan McCarthy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maryland.
Florida-based Maax Brands introduced its performance-enhancing gum in 2021 after its founder was driving home one evening and wanted a pick-me-up. Carrying around a cup of coffee wasn’t the most convenient, especially for going out on the town. It also didn’t provide the freshest breath.
Each piece of Maax’s gum contains the same amount of caffeine as one and a quarter cups of coffee, along with 1 gram of sugar, which helps offset the stimulant’s notoriously bitter taste.
“Part of the challenge is making sure that [the gum] provides that punch but also in a way that is going to be tasty to anyone who is chewing it because no one wants to chew bitter gum and be left with that bitter breath as well,” said Maria Cuesta, the head of marketing at Maax.
McCarthy said adding attributes like caffeine to gum is risky for larger companies reluctant to spend money on a new product that may not catch on with consumers. Instead, truly novel innovation in gum will likely come from smaller startups.
“I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a lot of the innovations coming from the outside and then just getting poached by the Wrigley’s of the world,” he added. Larger gum makers will “selectively make tuck-in acquisitions of some of the brands that seem to be gaining traction.”
Few gum brands have been as innovative in recent years as Simply.
Karsten Ch’ien, vice president of sales and growth at the New York company, said Simply eschews the synthetic plastic used as the base in most gums in favor of tree sap (chicle.) It also avoids artificial flavors, colors and sweeteners like aspartame, instead turning to organic, raw sugar. Most of its gums have six or fewer ingredients.
Simply also stands out with a flavor palate designed to draw in new users to the category. While it does offer flavors like mint that are ubiquitous to gum, others are more unique, including grapefruit, maple, fennel and ginger. These attributes have helped Simply generate growth in the high double-digits, Ch’ien said, making it the top-selling natural gum brand in the U.S.
Still, Simply’s success wasn’t instantaneous.
Unlike most gums that employ bright colors, Simply has a dull tan color. Its shape is different too, taking the appearance of small logged-shape pieces. It took months to persuade retailers and consumers that despite the odd color and shape, these attributes shouldn’t be an obstacle to carrying or buying the product.
Today, the 10-year-old brand is carried in 13,000 stores such as Walmart, Publix, Whole Foods and Target.
“We’ve proven that consumers are willing to be more open-minded about what gum can be,” Ch’ien said.
Changing for today’s consumer
Older gum brands also have realized that being more open-minded is key to their survival.
Big League Chew has amassed a strong following among older consumers who grew up with the shredded bubblegum as kids. But until recently, it was struggling to find its place among children and teenagers who were key to its future, contributing to a period of flat sales.
In 2022, Ford Gum, the manufacturer, seller, and marketer of Big League Chew, realized that the brand was not resonating with its target consumers. It undertook a significant revamp of the beloved childhood product to make it more appealing to today's shoppers while maintaining the nostalgic connection it had with parents and grandparents.
“The priority for us has been to reinvigorate the [34-year-old] brand,” said Lawdan. “It’s got pretty good awareness, people know about it. But something we’re very focused on is making sure that the new generation of kids grows up with it the way that my parents’ generation did.”
To do that, Ford struck partnerships with elite college athletes closely followed by 13 and 14-year-old baseball players. It has increased its presence on social media; moving beyond just highlighting the gum to showcasing athletes having fun with the brand.
Big League Chew has launched more limited-time offerings, including peppermint, to turn it into a year-round product rather than something to enjoy during baseball season.
Ford also overhauled the popular packaging that hadn’t changed in nearly two decades. The pouch now includes new player caricatures the company said are more reflective of today’s consumers.
The changes have worked. Sales are increasing double digits year-over-year, and Big League Chew has added distribution in outlets such as Lowe’s and Food Lion. There’s further opportunity for growth, executives said, in c-stores, and the brand has yet to make its way into big chains such as Walmart and Target.
“It’s about making it something that kids want to chew, not just as a novelty, but something that’s like ‘No, I’m not going to my baseball game without Big League Chew in bag,’ making it that FOMO element of not having the product,” Lawdan said. “When you look at Big League Chew relative to other gum brands, it’s really in a league of its own.”
