Posted on 01/11/2024 8:52:56 PM PST by nickcarraway
RIP Yipes.
If you call yourself an older millennial, then you definitely grew up with Fruit Stripe gum, its wildly erratic zebra mascot, and the brightly colored sticks of gum with bold fruit flavors that lasted almost as long as it took you to read this sentence. Almost.
However, according to Fruit Stripe’s manufacturer, Ferrara Candy, the gum is being discontinued. (That’s big news to anyone who didn’t think it was discontinued about the time “Hannah Montana” went off the air.) “We have made the difficult decision to sunset Fruit Stripe Gum, but consumers may still be able to find the product at select retailers nationwide,” a Ferrara Candy representative said in a statement.
“The decision to sunset this product was not taken lightly, and we considered many factors before coming to this decision, including consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns.”
The 25 Most Influential American Candy Bars of All Time Some Fruit Stripe enthusiasts had noticed that the gum was becoming harder to find in stores lately. “When I go to the store, I’ll look for the gum to no avail, the only place I can find [it] is online,” one person wrote on the r/Candy subreddit. “RIP Fruit Stripe gum.”
The first official news of its imminent disappearance was posted by OldTimeCandy.com. “We are sad to announce that Fruit Stripe Gum has been discontinued by the manufacturer,” the site wrote. “We are disappointed too.” (One disbelieving Redditor even spoke with a Ferrara customer service representative to confirm that the brand was being disconti…er, “sunsetted,” before learning that, yes, it’s gone for good.)
According to Ferrara, Fruit Stripe was invented in the late 1960s by James Parker. It was originally manufactured and sold by the Beech-Nut Confection Division, before being passed off in various mergers and acquisitions to Nabisco, Hershey, and Farley’s & Sathers Candy Company, which joined forces with Ferrara Pan Candy to create the Ferrara Candy Company.
In late 2021, Greg Guidotti, the General Manager of the Sugar Portfolio at Ferrara Candy Company, told Food Business News that sales of Fruit Stripe gum had increased 4.5% over the previous year. The company was then launching Fruit Stripe gummy candies, which also seem to have been discontinued.
It later introduced a zebra mascot named Yipes, and the slogan “Yipes! Stripes!,” which are both familiar to anyone whose childhood also included a steady diet of Saturday morning cartoons. In 2016, Yipes was even name-dropped in a Jeopardy! question, which asked the contestants what kind of animal he was.
I’m choosing to hold out hope that Yipes is now living happily in some kind of retirement home for discontinued spokes-cartoons, and that he hasn’t been “sunsetted” too.
I was a kid when fruit stripe came out. My Granny was a big time juicy fruit chewer, (probably to cover the snuff she often kept between her cheek and gum) but when Fruit Stripe came out, it was all over for juicy fruit. I preferred double mint, probably because the double mint twins made it look so cool, but I’d chew whatever was available.
Beech-Nut gum mentioned here.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/10/11-old-candies-you-cant-buy-anymore/
Stumbled upon it because I was looking for the legendary Baffle Bar,
“with all the tang of the great outdoors” and “zest that was born of a mountain wind”
My favorite was Teaberry
I liked it too
Dentyne gum
Loved it!😁
Better not ever get rid of Big Red gum.
I was about 5 when Fruit Stripe hit the market and I was lead to believe that the gum was as brightly colored the wrapper and was disappointed that it was so faded, however it was still tasty.
So the gum I like won’t come back in style?
And when your mother says, “Don’t chew it!” do you swallow it in spite?
We had Juicy Fruit gum.
There’s 10 seconds of flavor lost forever.
Exactly. Fruit Stripe gum had flavor for ten seconds and then - nothing.
Wow, Fruit Stripes Gum...I loved Teaberry Gum as a kid...and Black Jack Gum...
When I was a kid, I loved Fruit Stripe gum. Sure, flavor went away quickly, but I just chewed more. Now I chew sugarless gum. Not as good.
Yup, Loved me some Teaberry gum. And Dentyne cinnamon. Unfortunately NOTHING tastes the same. It’s all artificially flavored now. Tip: Avoid cocoa puffs - they are NASTY now.
Another clear sign that society is going to Hell in a bobsled... Remembering another one: Adam’s Sour Gums. My sister was a fan, and in 1969, wrote the company with her idea to make a large combo-pack (remember when there were the ‘large’ size packs of gum?) with all four flavors in it. They wrote back, thanking her for her idea, and included a box —around half the size of shoebox!— of said gums as a token of their appreciation. Do companies even do things like that anymore?
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