me’s blog

Anyone who has asked me for a piece of gum over the past few months has undoubtedly had to endure an enthusiastic spiel from me about the wonders of Stride gum.  You see, I’d always had problems with nearly all brands of chewing gum losing their flavor after about 15 minutes in my mouth.  Were I to continue chewing beyond that point, the gum’s taste would inevitably become increasingly heinous and would make my mouth feel fonkay, which always struck me as a cruel irony since the whole point of chewing the gum in the first place was to freshen my breath.

This spring I saw a commercial for Stride gum.  It’s the one where all the guys in the gum factory are talking about how Stride’s flavor lasts forever.  Then one guy pipes up about how that could eventually be bad for business, because with such enduring flavor, people will no longer have to buy as much gum as they used to.  Just at that moment, all the machines in the gum factory grind to a screeching halt.

A key part of my customary Stride spiel is that it’s the very first product I can ever remember buying strictly because of a television commercial.  I mean, the ad declares that the flavor basically lasts TOO LONG, so I thought, hmmm, I’ll be the judge of that.  Well you know what?  The commercial was right!  Stride’s flavor does indeed last a for a couple hours in my mouth, which was nothing short of a miracle to me.  For a while it seemed I’d found the answer to my prayers.

Then summer rolled around, and I began noticing something slightly disturbing.  The flat pack of Stride gum, once unwrapped, would sort of melt together in my pocket over the course of one moderately hot summer day.  Each piece of gum is individually wrapped in waxy paper, but the pieces would all kinda mush together and the paper would sort of melt into the gum, causing a kind of sweat to form on the outside of the wrappers, which would then adhere the wrapped pieces of gum to the inside of the pack.  Needless to say, it’s disgusting.  And once the wrapper comes unstuck from the pack, it’s a whole other adventure trying to unstick the gum from the wrapper.  By the time it’s ready to ingest, it looks like something that’s been scraped off a movie theater floor or out of the treads of some nasty-ass sneakers, making it a much harder sell to my friends.

"Um, but the flavor lasts forever!  I promise!  Just don’t look at it!"

I thought maybe this occurrence was unique to me, since I’d never met anyone else who was an out-and-proud Stride user.  I thought that perhaps when the awesome power of the gum’s unstoppable flavor was combined with my slightly above-average sweating tendencies during the summer, that the conditions were just right to fire up some kind of volatile chemical reaction in my pants and my pants alone.  Or something.  But last week my friend Hope confirmed that I am not alone.  She is also a Stride devotee, and she too has had to confront her own sweaty pack issues.

So today I decided to take action.  I called the now-blurry 1-800 customer feedback number on the soggy pack of Stride from which I’ve been peeling my gum today (pictured above), and I got a very nice young man on the other end of the line.  I expressed to him my great appreciation for Stride, then proceeded to air my concerns.  He said that the sticky pack situation was a huge concern during Stride’s first summer of production in 2006, and that they had taken steps to rectify the situation this year.  Obviously, however, the problem still exists, and apparently I am far from the first to sound the alarm.  He thanked me for my feedback, took down my mailing information, and said I would be receiving some Stride coupons in the mail within the next week.

It felt good to give something back, you know?  Maybe, just maybe, I made a little bit of a difference today.  And if nothing else, at least now I’ve got a little something to look forward to as the unpleasantly frigid - yet delightfully unsweaty - winter months approach.  Free, dry gum!  Huzzah!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.