I was hesitant to try the new Juicy Fruit Starburst gum, currently available in strawberry and cherry flavors. The original Juicy Fruit—one of the few gums that I’ll chew on occasion that is not sugarless—is not known for keeping its flavor for more than 2-3 minutes. I can go through a pack of five sticks in less than 10 minutes! But I gave it a go, and I was pleasantly surprised—the flavor lasted almost 7x longer than the original.

Speaking of the original, sometime in the early 2000s, Juicy Fruit began a new ad campaign that used the tagline, “Gotta Have Sweet?” I often wondered if they stole that line from me—well, from a gentleman who helped me move on Labor Day weekend of 1997. I was living in Richmond, Va., at the time, which is a very hot and humid part of the country. That weekend was no exception; in fact, I think it was a recordbreaker for temperatures (at least it felt like it). I’d hired a moving company, who brought four men to the job, all of whom were none too pleased to learn that I lived on the third floor of an apartment building without an elevator or air conditioning.

One of the men was older than the others by decades, and he couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds. Each time he came up the stairs to grab another box, I heard him singing gospel hymns. Toward the end, they were just the melodies of the gospel hymns, but the lyrics involved me: “Oh Lord, I just can’t carry any more of her stuff!” and “Oh Lord, give the strength to carry one more of this lady’s boxes!” I’d bought a couple of dozen doughnuts for the guys, and he was a big fan of the jelly-filled, powdered treats. Each time he sank his teeth into the soft doughnut, he’d sing, in the same melody as the others, “I gotta have my sweeeeet!”

Want to see a super cute timeline of Juicy Fruit’s “Packaging through the Years”? Check out Wrigley’s website.

The Mastication Evaluation

Strawberry

• Flavor: 5/5 — it’s like having a super juicy strawberry; delish!
• Scent: 5/5 — like freshly picked and cut strawberries, macerated in the sweetest sugar
• Texture: 5/5 — soft and super easy to chew, and it’s great for blowing bubbles
• Taste Time: 2/5 — wow, the flavor ended rather abruptly at 14 minutes, and it was baaad
• Long-Term Usage: 2/5 — same with flavor, about 14 minutes
• Overall: 3.8/5 — the flavor and chewability just didn’t last long enough

Cherry

• Flavor: 4/5 — that first taste is pretty amazing, and it tastes EXACTLY like a cherry Starburst candy, but it felt quick to dissipate
• Scent: 4/5 — very cherry, as you’d expect, but with a hint of disinfectant, which you would not expect
• Texture: 4/5 — soft and super easy to chew, but seemed to harden quickly
• Taste Time: 2/5 — the flavor was finally dead by 9 minutes
• Long-Term Usage: 3/5 — I probably could have kept chewing it, but there was no flavor
• Overall: 3.4/5 — I think cherry is like the original Juicy Fruit for me, in that I’ll chew a piece for about 5 minutes, pitch it, and start with a fresh stick.

Find 15 sticks per pack, which has the ol’ tuck-and-fold way to “reseal” the pack.

Nutritional Information also can be found on Wrigley’s website.