Fruit Stipe gum has officially been discontinued. And fans are reeling.
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.
Fruit Stripe gum had the unfortunate distinction of being the most delicious thing you've ever put in your mouth, a total whirlwind of flavor... for five seconds. Then it's just sugar, then shortly after that, it's just nothing. It's like something Willy Wonka would have wished for on a monkey's paw.
Ah yes. The memories of a few minutes of flavor and a few more of sadness as you chew hoping it would return.
I'll never forget that time at 6yrs old when I just kept chewing. It eventually just disintegrated and I was left with the consistency of old wet kleenex. I had to literally scrape my tongue to get rid of it all.
There was a short time around 1977, during which my wildest fantasy of the best and happiest thing that could possibly happen to me (short of truly fantastical and nigh-impossible things like going to Disneyland, which I wasn't yet sure really existed) would have been to receive multiple packs of Fruit Stripe gum.
It did, on the insides of the wrappers. They never worked very well, and even if you could get one to transfer they tended to last about as long as the flavor in the gum itself did.
I can't say I'm entirely surprised... I distinctly remember getting Fruit Stripe gum because it just looked so cool and being disappointed that it wasn't actually very good every time lol
Incredible. It's the only gum I've ever tried that crumbled to bits when chewed. Even just bought, it was like it had been sitting in the Arizona sun for decades.
It's a video loop of cartoon Spiderman grasping at a disappearing mist. I guess it's a gif but it also has a play/pause function so who knows what format it is.
It's hard to tell what will actually function on Lemmy. I think WebP files that aren't jpegs have been causing grief too, I see a lot of blank posts that are probably that format. A ton of pictures are WebP now even though you'd expect an older format.
Also I'm on desktop, so if you're mobile that might explain things.