September 2003 | The king of gums

Gum update.

So, today I head out to Uwajimaya, peerless Asian grocery store, in search of my beloved Xylitol Lime Mint, to no avail. Other intriguing gums presented themselves, and so I purchased:

• Meiji Xylish Fruity Mint and Clear Green
• Lotte Cool Mint
• Lotte Black Black Super Menthol (later discovered to not be a gum at all, but rather, a candy).

If I were truly industrious I would race upstairs to scan in the gums and give you an idea of what we are working with here. But it is late, and the scanner is all the way at the top of the stairs, whereas myself and the aforementioned gums are down here.

So far I have only sampled Fruity Mint (thrown into the basket last minute by the husband as a dare) as fruit gums tend toward abstract, chemical flavoring which rather rapidly departs from the gum, leaving the chewer questioning its very purpose. It is no small wonder that mint gums reign supreme for this reason-- they have staying power.

I am unsurprised to announce that Fruity Mint was a rather unsavory coupling nature's worst tasting fruit, the grapefruit, and a barely-there base note of mint which fled the gum like a suspect, leaving me with a quickly closing window of artificial, stingy-sweet grapefruit taste. This said, the entire concept of the Xylish gum packaging redeemed it utterly, as the Xylish gums have built into them a handy pull-out gum pellet storage door that folds into a space-saving half-package once at least six of the twelve pieces had been chewed by a hapless, grapefruit-loving fool. The sheer unamerican concept of saving space in a six inch gum package, which folds upon itself to become even more outrageously, stylishly compact, shot this ungodly flavored gum several rungs up Gum's many-runged ladder of greatness. Of course this leaves Xylish Fruity Mint innumerable rungs beneath the reigning champion of all global gums.... Lotte Xylitol Lime Mint.

(the original rant...)

But first, a letter: it seems a bizarre coincidence that a letter should arrive today describing in totally clear terms exactly what we were trying to accomplish with tiny dog's site re-design. How did he know?

Back to the gum: I just realized that I need to do an extended rant about gum. For the last several years I have been on a global search for the perfect gum, which has led me to reject all American stick-based gums as too substantive and gummy, with that ever present in-your-face pesticide-level of mint (a feature common to all unsubtle Amerigums) in favor of pellet-style gums that hail from distant lands.

So far there is a clear winner in the race for global gum dominance, a gum that is the Lance Armstrong of gums in my experience so far, beating out even the delightfully realistic spearmint flavor of Extra European spearmint pellet gum.

The mightiest of all gums... introduced to me by a co-worker when I was in Tokyo last March... drum roll please:

Tragically, I just finished the last of the 8 packs I had, and now I am totally bereft of any gum save for the scalding mint and overwhelming sweetness of our disgusting Amerigums. The worst part is there are people out there who would consider this critique of unsubtle American gum to be unpatriotic. That's the state of things in the US today people. Shut up and wave your flag and get back into the unemployment line before I kick your ass for insulting American gums!

Hey, peeps. Send mail to mail@tiny-dog.com.