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It's not surprising that sales for sugar-free chewing gum are up this year, considering the influx of new sugar-free gums into the marketplace and an increase of sugar-free products in general. The sugar-free candy category altogether rose 41.7% in sales from last year, according to Information Resources Inc. data available Aug. 10.
What may be surprising to some industry watchers is the reduced interest in many breath strips that hit the market last year. Still, new breath strip players like Altoids Strips and Wrigley's Eclipse Flash and Winterfresh Thin Ice gained enough dollars to rank them in the top 10 this year.
Wrigley's Eclipse Flash breath strips were a logical extension of the Eclipse brand, and its breath-freshening benefits, says Kelly McGrail, director of corporate communications for Chicago-based Wrigley. Similarly, Winterfresh is a favored breath-freshening gum among teens. Wrigley wanted to make sure that this particular consumer group, which likes to be on the cutting edge, had this new format in the well-known brand.
"The breath strip category has not necessarily shown the growth that was projected at the start, but consumer's like the format and it provides an opportunity to leverage the value and equity of our Wrigley brands, particularly the breath-freshening brands, into new, incremental categories," McGrail says. "It's an increasingly crowded segment, but that is helping to attract consumer attention."
But, breath strips are not the only new offering from Wrigley. For the first time in Juicy Fruit's more than 100-year history, the brand is available in two new flavors - Strappleberry and Grapermelon. "Juicy Fruit was restaged as part of our initiative to revitalize our sugar brands," McGrail explains.
During the restage,...