If you take a look at your standard grocery checkout line, you’ll notice that on the sides are the stores’ last attempts to take your money. Candy bars that are too fancy for your budget (cookie batter flavored Twix and strawberry KitKats), tiny disc batteries, unusable $10 gift cards for Outback Steakhouse, and tabloids about Kate Middleton are only some of the things you can purchase as you wait your turn in line. 

Yet, next to all those seldom-needed trinkets is the gum area.

When I look at the gum shelves, I am immediately bombarded by the sheer amount of choices. Should I get the Extra strawberry lemonade gum? The fancy Simply peppermint gum? The cuboidal Icebreakers berry gum? What about the Mentos wintergreen gum? What even is wintergreen?!

Usually, I choose the gum with the most pieces for the lowest price, but I am usually disappointed by the actual quality of my purchase. So this time, I decided to find out which chewing gum is actually the best.

I tried many different brands of gum, and to make it fair, only tried the spearmint flavor, which is a popular flavor across the board. I tested each one based on five components: its initial flavor, how long the flavor lasts, its texture, its price, and how many are needed for a satisfying chewing experience.

After reviewing the following four chewing gum brands, a strong winner emerged.

Extra Gum

After telling my friends that I was going to undertake the solemn process of reviewing chewing gum, none were as excited as my friend Sanjana Prabhu (others just told me that gum is gum). She was so excited, in fact, that she gave me a piece of Extra spearmint gum during Health so I didn’t need to buy an entire pack (thank you, Sanjana).

Extra gum is probably the most famous of all current gum brands (or, at least, the most bought), so I knew what I was getting myself into when trying it.

Extra’s flavor is light. There is definitely a minty flavor, but it is too subtle to be discerned easily. It’s not very spectacular.

However, the nice thing about the taste is that it lasts for a long time—about 10 1/2 minutes. If I wanted to replenish the taste, I could have probably chewed a second piece, but just the one was sufficient for me. 

This one piece, which Sanjana admitted was stored in her backpack for some time, was a little tough at the beginning. Sure, it crumbled a bit at first (which one should expect if they don’t store it correctly), but with the mysterious magic of Extra gum, it became a normal gum texture after a few minutes of chewing.

Still, like some gum I have tried before, eventually Extra’s texture goes from a bit tough, to normal, to tasteless mush. 

That being said, it is one of the most accessible gum brands out there and one of the most chewed, too. I feel almost intimately familiar with Extra gum, from its fun-to-play-with silver foil wrapping (in which I wrote notes about its spearmint gum on), its stick shape, and even its packaging.

Its small pack, which houses 15 sticks, is sold for around $2 (a little more than 13 cents per piece), while the “over two packs!” version is sold at $3 for 35 pieces (eight 1/2 cents per piece). This was the best part of Extra gum!

This is definitely not the best gum in terms of taste and texture, but its availability in stores and its low price compared to niche gum brands makes it a solid 5.2/10 (3/10 for initial taste, 6/10 for longevity, 5/10 for texture, 9/10 for price, 4/10 for how many needed).

Trident Gum

Trident is Extra’s lesser-known sibling in a tween novel: the one no one really pays attention to, but it achieves a lot more than one assumes at first glance.

Trident, which is a dark green that looks coated in powder, is packaged in smaller sticks than Extra (meaning two pieces are needed), but its flavor is much stronger. The flavor seems weaved into the gum at first, and as I chewed through the stick, there was a minty juice that kept the gum flavorful. Sometimes, rather bizarrely, I tasted light undertones of bubblegum as well. 

Even with its initial punch, the taste fades after five minutes. The minty back-of-throat flavor lasts for a lot longer, though: 15-20 minutes.

The nice thing about Trident gum is that even after the flavor is gone, it doesn’t become unappetizing, especially because of its texture.

It stays consistently gummy and never turns to soft clumps or hard cement. Because of this, I am content to chew this gum for more than an hour, unlike others that I have to get rid of shortly after they lose their flavor.

As much as I like this gum, it is too expensive. Stores sell Trident for $2-3 for 14 pieces (14 to 21 cents per piece), which is more than double the cost of other chewing gum brands. This, unlike the Extra gum, is the worst part about Trident.

As I chewed this gum, all I could think about (beyond excessively worrying about my math quiz and wondering what I will have for lunch) was how much money I spent on it. Sure, this gum is pretty nice, but it’s also pretty expensive. Is it worth it? I’m not so sure.

Its flavor and longevity is stellar, but its price makes this gum a 6/10 (9/10 for initial taste, 6/10 for longevity, 9/10 for texture, 2/10 for price, and 4/10 for how many needed).

Mentos Gum

At first glance, a piece of spearmint Mentos gum looks like a regular Mento: white but also with green specks. I half expected it to be a Mento when I first tried it. 

It is, in fact, not a Mento.

Once I started chewing it, I was immediately and severely hit with a stronger-than-strong mint flavor. Imagine mouthwash, but sweeter.

As a gum connoisseur (for that is the only way to describe me now), I could actually taste subtle notes of “Mento shell” underneath the initial strong minty taste.

Did I mention that the flavor is strong?

And yet, while the taste longevity is aided by the green jelly advertised on the package, the flavor fades fast, usually lasting for three to five minutes. The only way the taste is preserved is the mintyness that lingers in the back of the throat for 30 minutes.

That being said, I usually need two pieces for a satisfying experience because of its small Mento size, and I recommend spacing out when you use the second piece to extend the length of time the flavor lasts.

On another note, because it is Mentos branded chewing gum, the texture of the gum is decidedly very interesting. There is a hard outer shell that coats the chewy part, so when I started chewing this gum, it was a bit crunchy at first, which was definitely a weird experience.

The jelly part on the inside does nothing beyond adding a very faint flavor and making the gum green. 

I have a surplus of this gum from before I wrote this article, simply because it was the brand I deemed most cost effective: $4 for 50 pieces (eight cents per piece).  

Overall, this Mentos gum is worth it (and “valuable” in my book). It’s a good 7.2/10 (9/10 for taste, 8/10 for longevity, 7/10 for texture, 9/10 for price, and 3/10 for how many needed).

Icebreakers Gum

Listen. Icebreakers mints are great! They wake me up with their strong taste, they freshen my breath, and, in turn, they get the job done. 

Disappointingly, their spearmint gum does not. 

Icebreakers spearmint gum is cuboidal (like other gum flavors of this brand) and is decorated with blue specks. Why are the specks blue if it’s spearmint gum and the packaging is green? Only Icebreakers advertisers and developers know.

The cubes themselves are quite small: about one would take up the volume of a die. Because of that, at least two pieces are needed to even compare to other sizes that occur in different gum brands. And, honestly, they smell. The smell is mysteriously not mint-like, and it is not entirely identifiable what said smell is.

But the flavor itself isn’t bad; it’s just not good either. There’s definitely a mint taste there, but it isn’t as strong as Mentos or Trident. There’s nothing really spectacular about the flavor for 30 seconds.

After that semi-glorious interval, the flavor fades quickly. Once the flavor diminishes, the texture, for some weird reason, fluctuates, as if it can’t decide how to make itself annoying.

It starts out hard, then becomes a gummy texture that is somehow different than all the previous ones. It’s half gum-like, half powder-like. 

Once I got used to that weirdness, it turned tough again, forcing me to chew harder, and in turn, gain a headache (who knew chewing gum could be that serious?). In a shocking turn of events, the texture turned soft again after 30 minutes of my having a headache.

This gum had a mind of its own.

At least it’s a cheap(er) mind of its own. It’s typically sold at $4 for 40 pieces, making it about 10 cents per piece. 

Perhaps the best part of Icebreakers gum is its packaging: a rectangular prism of plastic that has two options for opening it. Echoing regular Icebreakers mints, there is the “one” option, which in reality can dispense zero or two pieces at a time, and the slightly overkill “many” option which opens the entire top of the package.

This gum was, frankly, a roller coaster. Some parts were good, but most were stomach-dropping, headache-inducing messes. It’s a 4.2/10 (5/10 for initial taste, 3/10 for longevity, 2/10 for texture, 9/10 for price, and 2/10 for how many needed).

The solemn verdict: which one was “mint” to be?

Most people told me that gum is gum. They don’t really care which one they choose, as long as it works. While that is true, sometimes it’s important to invest in the correct gum. Which one is the best in terms of flavor? Texture? Price? Which one is reliably there and doesn’t give you headaches or a bad taste in your mouth? For me, the answer is decidedly Mentos gum.

It has an amazingly strong taste that lingers for a long time, it’s cheaper than other gum brands, and while its texture is initially weird, it eventually turns into real gum texture.

However, if I, for some reason, wanted stick gum instead, Trident is a good substitute. If it weren’t for the price, Trident probably would have been the superior gum.

In the end, gum is gum. Pick whichever one you like the most! It’s a matter of personal preference, whether it’s between brands or even flavors.

Just don’t get it stuck in your hair.