Ice Breakers Candy: History, Varieties & Flavors

Snack History Nostalgia Rating: ⭐⭐☆☆☆

Ice Breakers candy is really more like a breath mint. There are many varieties of this candy and you will love the freshness of all of them that cannot be found in any other candy. You will also probably really enjoy the cute and stylish containers of these candies because they will fit right into a bag or a purse with ease.

This candy has been around since the 90s and you will love that you will get the same breath mint properties as some other breath freshening products without needing to chew gum or suck on a mint for hours. Ice Breakers is a really unique candy for this genre and many people love this product because it does not fit in the mold.

History

Ice Breakers candy has been around since the 1990s and Nabisco made it first. This was actually the same company that made LifeSavers candy and you will immediately see some parallels between LifeSavers and this breath mint product. The LifeSavers brand was bought out by Hershey in 2000 for a huge sum of money and being under the umbrella of this new company has not changed the Ice Breakers candy brand in any material way.

As of 2006, Hershey had the largest share of the chewing-gum market and Ice Breakers candy were a part of their successful lineup of breath freshening products. This product has been key to Hershey’s expansion in this area in recent years and they have added some unique flavors to the brand that have made it an even bigger success than before. Not everyone wants chewing gum that is sticky and heavy and Ice Breakers are like a happy medium between chewing gum and breath mints.

The Ice Breakers brand makes mint-like products as well as items that are more like chewing gum. Many of the Ice Breakers candy lineup are shaped like small cubes that are chewy like gum right off the bat but with a crunchy and minty texture that makes them really refreshing. One of the early efforts of Hershey’s to bring awareness to the brand was an ad campaign that included Jessica Simpson. There were also deals that were signed with Haylie Duff and Hilary Duff that same year. These ads helped convince younger people to be invested in the product and did bring more attention to the brand than it had previously enjoyed.

MTV also advertised the brand extensively and there were even promotional packs that were bleu and red and were marketed with cinnamon and cool mint with the MTV logo on them. These unique styles were featured in some movies during this period and Robert Downey Jr. and Michele Monaghan talked about Ice Breakers briefly in a movie called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

In 2018, Ice Breakers candy added an edible variety with glitter that was intended to appeal to Millennials. There have also been recent ads that were done with NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick and US Ski and Snowboard Association athletes.

The 2007 Ice Breakers candy PACS that was powdery and encased in 2 dissolving layers actually caught negative attention for looking like street drugs to some consumers. Hershey’s asserted that the product did not look like any kind of illegal substance but they did pull it from the market a few months later. This product was actually banned in some companies because it contained pig gelatin.

This is a sugar-free candy which is a nice benefit and the cute round cases are still the same as they were when the product was first sold. There is nothing else on the market quite like this candy that is also like gum and you will enjoy fresh breath and an enjoyable eating experience when you pick up some Ice Breakers candy to try.

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Varieties

There are both gum and hard mint versions of this product and you will probably find that both are enjoyable for their own reasons. There is something special about each variety and you can get fresher breath with either of these great products.

• Ice Breakers Ice Cubes Peppermint
• Ice Breakers Coolmint Sugar-Free Mints
• Ice Breakers Ice Cubes Arctic
• Ice Breakers Duo Strawberry
• Ice Breakers Ice Cubes Spearmint
• Ice Breakers Cherry Limeade
• Ice Breakers Duo- Various Flavors
• Cinnamon Ice Breakers

All of these products have a cooling and breath freshening component that makes them really great to keep on hand in your purse or car just in case you need fresh breath. The Ice Cubes gum lasts for a long time and keeps its flavor and the mint candies are flavorful and really excellent in quality.

There are stick versions of the gum as well as the cube-style offerings that come in the handy plastic box. Many people are more familiar with the cubes since they are more novel and memorable overall. The cube styles were also more extensively advertised over the last ten years and they are connected with the more exciting “flavor crystals” which the brand promises will explode in your mouth for lasting freshness.

What the favor crystals do best is make for a unique and crunchy gum that does retain flavor more much longer than traditional stick gums will. The overall minty presence that is involved in any flavor of this product is memorable and the flavor crystals are likely to thank for this part of the unique taste of this gum and breath mint. Most people do not connect gum with lasting fresh breath, but the Ice Breakers brand can actually deliver on this goal really well.

If you do not like the crunchy inclusions that are in the flavor cubes or the chewy mint styles of this product, you will want to get the regular gum offerings that the company makes. These are less commonly sold and are definitely much more like a regular stick of gum than the rest of the company’s lineup of products. This is a totally acceptable choice, but you will be missing out on the things that make this product different from other gum and mint styles. Plus, if you really do want to chew gum to have fresher breath, you need the original cube version of this product to meet that goal.

Ingredients

This ingredient list is for the basic version that is peppermint and is the Ice Cubes Mint Rather than the gum. The ingredients can vary some from flavor to flavor. From the Ice Breakers candy website:

• Xylitol
• Gum base
• Maltitol syrup
• Mannitol
• Natural flavor
• Artificial flavor
• Maltodextrin
• Lecithin (Soy)
• Artificial color Blue 1
• Aspartame
• Gelatin
• Acesulfame potassium
• BHT
• Phenylalanine

Nutrition

Serving Size: About 53 servings per container	1 mint (0.8g)	% Daily Value*
Amount per serving
Calories	5
Total Fat	0g	0%
Saturated Fat	0g	0%
Trans Fat	0g
Cholesterol	0mg	0%
Sodium	0mg	0%
Total Carbohydrate	1g	0%
Dietary Fiber	0g	0%
Total Sugars	0g
Added Sugars	0g	0%
Sugar Alcohol	1g
Protein	0g
Vitamin D	0mcg	0%
Vitamin D	0mcg	0%
Calcium	0.02mg 0%	0%
Iron	0mg	0%
Potassium	0mg	0%

• The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Marketing

This product has been extensively marketed as a breath freshener that will hold up to the toughest of challenges. Both the gum and the mints have been marketed in this way and the common audience that these products are aimed at are younger people and teens.

Many ads will show parties, rave-like environments, and more that are then revealed to exist inside someone’s mouth when the camera pans back. There are usually also lots of images of snowflakes and cold and other signs that the mints are cooling the environment around them. Some more recent ads involved the windows frosting up in a car or other location where teens or young people have put these products into their mouths.

The hint of dating-style situations is often quite strongly indicated in these ads and you will immediately see that the company wants you to view this product as one that will help you to be at your best for a date or other social interaction that requires fresh breath. Attractive people in intimate situations in the car or a small space are also commonly featured in the ads for all of the Ice Breakers candy products. This was a strategic move by the Hershey company to try to make sure that these products replaced regular chewing gum for fresh breath.

While this might not have been 100% successful, the efforts in ads were not without success. Many younger people still gravitate toward these products and favor them over the gum for a breath pick-me-up on the go. The enjoyable crunchy and sharply mentholated experience of these products is really enjoyable and you might not reserve them just for social settings due to the really nice taste profile that they can offer.

There were some recent ad campaigns that involved a lot of silly chaos going on and a unicorn would always show up at some point in each ad. These were really memorable marketing campaigns that were very successful as shorts on social media and YouTube. While strange, these ads were memorable and might have been concocted to try and create the same slightly shocking impression that the Orbitz gum ads of the same era conveyed. Shocking commercials were common in the early 2000s, and Ice breakers ads from this period were on-brand for this trend.

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Commericals

A recent Ice Breakers candy advertisement:

An add for a duo flavor:

A watermelon ad:

Ice Breakers as a party in your mouth: