I am a bit wary of buying things that I haven’t seen any advertising for. I tend to feel that the product has something to hide. I don’t know if it’s a nasty side effect, a lack of extreme attitude, or a criminal record, but I am always a bit hesitant. Generally, I never know if I should buy something unless a kid is skateboarding with it or a hot chick is deepthroating it in an ad. These are the things that I think about as I go shopping.

I made an exception with the IceBreakers Ice Cubes because of its novelty factor. This isn’t IceBreakers’s first foray into the world of gimmicky products, so they should know what they’re doing. Anyone remember Liquid Ice and how stupid those commercials with the Duff sisters made you feel? Now that they’re out of the equation, no longer will you question whether it’s liquid, it’s ice, or if anyone gives a damn about your inane queries. It’s all been settled, and ice has apparently won the battle.

IceBreakers Ice Cubes also appealed to me because breaking the ice in a social situation has never really been my cup of tea. This is a big problem in all of the facets of my life. Take philosophy class for example: “According to the rules of Fight Club, isn’t this sentence paradoxical?”

Or pickup basketball games: “Dude, can’t you toss it in? Your balls keep dangling around the rim!”

And especially first dates: “I’ll be honest, one of my guilty pleasures is getting naked in front of a mirror and loudly singing the Pokemon theme song as I gyrate and let ‘em bounce around.”

So I was hoping that these particular IceBreakers would break the streak of bad ones. As I opened the small box, I was immediately hit with the headache-inducing fragrance of fake mint and xylitol. It was not a promising start.

Xylitol is apparently an alternative to sugar that’s supposed to have a natural cooling effect on your tongue. It can also cause nausea and act as a laxative in high enough doses, but the same could be said about almost anything I eat. I’m not going to hold that against it. However, I can’t excuse the fact that it’s a pretty horrible sugar substitute.

Like all of my other icebreakers, these particular cubes failed rather miserably in providing any type of freshness. Not only are they sickeningly sweet, but they have a grainy and unpleasant texture to start. Any cooling effect you’re supposed to get is completely masked. Worst of all, I didn’t even win the damn Singtone contest that I had banked my future on. How will I survive college if people can’t hear my rendition of Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” every time my phone rings?

Overall, the only thing these cubes have going for them is their convenient shape. Now I can see why there are not seen suggestively licked on billboards. If you are the type of person who enjoys munching on sugar cubes and would like to replicate the experience in gum form, then this is the treat for you. For everyone else, the money spent purchasing these supposed “ice cubes” would be better served going towards some real ice cubes and crushed mint.

Admittedly, that would only lead you to heavy drinking after you figure out that you’re halfway towards a mojito, but I can hardly be blamed for your alcoholism.

Item: Icebreakers Ice Cubes
Price: 79 cents
Purchased at: Circle K
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Extremely convenient shape and packaging. Decent enough after initial grainy stage of chew. Possibility of winning a Singtone. The original Pokemon theme song.
Cons: My icebreakers. Way too sweet and grainy. High possibility of not winning a Singtone and the ensuing disappointment. Letting creation of your own mint ice cubes lead you down path of alcoholism.

When a PR firm sent me the Wrigley’s 5 Gum to review, I found out how much gum was too much gum. Thirty packs of it is definitely more gum than I can handle.

If I had an oral fixation, halitosis or wanted to work on my gum sculpting skillz, the three boxes of gum they sent me would’ve lasted me about three weeks. Sure, I could pass the gum to the homeless panhandlers that hangout at the 7-Eleven down the street, but that gum won’t help them buy booze.

Instead, I offer it to you TIB readers via a prize drawing. I’ve got 18 packs of gum left, six in each of the Wrigley’s 5 flavors: Rain (spearmint), Cobalt (peppermint), and Flare (cinnamon). So 18 lucky random readers will each receive a pack of Wrigley’s 5 Gum.

To enter the Wrigley’s 5 Gum prize drawing, just leave a comment for THIS post with the Wrigley’s 5 flavor you want and whatever else you would like to say.

Please fill out the email field, because I’ll be emailing the winners for their mailing addresses. Don’t worry about the shipping, it will be taken care of.

The Impulsive Buy will start accepting entries for the drawing on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 and stop accepting entries on Wednesday, July 4, 2007 (11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time). Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is open to ALL Impulsive Buy readers.

Sometime after July 4th I’ll randomly select the 18 winners.

Good luck!

Fine Print: The Impulsive Buy promises your email address will not be used to sign up for gay porn. The Impulsive Buy also promises your mailing address will not be used to send you information about speed dating events in your area. Bribes will not be accepted. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for lost mail, damaged mail, or you joining Scientology.

The new Wrigley’s 5 gum is being marketed to teens, young adults and anyone else who looks like they belong in the audience for MTV’s TRL.

I’m sure Wrigley’s is hoping that this new sugar-free gum becomes a trend among this valuable age demographic, but I don’t think their public relations people, who sent me three boxes of Wrigley’s 5 gum to review, realized that sending me those samples will probably kill any chance of it becoming popular, because I’m the Grim Reaper when it comes to trends. When I use or do something that’s considered trendy, popular or cool, I unintentionally kill it with my scythe of uncoolness.

It’s like when William Hung sings a song, he ruins it forever. I can’t dance to the Ricky Martin song “She Bangs” anymore because of him.

Speaking of dancing, I have stopped the popularity of so many dance moves that I am not allowed to be on or around a dance floor. I killed the Macarena, The Bangles “Walk Like An Egyptian” dance, Riverdancing, the Electric Slide and whatever that dance Flavor Flav does in Public Enemy music videos.

There was supposed to be a third Breakin’ breakdancing movie called Breakin’ 3: Pop and Lock With Me, but that was cancelled thanks to me and my attempts to do the Worm.

Sure, trends aren’t meant to last forever, but I have the ability to give them an earlier death than the trend hoped for, which helps ensure them a place in a future VH1 retrospective special. You’d think someone out there would thank me for this curse, especially those who used to wear fanny packs or clothing that came in neon fluorescent colors and those who drank Zima, but I haven’t gotten a thank you card or an A&E Biography about me.

So by chewing the Wrigley’s 5 gum I’ve already made it uncool, much like how I killed the phrase, “Fo’ shizzle, ma nizzle” and ruined the Rachel hairstyle made popular by Jennifer Aniston during her Friends days. I probably even ruined the product’s marketing slogan, “5 is the new black,” even though I’m not quite sure what it means. To be honest, its name sounds like something very random that was either pulled out of a hat or pointed to on a refrigerator with a magnetic poetry kit by someone who was blindfolded or an extremely inebriated Britney Spears.

Each pack of Wrigley’s 5 gum has 15 sticks and there are only three flavors: Cobalt, Rain and Flare, which is “cool speak” for peppermint, spearmint and cinnamon, and is now no longer cool because I mentioned it. Its slim, black packaging looks trendy and fits well in the front pocket of my jeans, but because I think it’s trendy, it’s no longer trendy.

If you’ve had any spearmint, peppermint or cinnamon gum from Wrigley’s, you probably won’t notice much of a difference with the Wrigley’s 5. It’s like listening to the Nickelback songs “How You Remind Me” and “Someday.” The intensity of each flavor isn’t as strong as their regular Wrigley’s counterparts, but each stick lasted surprisingly long, like a piece of Extra gum.

Overall, Wrigley’s 5 gum is good, but doesn’t seem like it’s anything innovative.

Although, all of that doesn’t really matter since I already killed any chance of it being popular by chewing it. It’s much like how I stopped the spread of Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star shoes, Starter jackets, the 7-Up “Up Yours” green t-shirts, Slap bracelets, acid washed jeans, Where’s Waldo? books, Members Only jackets, and Techno music.

(Editor’s Note: Brian at the Candy Addict also received free samples of Wrigley’s 5 gum. You can read his review here.)

Item: Wrigley’s 5 Gum
Price: FREE
Purchased at: Received from nice people at a PR firm
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: If you like other peppermint, spearmint or cinnamon gum from Wrigley’s, you’ll probably like these. 15 sticks of gum. Nice packaging and its slim shape makes it easier to slip in my jeans front pocket. Long lasting flavor. Stopping the popularity of fanny packs, bright florescent clothes and Zima.
Cons: Not anything innovative. Product name seems kind of random. My ability to kill trends. No A&E Biography about me. Acid washed jeans. An extremely inebriated Britney Spears, because you might end up married to her.

(Editor’s Note: Please do not attempt this at home. I am a professional stupid person. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for any accidents, injuries, deaths, or gum in hair due to attempting this stupid act.)

You would think that after deep throating a banana for a review, I would be able to easily stick in my mouth the sixty pieces of gum in an Eclipse Spearmint Gum BigEPack. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy.

I also thought it would be easy to do because chewing on sixty pieces of gum is as impressive as anything David Blaine has done. Actually, the chewing of sixty pieces of gum at one time is probably more impressive than anything he’s done.

Originally, I thought I would pop a piece of gum into my mouth one by one each minute like I was Rush Limbaugh with painkillers. Unfortunately, after ten minutes of popping gum into my mouth, I wasn’t feeling very well.

I spit out the ten pieces of chewed gum and drank some water. The cool liquid surprisingly burned my throat a little. I think the excessive minty flavor of all that gum was probably the reason for that. My slightly burnt throat kind of freaked me out, but at the same time I knew my breath was extremely minty fresh and I wished I had a beautiful woman to make out with…as long as she didn’t try to stick her tongue down my throat, because that might burn a little.

Instead, I had to settle for my pillow.

Giving up my quest to chew an entire container of the Eclipse Spearmint Gum BigEPak was something that crossed my mind, but I’m not a quitter. I may be a wuss, I may own a pink striped shirt, I may not have had the balls to ask out the hot girl at work out on a date until it was too late because I didn’t want to be the rebound guy, and I may listen to Harry Connick Jr., but I’m not a quitter.

The following night, I decided to finish the rest of the gum, but took a different approach. Instead of popping one piece after another, I decided to chew five at a time. Then when it’s well chewed I would place it in a bowl to chew on later, then put five more pieces of gum into my mouth. I would repeat the process until all the gum was gone.

But even this process was like I was running in a marathon, I may be in pain and I really want to stop, but it’ll be so sweet when I cross the finish line. Actually, I have no idea what it’s like to run a marathon, half-marathon, quarter-marathon, or even make a run for the border for Taco Bell.

Eventually, I was able to get through all fifty pieces and form a giant wad of gum, which you can see in the picture above. The wad was roughly the size of my iPod nano, but I was able to stick the whole thing in my mouth. With so much gum, I couldn’t blow bubbles with it, but since it was so large, there was enough gum to form objects and I could’ve made a holiday claymation special with the sticky and slimy Play-Doh-like substance.

While chewing on the huge wad and thinking of what my chewing gum claymation special would be about, all the minty goodness from the gum made me nauseous so I spit it out and threw it away. Or the nauseous feeling could’ve been from all of those pictures of Britney’s crotch I was viewing while chewing the gum.

Item: Eclipse Spearmint Gum BigEPak
Price: $3.99
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: 60 pieces of gum. Freshens breath. Cheaper than buying five packs of regular Eclipse gum to get sixty pieces. Big wad of gum is hard to blow bubbles with. A claymation special using chewing gum.
Cons: Chewing 50 pieces of gum at one time. The burning sensation while drinking water that was caused by the excessive minty flavor of the gum. Seeing Britney’s hoo hah way too many times. Big wad of gum is hard to blow bubbles with. Making out with my pillow.

Coffee.

For many it’s a morning elixir or a liquid alarm clock, if you will.

I’m not a coffee connoisseur for several reason: I hate waiting in long lines at Starbucks and I hear hot coffee farts aren’t pleasant at all.

A co-worker once asked me, how I can be so cheery and perky in the morning since I don’t drink coffee. I told her that I’m high on life and look forward to every morning because it’s the beginning of a brand new day, full of experiences, wonder, delight, and sunshine.

After telling her this, she told me she hated me and then with a glimmer of animosity in her eyes, she took the lid off of her six dollar Starbucks espresso, had thoughts about throwing the scalding hot liquid at my face, but soon came to her senses, not because the hot coffee would burn me, but because she would be wasting a six dollar Starbucks espresso and would have to wait in a long line to get another.

Of course, what I told her wasn’t the truth, but I couldn’t tell her what really got me going every morning, which was either crack cocaine or lines of regular cocaine off of a passed out stripper’s ass.

I may not be a coffee drinker, but I seem to like coffee-flavored products, like ice cream and candy. I enjoy these products because they tend to be just like the way I like my women, artificially colored and flavored. Recently, I got to try the Wrigley’s Doublemint Kona Creme coffee flavored gum, which finally appeared on the shelves here after being announced earlier this year.

You would think that having the town of Kona on one of these rocks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, would pretty much guarantee the Kona Creme gum being on store shelves here when it was introduced, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

For those who don’t know, Kona coffee is considered to be one of the premium coffees in the world and it comes from a little town called Kona, which is a tourist destination, much like Oahu’s Waikiki or Maui’s Lahaina, except significantly smaller and without any transvestite prostitutes.

Speaking of transvestite prostitutes, this Wrigley’s Doublemint Kona Creme gum is very much like one, because at first it was pretty good, but then after a little more chewing and digging it became something I didn’t expect…nor want…nor pay extra for.

When I first put it in my mouth it had a very good coffee flavor, which tasted much like other Kona coffee products I’ve tried. However, about a minute later that flavor turned into something I didn’t want to savor. It turned bad like it was Darth Vader and now I’m a Kona Creme gum hater and don’t really trust its creator.

Um, I’m not too sure why those last two sentences ended up rhyming.

But it might’ve been the cocaine.

(Editor’s Note: Back in April, Impulsive Buy reader Nina asked if I could review the Kona Creme gum and here’s the review….seven months later. Also, TIB friend TG reviewed the WDKC earlier in the year at NYCE. OK!)

Item: Wrigley’s Doublemint Kona Creme Gum
Price: 99 cents
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Good coffee flavor while it lasted. Doing lines of coke off of a passed out stripper’s ass. Being high on life and looking forward to every morning because it’s the beginning of a brand new day, full of experiences, wonder, delight, and sunshine.
Cons: Flavor doesn’t last very long. When the flavor runs out, it tastes pretty bad. No caffeine. Transvestite prostitutes, unless you’re into them. Coffee farts. Long lines at Starbucks for expensive coffee. Won’t freshen breath.

As I chewed on the Extra Cool Watermelon Gum, I wondered how can I be extra cool. How can I be the pinnacle of cool? How can I be so cool that if I wore a cardboard Burger King crown everywhere I went, everyone in the country would want to wear one?

But before I could become extra cool, I had to figure out how to be just plain old cool. The only way I could figure out how to do this was by watching the ultimate indicator of coolness…MTV.

So what did I learn from watching MTV?

The first thing I need to become cool is to get some Grillz made for me. Preferably, I need thirty down at the bottom, thirty mo’ at the top.

Another thing I need to become cool is that I must live in the community of Laguna Beach, in a house with a bunch of cameras and roommates from different backgrounds, but one of them definitely either needs to be gay, African-American, or both.

Also, I need to have a super sweet 16 party at some fancy-schmancy place with Fall Out Boy or Maroon 5 playing.

Oh yeah, I also need spinning chrome rims for my car.

But now that I think about it, all of this wouldn’t just make me cool, it would automatically make me extra cool. Sure it’s expensive, but I think it’s worth it.

Grillz…$30,000.

A crib in Laguna Beach…$7 million.

Super Sweet 16 Party…$35,000.

Spinning chrome rims…$20,000.

Seeing people around the country wear a Burger King crown on their head because I made it cool…Priceless.

Now all I need is about $7.1 million dollars and I’ll be on my way to coolness and the rest of y’all will be on your way to wearing cardboard Burger King crowns.

However, right now, I’m not even as cool as this Extra Cool Watermelon Gum.

Not only does it have the word “cool” on its packaging, it also comes in pink, which is probably the coolest color out there for women, some gay men, guys who have their girlfriends pick their clothes, and people who mix their whites and colors in the washing machine.

It also has very good watermelon taste, which was a taste I would’ve expected from Hubba Bubba gum, Bubblicious gum, Big League Chew gum, or a stripper who LOVES watermelon body oil, but not from a stick of Extra gum. How cool is that?

Even by association, the Extra Cool Watermelon Gum doesn’t even make me slightly cool. Right now, I think I’m as cool as an over-produced, mass-marketed “Vote for Pedro” t-shirt.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Impulsive Buy reader dramastically for letting me know about the Extra Cool Watermelon Gum. Also, go read TG’s take on the gum at NYCE.)

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Item: Extra Cool Watermelon Gum
Purchase Price: $1.09
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Pros: Significantly cooler than me. Good watermelony flavor. Decent-lasting flavor. No watermelon seeds. Chewing it doesn’t make me slightly cool. Comes in pink, which is good for some people. Strippers who love watermelon body oil.
Cons: Can’t blow decent bubbles with it. “Vote for Pedro” t-shirts. The amount of money needed to become extra cool. Not being able to realize my dream of seeing people wear cardboard Burger King crowns on their heads.

It’s hard to choose which Limited Edition Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum flavor I like best, because the blue and pink flavors are very similar.

They both have juicy AND fruity flavors; both are limited edition; neither comes in the color they’re named after; both have short-lasting flavor; and both have two of the most unoriginal chewing gum flavor names EVER.

Since I can’t decide which one I prefer, I think the best way to figure it out is to have an ol’ fashioned Color-off, which is a competition that involves naming things off of the top of my head that come in either color OR has the color in its name. Then I rate each item as either something positive or negative.

I have to come up with ten items for each color, count the positives, and then the one with the most positives will be the winner.

Ready? Here we go!

Pink prime rib…Positive (Unless you like your meat well done, then if that’s the case, go eat something else).

Blue police lights…Positive (Unless you’re wanted for something).

Pink poodles…Negative.

The blue sky…Positive (Unless you’re falling through it without a parachute).

The diet soft drink Tab…Negative.

The Blue Lagoon…Positive (Unless you’re a guy and masturbated to the love scenes, which is wrong because Brooke Shields was only 14 years old at the time).

An orangutang in a pink lace ballerina skirt…Positive (Unless it’s throwing its own poop at you).

Blue balls…Negative.

Pink eye…Negative.

Blue denim jeans…Positive (Unless you’re wearing it with a blue denim jacket, blue denim cap, blue denim long-sleeve shirt, and blue denim shoes).

Pink Floyd…Positive (Unless you think Pink Floyd is the name of an alcoholic drink, because you’re too young to know what Pink Floyd is).

Weezer’s Blue Album…Positive (Unless you don’t like Jonas).

Weezer’s Pinkerton Album…Positive (Unless you hate critically acclaimed albums that didn’t have a lot of record sales).

The Blue Pill from the Matrix…Negative (Unless you like living in ignorance, unaware of reality, and enjoy having a bunch of tubes sticking out of your body in a robotic human growing farm).

Pink Energizer Bunny…Positive (Unless you have a headache).

Blue Man Group…Negative (Unless you’re also into Smurfs).

The Pink Power Ranger…Positive (Unless you prefer the Yellow Power Ranger).

The TV show Blue Thunder…Positive (Unless you didn’t see any of the episodes during its very short 11 episode run).

Pigs, either alive or in raw bacon form…Positive (Unless you hate mud, the movie Babe, or have heart disease).

Blue Viagra pills…Positive (Unless your erection has lasted longer than five hours).

Done.

Hmm…Seven pink positives and seven blue positives?

Damn! That didn’t solve anything.

Anyway, the real winner is Wrigley’s for coming up with a way, albeit an overused way by Hershey’s, to sell gum. Also, the real losers are those of us who bought these packs of Limited Edition Juicy Fruit gum.

The flavors aren’t very special, they don’t last very long, and they have totally unoriginal names, much like boy bands.

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Item: Limited Edition Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum
Purchase Price: $1.09 each
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Pros: Fruity AND Juicy. Limited edition. Pigs. The TV show Blue Thunder. Weezer’s Pinkerton album. The Pink Power Ranger. The Energizer Bunny. Weezer’s Blue Album. Blue jeans. Pink Floyd. An orangutang in a pink lace ballerina skirt. The blue sky. Blue police lights. Pink prime rib. The Blue Lagoon. Viagra.
Cons: Not a low calorie food. Short-lasting flavor. Neither come in the colors they’re named after. Most unoriginal flavor names EVER, would’ve been better if they were named Blew Blew Blue Boo Boo and Tinkle Tinkle Pinkle Pinkle. Blue Man Group. The Blue Pill. Pink eye. Blue balls. Tab. Pink poodles.