Fruit Stripe, the striped gum known for its short burst of flavor, has been discontinued after more than half a century, sparking nostalgic tributes on social media.
“Best two seconds of taste you've ever had,” one Reddit user wrote on Wednesday. “Rest to a legend.”
In the late 1960s, rainbow-colored packs of fruit strip chewing gum first appeared in stores across the United States. Ferrara, a Chicago-based pastry chef, announced this week that he had stopped making the product.
“We considered many factors before making this decision, including consumer preferences and purchasing behavior – and overall brand trends,” the company said in a statement.
The pack's five gum strips were printed with wavy zebra stripes, and each strip was a different color and flavor: cherry, lemon, orange, peach and Wet n' Wild Melon. The flavor, more spicy than fruity, was known to disappear within seconds, almost upon contact.
Early advertising used the Fruit Stripe Gum Man, an anthropomorphic gum pack with limbs and a face. Later, advertisers used a family of animals, including a zebra, a tiger, an elephant, and a mouse, in commercials and posters, as well as in a range of retail products that included coloring books and stuffed animals.
Yipes the Zebra proved to be the dominant mascot, with each gum wrapper doubling as a temporary Yipes tattoo. The tattoos showed Yipes in active poses, such as skateboarding, playing baseball or eating grass.
Fruit Stripe was also available in jumbo packs of 17 sticks. On social media, consumers shared their childhood memories of eating all 17 sticks of gum at once in a vain attempt to preserve the flavor of the gum.
“The wildest three-second ride your taste buds have ever experienced,” one person posted on Reddit.
An account on X, the social media site called Discontinued Foods!, described Fruit Stripe as “An icon in the chewing gum sector“And people filled a thread with jokes about how quickly the gum went from delicious to disappointing.
Some compared chewing Fruit Stripe to chasing a drug high.
Ferrara, which also makes Sweet Tarts, Nerds, Laffy Taffy and Fun Dip, said consumers may still be able to find Fruit Stripe in stores, but it was unclear how much inventory remained. The company did not respond to an interview request Thursday.
Fruit Stripe was listed as unavailable on the websites of several major retailers, including Walmart and Amazon.
The gum could be found on eBay, where a seller was offering a dozen packs for $189 along with other Fruit Stripe paraphernalia, including T-shirts, coffee mugs and vintage posters featuring a grinning Yipes the Zebra.