Fit’s – Melon/Watermelon Mix
Product names fascinate me. While it’s important to always remember that the product itself is the most important thing, the term or name associated with it is not far behind. Can you imagine how different things would be if Kleenex or Popsicle were originally named something else? I guess if everyone’s used to it, it’s not really noticeable anyways. Like if brownies were called cookies and vice versa. My point is, companies recognize the importance of naming their products, so there’s usually a lot of effort and research that goes into naming things. Certain ones make you scratch your head and wonder, but it doesn’t mean they had less effort put into them.
Today’s product is a chewing gum. Lotte is known for being around for quite a long time, bringing us products like Koala’s March, Ghana and Toppo. They also have a line of chewing gums called Fit’s, which seem to be geared more towards fun flavours than breath-freshening, which they have another product line for. Strange product name aside, Fit’s looks to be the more whimsical line with lots of fruit flavours and drink flavours. I’m still waiting for them to release a milk tea flavour…
This flavour I have today is a limited edition melon flavour, which combines watermelon and honeydew flavours into one piece. The pick and nice and compact, and apparently what the product name is based off. As in, it “fits” in your pocket, purse etc. Not sure how they ended up with the extra apostrophe, but whatever. The packaging all round is quite nice and well thought out, and I appreciate the overall design. The sleeve design is nothing new, but it’s nice and effective.
Opening it up, there’s that really nice, strong smell of melons. I can’t decide if the watermelon or honeydew comes across stronger, as it’s like a perfect blend of the two. Like if the honeydew and watermelon had a kid together. My mind is racing with the possibilities of how that sort of a fruit would actually look…
A really nice thing about these pieces is, when you pull a piece out it’s already pulled a small tab off the top so you don’t need to unwrap the piece. You just bite the tip and pull the wrapper off the throw out. Nice, simple and clean. Just the tip. That’s all it takes folks. The wrapper being the flesh of a watermelon is also a nice, cute touch. Much appreciated, all the tiny details they put into it. I did find it kind of odd that there are instructions on how to take a piece out and eat it on the back, but I guess not everyone is ready for this level of gum wrapper technology. I forgot to mention that each pack has 12 pieces, so pretty standard stuff.
Upon the initial chewing, the flavour of both melons comes in strong, and has a nice mouthwatering taste to it. I’d say the initial flavour lasts for about a minute before it starts to slowly fade, but the gum still holds it’s flavour for at least 5 minutes by my count before losing most of the flavour. I found myself chewing a piece for about 15 to 20 minutes despite most of the flavour being gone, as there is still some mild melon flavour keeping me going before I’m just chewing rubber. Honestly, with fruit flavoured gums, I don’t expect the flavour to last very long anyways, so the fact that I lasted this long without spitting it out is impressive.
The texture starts off similar to other stick gums, where it’s very bouncy and has the nice rubbery texture you expect from a chewing gum. The piece starts off a little hard and chalky, but that quickly goes away to give way to the soft bouncy texture you get from other stick gums. I found the texture to stay fairly soft for a long period of time, and didn’t really start to stiffen up for me until around the 20 minute mark, where it started getting a little firmer and I got bored of chewing.
As with most chewing gum, this isn’t really a gum designed to be blowing bubbles with, but it’s still a possibility. You just gotta try hard enough. I never really think of chewing gum when I think of Japanese snacks or candy, and I wager that’s mostly a numbers game. In the culture it’s generally frowned upon to take things out of the mouth once they are put in, so gum isn’t as common as it is over in the West. That being said, these were delightful and I wouldn’t mind giving some other flavours a try. I guess you could say I wouldn’t mind “Fit’s” a few more of these into my snack rotation.
