Mintia – Chocolate & Banana

Chocolate and banana is one of those old, classic flavour combinations. I personally don’t see it too often, probably because I don’t pay attention to it. I also like to think that as far as chocolate fruits go, banana is also not as common as something like strawberries, so it gets overshadowed. But I saw them in a candy aisle and I’ve had good experience with Mintia so far, so why the hell not?

The initial smell of these is kind of weird, almost like soil. The smell of chocolate and fake banana is not doing favours here. If Mintia has taught me anything, it’s that smell is half the experience with these things. This is not boding great so far.

So this is the pairing of two flavours in one, as opposed to what I was originally expecting which was the fusion of two separate flavours. The banana is very much like the banana cough syrup I grew up with, which in all honesty, I enjoy. The chocolate is honestly kind of weird. It’s like they went for that fake chocolate flavour you get in the middle of chocolate mints, but it lacks the mint surrounding it so it just tastes kind of weird and earthy. The question of whether these two flavours pairs well together, well not great to be honest. I think it’s mostly trying to emulate chocolate without any actual chocolate or dairy is tough, and it makes it taste very artificial. Chocolate on it’s own is not a great flavour for a mint format, and really should be accompanied by something else. Sort of like children requiring parental guidance when in a toy store.

The texture is a tiny disk of mint made to dissolve slowly on the tongue. It Isn’t anything that different from other compressed powder styles of mint. There’s not much to say about these for anyone who has already had them. I guess one downside of this style of mint is that similar to some other tablets, if it sits in your mouth and dissolves slowly, it tends to turn into this layer of pulp or paper and can be a little strange for those not use to it. But again, nothing to be alarmed about.

I like Mintia and it’s typically a pretty low risk way to try new and novelty mints. Having said that, this is one of the few flavours where I cannot in good conscience recommend this to most people. The reason I say most people is because there’s such a wide variety of characters and personalities out there, that I have no doubt someone enjoys the flavour of artificial banana. I have a hard time imagining someone who would enjoy artificial, earthy tasting chocolate as well, but there’s billions of people on this planet, so maybe they are out there somewhere.