Fruit Stripe Gum Has Been Discontinued; Millennials In Mourning

Sad news today, folks: Fruit Stripe gum, the fruit-flavored candy made by the Ferrara Candy Company, has gone the way of the Choco-Taco and Ronzoni pastina. While we haven’t thought about this gum or its mascot, Yipes the Zebra, in about 30 years, this gum loomed large in our childhoods and now, many a millennial has entered a period of melancholic nostalgia over its demise. O Yipes! O Captain! my Captain! Our fearful trip is done...

A representative for the company told CNN on Wednesday that “the decision to sunset this product was not taken lightly. We considered many factors before coming to this decision, including consumer preferences, and purchasing patterns — and overall brand trends for Fruit Stripe Gum.” Fruit Stripe gum was first released in 1969 by the Beech-Nut Company. But thanks to new marketing in the ‘90s, including a super catchy 1991 commercial jingle that some of us can still recite (seriously, did anyone ever go harder than a ‘90s gum commercial?), it became one of the “Mom ,can I have it? Pleeeeease!” products of millennial childhood.

Social media is positively awash with nostalgic 30- and 40-somethings and our sentiments are largely the same. This one got us right in the childhood...

“Noooooooo fruit stripe gum is the greatest 12 seconds of everyone’s life whyyyyyy,” wailed Twitter user @ginamarina.

“The ‘20s have brought nothing but pain and sorrow. Another fallen brother. RIP Fruit Stripe,” eulogized @lftovrpizzaclub.

“We will now observe 5 seconds of silence, or the length of flavor in one stick of Fruit Stripe,” teased @philenespanol.

I’ll state the obvious here: most of us are going to carry on with our lives with no real disruption resulting from the “sunsetting” of this fruity gum. Most of us probably haven’t had a stick in years and, yeah, a lot of that might have to do with the fact that our excitement leading up to getting a pack was often far greater than our excitement for the product. But that’s entirely besides the point. We’re not mourning the gum. Not really. We’re mourning the time in our lives when we could get really, really excited about a striped gum with a zebra mascot, and the caché that came with whipping out a pack of these babies on the playground, informing everyone “Yeah, my dad took me to Toys ‘R’ Us and he said I could get a pack at check-out.” We’re mourning having vigorous debates about which flavor was better: wet ‘n wild melon or peach smash. We’re mourning the fact that this discontinuation probably means nothing to our Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha children.

It’s not the absence of gum that’s upsetting: it’s the fact that our youth is, like the flavor of a stick of Fruit Stripe, gone all too soon.