I’ve never been a big gum person. I was never one of those kids that felt they were getting a “treat” when their grandmother pulled a 3 month old stick of JuicyFruit out of their purse that was resting next to a tube of ointment and a worn out Mary Kay compact. Unless it comes with a picture that I can adhere to my body with a wet tongue slurp, gum isn’t a treat. The people that think gum is a treat are the same people that give away pencils for Halloween. I would say real treats start around the Werther’s Original area.

One gum I would consider a borderline treat is FruitStripe gum. While their color-transfer “tattoos” aren’t as hardcore as the true sticker kind with pictures of cartoon devils flipping off a kitten, there is just an air of zebra magic in them. This pack is of the sugar-free variety and features a rainbow of multi-flavored stick gum. I haven’t seen a gum this flamboyant since Gay Pride Big League Chew. The colors all coordinate, there's no surprise when you pop in a yellow stick and find out it's really some starfruit/papaya mix. It's lemon. Plain and simple lemon.

The one disappointment with this pack of FruitStrip is that the pack itself has blue stripes on it, yet there are no blue sticks of gum. I grew up in the era of Blue Raspberry, so for me this just doesn't cut it. I want this pack to remind me of drinking blue Hugs with the squirt bottle top at the park in the summer and how we'd refill the bottles with water and use them as squirt guns until we lost the lid and smashed the shit out of the plastic. If the Zebra has blue stripes, I want blue gum.