Glee Gum review and giveaway (ends 2/10/10)

I looooove gum... seriously. I chew it at least a few times a week and some weeks, well, practically every day. When you have long classes to attend everyday, the monotony of hours of study, and a commute which seems to drag on and on (and on and on....) gum can become pretty crucial. A life or sleep situation!

When you chew gum as much as I do, you tend to pick out favorites. I consider myself pretty picky when it comes to gum and I've really narrowed down my options because the only gum I will even bother purchasing is peppermint Glee. If you haven't seen Glee before, it’s a candy coated style gum with a crunchy outer shell that comes in a cute little box (18 pieces per box). I'll leave it to Glee to describe the gum since they do a way better job of it than me...

Glee Gum is all-natural, gluten-free chewing gum with no artificial coloring, flavoring, sweeteners nor preservatives. Glee Gum is the only gum in North America made the old-fashioned way, with chicle! Chicle is a natural tree sap harvested sustainably from the rainforests of Central America. Once all chewing gum was made with chicle, but today most gum is made entirely from synthetic stuff. Not Glee Gum! Glee Gum uses chicle because it is an eco-friendly way to help conserve the rainforest. Chicle is also what gives the gum such great, long-lasting chewing texture! Glee Gum is a “green” gum right down to the packaging, which is made from biodegradable, recycled cardboard. So chew with Glee, naturally!

Sounds awesome right? It seriously is THE BEST. Being as crazy about their peppermint gum as I was, I dropped a quick email to Glee and before you know it they had generously supplied me with some samples of each flavor of Glee along with a package of Wee Glee (which contains the ever elusive banana, the only flavor you can't purchase by itself). The great thing about Wee Glee is that each box contains a medley of all the fruit flavors in a nice little box that you can tuck away in your backpack, purse, etc. I kept mine in the car along with my ever present package of Peppermint Glee. The boxes fit perfectly in my car cup holder and it looks adorable!

I had never tried any of the other flavors of Glee but I was pleasantly surprised by how good each of them was. Here’s my quick run down of each of the flavors:

Non-fruit flavors:

Peppermint is still my favorite flavor, hands down. The color is really beautiful… wait, am I really talking about the beauty of gum color? Kind of weird! But it IS really pretty... it’s a pale mint green color and the flavor is as equally beautiful as the color. Super refreshing and has a nice subtle lingering flavor. I sometimes chew my gum for hours and hours (and hours and hours), which is maybe sort of gross, but I do it in the name of science… testing the lasting flavor ability of gum... yes... scientific purposes *shifty eyes*.

Cinnamon was my second favorite flavor. The thing I love about the cinnamon is that the flavor lasts long but the initial taste isn't all burn-y like some other cinnamon gums. Plus the color is a nice soft pink rather than a gross unnatural red #2313213 color. There I go with the gum colors again. I can't help it, I'm all about aesthetics and well, this blog IS about things that are cute and this gum IS very cute.

The one flavor that I was the most apprehensive about was bubble gum. Admittedly I am an avid hater of all things bubble gum flavor, but the bubble gum flavored glee was actually one of my favorites. The gum was indeed was very bubble gum flavor-y but the crunchy outer shell somehow made everything alright with me. Whew, crisis averted!

Fruit flavors:

My favorite of the fruit flavors was banana, which coincidently can only be found in the packages of Wee Glee. Also coincidently, I hate bananas themselves, but I like things that are made with banana (banana bread/muffins, etc). Typically I don't even like banana flavored candy but this gum was REALLY good. The secret again I think was the crunchy outer shell.

Triple berry tastes sort of like Starburst. I can really see people loving this flavor. Remember that mystery flavor of Starburst? It reminds me of that, if I'm remembering correctly, which I'm probably not. Maybe I'm thinking of wild berry Starburst? Is there even a wild berry Starburst? Maybe it was wild berry Skittles I'm thinking of, that seems about right. I don't know, now I'm just confused! But in any case triple berry GLEE is super.

The tangerine flavor is really refreshing. The flavor doesn't taste fake and it’s as just about as juicy as gum can be. I know some other gums that make "juicy" claims but this gum actually is juicy!

There are a few big retailers that carry Glee & you can search for them using the product locator on the Glee website here: http://www.gleegum.com/retail-stores-locator.htm. I've purchased Glee from Amazon.com a few times in the past, but I think next time I'll be making an order directly with Glee because they sell the gum in bulk. Peppermint one pound bag, you are mine! Muahhaha!

** I did NOT receive any monetary compensation for this post. I received free samples of Glee Gum to try and was allowed to post at my discretion. All opinions expressed here are mine **

Glee is generously offering THREE readers of this blog (US residents only) a chance to win a prize pack of 3 boxes of Glee Gum and a Glee coupon.

* To enter all you need to do is visit the Glee Gum website and leave a comment on this blog post about something you learned about Glee from the website or a flavor of Glee Gum that you’d like to try.

For one extra entry each you can:

* Become a fan of Glee Gum on Facebook
* Become a follower of Glee on Twitter (leave your twitter ID)
* Tweet about the giveaway and leave a link to your tweet (you may tweet once per day)
* Post this giveaway in your blog and leave a link to your post
* Follow this blog via Google Friend Connect OR subscribe via RSS or email

Please leave a separate comment for each entry! Also make sure to leave your email address in one of your comments or have your email address visible in your profile.

This giveaway will end 2/10/2010 at 11:59 PST.

Giveaway winners: Rose Mary, Ashley, Celeste