Is Wrigleys (Mars, Inc) killing off the Altoids product and brand?
This is a somewhat confusing response to our email asking about the availability of some Altoids (photo bbum).
Dear Limor Fried,
Thank you for taking the time to let us know about your difficulty in finding Altoids® Gum. We appreciate hearing from you. As you might imagine, we take feedback like this very seriously.
We’re sorry to say that Altoids has been discontinued. We thought it was a great product – and, clearly, so did you. But, sadly, we’re occasionally forced to discontinue a product when there is low consumer demand for it over time, which is what happened with Altoids.
We all have our favorite products and can appreciate your frustration at no longer being able to enjoy Altoids. Thank you again for reaching out to us about this. We hope that you’ll find other Wrigley brands that you enjoy, both now and in the future.
Sincerely,
Janell ******
Consumer Care Representative
We’re not sure if this is correct and likely a scripted response for weird flavors of BIG RED that are no longer made, but wow – what a response if true!
Introduced in 1780, Altoids were originally marketed to relieve stomach discomfort. By the 1920s, the original cardboard box had been replaced by the more durable distinctive metal tins of today. The irreverent, quirky personality of Altoids has led Altoids Peppermint tins to be a top-selling mint in the U.S. Over the years the Altoids brand has expanded to include not only mints but sours, gum and sugar-free mints in miniature portable tins. For fun facts, ad viewing, games and ordering we invite you to visit Altoids.com.
We have plenty of mint tins for all our products and we also have many options and enclosures going forward (don’t worry about that) – we’re hoping someone from Altoids will see this and clear things up. However, if it’s true we just got a scoop! Adafruit electronics *and* candy gossip site!
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Try Bawls Mints: http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/6b77/
The tin will fit two AA batteries when inserted one at a time, so it would not quite be a drop-in replacement for the MintyBoost unless you switched to AAA batteries.
Wrigley’s makes the Altoids gum, which I am figuring is what is specifically getting discontinued. Altoids the mints sell a lot better, and I expect them to stay around. If nothing else the brand is too valuable to not sell off.
So I was just poking around looking for glass jars, and I found specialtybottle.com, which not only has inexpensive jars, but also a bunch of useful-sized tins… It’s like 75 cents each for this: http://www.specialtybottle.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=332 although you do have to pay shipping… But if you use lots of tins, it’s cheaper than buying tons of Altoids, even.
I can confirm that Wrigley’s has discontinued only the Altoids Gum, the mints are still available.
I’m producing a bunch of Mintyboosts and contacted some concessions distributors in order to get bulk pricing on Altoids Gum. All of them responded that the Altoids Gum was discontinued a while back (January was one date given).
If necessary, I expect to switch to the Altoids Mint tin, but so far I’ve had pretty good luck finding the gum at specialty grocery stores (like Trader Joe’s).
It doesn’t appear there is reason to panic, but I’ll take this opportunity to suggest an alternative. I have been saving a bunch of these for projects. They are a little large, but they won’t short your boards.
in 2004, Wrigley purchased the Life Savers and Altoids businesses from Kraft Foods for US$1.48 billion.
Now, is wrigley going to kill off life savers?… HAHHA…. would they kill off Altoids? HAAA, I’d write and complain to the superviser of that customer service rep
There are a few places out there that have the gum in their tins still, I found some at http://www.candywarehouse.com/, a bit expensive but I’m sure there are some cheaper places, if I recall correctly it was 6 tins for 18 bucks American.
Try Bawls Mints:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/6b77/
The tin will fit two AA batteries when inserted one at a time, so it would not quite be a drop-in replacement for the MintyBoost unless you switched to AAA batteries.
Wrigley’s makes the Altoids gum, which I am figuring is what is specifically getting discontinued. Altoids the mints sell a lot better, and I expect them to stay around. If nothing else the brand is too valuable to not sell off.
Do they only sell the gum and not the mints in the US? I can’t see them stopping the mints any time soon.
You can still get the mints here in the UK. M&S sell their own brand in the same cases. Perfect for 2x 9V batteries and a small PCB, i.e. a cmoy.
The gum was never available in the UK it seems. Strange because if you saw a typical British pavement you would think chewing gum was really popular.
Possible replacements?
ThinkGeek built their YBox2 in a Penguin Mints box.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/287d/
I have used Eclipse mints tins for some projects. Roomy tin fits well in pockets.
http://store.candywarehouse.com/eclipsemints.html
My guess is they probably are referring to just the gum – it was never a hot seller and isn’t carried in many places at all.
The mints are a whole different story.
So I was just poking around looking for glass jars, and I found specialtybottle.com, which not only has inexpensive jars, but also a bunch of useful-sized tins… It’s like 75 cents each for this: http://www.specialtybottle.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=332 although you do have to pay shipping… But if you use lots of tins, it’s cheaper than buying tons of Altoids, even.
I can confirm that Wrigley’s has discontinued only the Altoids Gum, the mints are still available.
I’m producing a bunch of Mintyboosts and contacted some concessions distributors in order to get bulk pricing on Altoids Gum. All of them responded that the Altoids Gum was discontinued a while back (January was one date given).
If necessary, I expect to switch to the Altoids Mint tin, but so far I’ve had pretty good luck finding the gum at specialty grocery stores (like Trader Joe’s).
It doesn’t appear there is reason to panic, but I’ll take this opportunity to suggest an alternative. I have been saving a bunch of these for projects. They are a little large, but they won’t short your boards.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/indylarry/4569910622/
buy the machine that makes them !
if they don’t use it, you can …
in 2004, Wrigley purchased the Life Savers and Altoids businesses from Kraft Foods for US$1.48 billion.
Now, is wrigley going to kill off life savers?… HAHHA…. would they kill off Altoids? HAAA, I’d write and complain to the superviser of that customer service rep
There are a few places out there that have the gum in their tins still, I found some at http://www.candywarehouse.com/, a bit expensive but I’m sure there are some cheaper places, if I recall correctly it was 6 tins for 18 bucks American.