I’m a sucker for checkout line candy, and on a recent trip to Winn-Dixie, I noticed their own brand of gum nestled between the usual name brands. I buy a lot of store brand products, and although most of them are comparable in quality to big brands, I’ve been disappointed enough to know that sometimes economical purchases aren’t tasty enough to make their lower price worthwhile. I picked up a pack of Winn-Dixie Crushed Ice Spearmint gum for seventy-nine cents and headed back to my house for a taste test.
I decided to put the store brand gum up against Orbit White Spearmint, my favorite sugarless chewing gum. The Winn-Dixie gum is packaged almost identically to Orbit White: twelve pellets per pack, with green and white as the predominant colors on the cardboard case. The pellets were firm and did a good imitation of Orbit – at least until I bit into one. What I said to my friends who were waiting eagerly to hear my verdict sums up my review of the Winn-Dixie gum: “Ugh, this gum is foul!” It really is. There’s not even a hint of authentic mint flavor, and the closest taste I can compare it to is cough syrup. It’s just terrible.
Orbit White’s crisp, fresh taste is worlds away from the Winn-Dixie gum. I always feel like Orbit White freshens my breath and cleanses my palate, but neither of those feelings apply to the Winn-Dixie gum. And, since the store brand wasn’t exactly a steal in price, this is one instance where I’ll figure the name brand product into my grocery bill and steer clear of the slightly cheaper alternative.
I used to have a step-father (mom has since divorced him) who insisted that ALL store brands were made by the same company who made the name brand because of ONE (flawed) example of an experiment that 60 Minutes (a news prgram) did with Diapers in the early 1980s. Posing as commercial makers, they had random people in a grocery store bring home a “store brand” and a “leading brand” Diaper and all of the customers came back insisting that the leading brand was far superior. The catch was that the diapers were all exactly the same. My step father’s theory was flawed because the 60 Minutes thing didn’t expose that “leading brands” were actually making “store brands” in their spare time. It actually exposed that if you trick people into thinking they are in a commercial, they will plug your product… of course 60 Minutes said that they proved that Consumers are brand loyal even when there isn’t a difference in the products (which might be true also). No matter how much I insisted that CheeryOats did not taste the same as Cheerios, he insisted they were the exact same thing. He even poured them into the regular Cheerios box! As if I wouldn’t be able tell that the oversized pasty, crumbly, “O”s in my bowl were not Cheerios. I still hate off brand Cheerios.
I don’t think I’ve seen any Winn-Dixie products sold in stores here (Tucson), but I DO know that the cheapo brand of mint gum I bought at the 99 cent store was AWFUL! 4 packs for a dollar (OK, 99 cents, whatever) was NOT worth it. I totally blew my dollar, but hey, now I know. I gave the other 3 packs to some kids I know and they hated it, too!
I grew up in a family that bought a lot of store brands to save money and I remember telling my mother that there really WAS a taste difference, but she didn’t agree. She said, “Well, when you grow up you can buy what you like.” I don’t mess around with my CANDY AND GUM! (And I’m never buying the store brand of Cheese Nips again, either…ugh).
Hey great post. I am a sucker for trying store brand products. If the price is right I will buy the store brand over the name brand. I have been pleasantly surprised on many products. I did do the gum test. We have a local drug store that I love called Bartells. They have a variety of chicklette (spl?) style gums. I normally get the mega warehouse variety pack of Eclipse at Costco but I was out this day so I grabbed a couple flavors of the house brand. I tried a piece from each flavor and had to toss the rest of the pack after nobody else would take it. So far Store brand gum scores a 0 out of 10. I am scared to try other store brands because I don’t want to waste my $0.79. haha