Comments on: Candy Review: Store Brand Gum vs. Name Brand Gum

By: Greg R Benson

Greg R Benson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:53:39 +0000

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

By: Julie Nicolay

Julie Nicolay — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 06:17:40 +0000

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).

By: AntFan

AntFan — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:51:21 +0000

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.