First, the peppermint: At first I was very confused. It had been a long time coming finding these, and had forgotten all about your mention of the licorice notes. When I opened these (first, I might add :P) I instantly smelled very strong peppermint. My husband, son and I all popped one in our mouths after admiring the clever bitten-mint design, and though we agreed they were very strong, they were also DELICIOUS. However, five minutes later, my purse smelled oddly of licorice, and even my dear husband smelled it over the minty goodness (and immediately assumed I had purchased black licorice and wasn’t planning to share, I might add!). After sniffing our way around we discovered the culprit was the mint tin staring at us the whole time. After trying another mint, we both agreed that other than the smell, there was not a taste of licorice to it that we could detect. (meanwhile my son was rambling on about how cool the shark bites were, not caring whether they tasted like licorice or not!).

Next, the spearmint: These we noticed immediately didn’t have nearly as strong of an odor to them licorice, mint, or otherwise. They did smell, well… sweet, actually. All three of us popped one in our mouths and agreed immediately: these were awesome. They definitely don’t have as overpowering of a ‘breath freshener’ quality to them, but they were a nice airy and lightly sweet mint, just perfect. We could have eaten the whole box before we got home if we tried. Really.

Then, as hubby and I finished up our spearmint variety, the five year old had crunched his way through his and wanted what he was sure would be his favorite, the orange. I obliged, and opened the tin.

Whoa, those smelled fruity! I resisted the urge to tell my child that I’d changed my mind, and hide them to devour myself, and passed one back to him. He put it in his mouth, sucked for a second or two, and spit it across the car. Now, in all fairness, I NOW understand why, and it has NOTHING to do with the flavor of these divine mints. After washing his mouth out with some water and giving his best ‘patooey’s, he explained, the way a five year old only can. He told us it tasted like ‘breakfast and toothpaste’. As I’m a curious creature by nature, I took this as a challenge and popped one in my mouth.

I should have listened better, or something. After the two mint flavored mints, the orange one tasted like I brushed my teeth, barely rinsed, then ran into the kitchen and started chugging straight from the orange juice carton. I resisted the urge to spit it out, and instead waited for that awful taste to pass. Well, it did. And I must say, these were only a very close second favorite to the spearmint, provided you don’t eat the spearmint one (or the peppermint, for that matter) first. It tasted like a fresh, juicy orange, right in my mouth. Slightly tart, a little acidic, but totally fresh. Clean and citrus-y and everything great about oranges was right there in a cute little shark-bitten morsel.

So the morals of this story are:

Buy lots of these. TONS.
If you like black licorice, you probably won’t taste it. If you hate black licorice, hold your nose or avoid the peppermint, your choice :P
And never, ever eat the minty ones first and the orange ones last. Unless you happen to enjoy drinking OJ straight after brushing your teeth.

That’s good marketing, there.

Alas, none of this stuff ever seems to show up in Canada. =(