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Tic Tac Two?

By Brian | November 8, 2007 | Share on Facebook

OK, here’s a phrase I’ve never typed before: Following up on my post about Tic-Tacs…

But seriously, there’s more.

You see, the orange-in-flavor-but-not-in-color tic tacs are truly awful. They don’t taste good, and they don’t freshen your breath, which is the main reason I bought Tic Tacs in the first place. So, I went to a different newsstand in hopes of finding the old standby: plain, white Tic Tacs. Well, I found them, but guess what else I found!

So apparently, there are two types of orange Tic Tacs. Excuse my french, but what the fuck is up with that? The mind truly boggles…

Ah, but wait, there’s still more: looking closely at the back of the containers, I learn, well, more than I ever thought I would reading the back of a Tic Tac container. To wit:

The orange Tic Tacs are listed as having 1.5 calories per mint. The white ones are listed as having 1.9 calories per mint. Anyone else remember the “one and a half calorie breath mint” commercials? Are there really different formulas for these things? Did Tic Tac add something to the white flavor to give it 0.4 more calories? Was there fine print on the commercials that said “Calories refer to orange flavor only” that I missed all those years ago?

Also, the back of the orange-flavored-but-white-colored Tic Tacs doesn’t list calorie information at all, but lists the ingredients in both English and French. Maybe these are French Tic Tacs being sold illegally in the United States? Ooh, a Tic Tac scandal! You read it here first!

And…there’s a website. Here’s the product page at TicTacUSA.com. You’ll notice if you click around – no white Tic Tacs that taste orange. We’re definitely looking at some foreign mints here, folks…

Finally, I just couldn’t resist checking why they used TicTacUSA.com, instead of TicTac.com. Turns out there is no site up at TicTac.com, although the domain is registered to an Italian gentleman named Oscar Saglietti from Alba, and the technical contact is in the UK.

Someone ought to write a book (someone other than me, that is…)

Topics: Random Acts of Blogging | 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Tic Tac Two?”

  1. Jeff Porten says at November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am :
    My first thought when reading paragraph 2 of your post: is the label in French and English?

    Really.

    Take it from your buddy in the candy importing business — if the label’s bilingual, you’ve got a product that’s made for Canadian export. So yes, it actually does make sense to have two kinds of orange Tic-Tacs, depending on what the differences are in the two markets.

  2. Mike Starr says at December 31st, 1899 at 12:08 pm :
    Sounds like maybe you got your hands on some Tic Tacs from down under.

    … and that down under, your long-lost twin has been ruminating about the US version..

    … and the two of you might want to chip in (within the next 11 hours) and share these.

  3. Brian says at November 8th, 2007 at 11:21 pm :
    Wow – nice Googling, Mike. Very impressive. I’m gonna pass on the $6K Tic Tacs, though…