Lotte Black Black Gum has been around since 1983 – although they really were not known in this country until Wired magazine did a story on them. Now the gum can be found in many Asian supermarkets (check local stores for availability). In Japan, this gum is extremely popular and can be found in most convenience stores and supermarkets The gum comes from Japan and exclaims on the front that this has “High Technical Excellent Taste and Flavor”. In japan, the commercials for this gum feature a martial-arts swinging none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme performing his wild pseudo kung fu. I also found out this comes in big sucking candies as well.

Each gum pack contains 9 individually wrapped sticks of gum. Befitting the name, the gum is soft charcoal in color, and is hard as a rock. After a couple seconds of chewing it turns into normal gum, which has me thinking that this gum might be stale. However, I purchased this from a couple stores around me and both times it was the same crunchy sticks. It could be that by the time this gum reaches American shores it is already past its soft prime.

My overall reactions were not that great – not a whole lot of caffeinated pick me up and the flavor turns bad fast. After about 5minutes I was searching for the garbage can ( or would be if I did not already swallow it) and it did not turn my mouth back, as I would have hoped. I just pictured with a cool name like BlackBlack I would have seen more black.

Taste:6
not bad for as short of a time as it lasted. for the first couple minutes it was nice, full of mint and pepper. While it did not freshen my breath, it did taste good. The caffeine flavor came out once the grape sugar left, and it tasted sour enough that I had a hard time giving it a full chance for the caffeine to come out. I read on the literature for Mad Croc gum that to get all the nutrients out of their gum you needed to chew it for 5 whole minutes – which is a difficult task for me to begin with. While I would not turn down a stick if offered to me, I doubt I would buy this again.

packaging:8
occasionally get a stick with YES! Chewing” on it – just in case you were going to mistake this for “YES Bubble!” or “YES Sucking!”. The package fofr the gum is great. The thick bold lettering in
the black and while packaging is ultra cool. The wording on the package adds to the mystique –
and the engrish all over the pack adds to the overall package as well. Even the black wrapped sticks seem somehow cooler and more exciting than if they did not have such phrases on it. What I do with was on here is the caffeine listed as well as any website or company information.

Nutrition/Buzz:5
While it is not disclosed on the packaging, it seems that BlackBlack has about 5mg of caffeine per stick. This information comes from the clerk selling the gum, so I am not sure how reliable this is, and the amount is not listed on any of their packaging or found in energyfiend.com’s database. I tried eating 5 sticks in the space of a half hour to see if I could feel anything, and was sadly disappointed. The buzz I had was the same I would feel from a diet coke or Dr. pepper. Black Black also contains Vitamin B-3, ginseng and oolong tea. it is sweetened with grape sugar and erisuritol( I think erisuritol is a sugar – but don’t know for sure) and chrysanthemum flower extract. I would normally rank this lower, but the added benefit of the chrysanthemum, ginseng and vitamins was a nice addition to an otherwise unremarkable gum.