Spearmint (flavour)

Spearmint is a flavour used mainly in chewing gums and tooth paste that is either naturally or artificially created to taste like oil of spearmint (herb). It is also popular as a flavouring for milkshakes in Canada and the U.S.; during each March, McDonald's puts them out as a Shamrock Shake.

Wrigley Company and Cadbury Adams are among the companies in the United States that manufacture and sell spearmint-flavoured chewing gum as Wrigley's Spearmint. Excel gum comes in this flavour in Canada; the same gum is sold as Eclipse in the US and Australia. Jolt gum is also available in a spearmint flavour. Freshen Up Gum is chewing gum produced in Brazil which also has a spearmint-flavoured gum.

Wrigley also makes a sugar-free chewing gum called Eclipse Sugarfree Spearmint and Extra Sugarfree Spearmint. For those who don't like gum sticking to the teeth, there is Freedent Spearmint Chewing Gum.

The flavour is not restricted to chewing gums strictly. It is sometimes possible to buy spearmint-flavoured Mentos; there is also a spearmint-flavoured Soft Mint from Trebor, and a spearmint Polos, these are on sale in the United Kingdom "chewy dragées" in some countries. They were (or still are) available in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. As of 2005, they are no longer sold in the latter.

The name "spearmint" is trademarked in the UK. This issue became known when skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan recorded a cover version of the 1924 American song "Does the Spearmint Lose its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?" Because "spearmint" was trademarked in the UK, BBC Radio would not play the song as it was; as a result, Donegan renamed the song "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)", turning it into a top-10 hit in both countries.