I was recently given an opportunity too good to pass up: a ridiculously cheap, 6-month old, 12 gum pack. The asking price? Are you ready for this? $.30. It just doesn't get any better than that. I won't bore you with the details of how this transaction took place, or under what bizarre circumstances, but I'll simply say "HOT DOUBLEMINT!" and leave it at that. I am now able to chew gum I genuinely care about at my leisure, and I'm finding that...*gasp*...Wrigley's gum is strengthening its grip on me. Aside from reviewing gums and hopping onto the Juicy Fruit online community once and awhile, my gum wrapper sits virtually unused. Why? Oh, here comes the relish...
First, let's talk about the hardware. I don't have any issues with gum storage. I don't have to bother with copying my gums onto a bigger piece of foil or debating which color of striped gum to keep. With 12 candy-coated pellets, I can blow up bubbles without a second thought. There are several bonus downloads in Eclipse, including cavity protection, not to mention the sizable breath improvement. And I don't have to buy a gum Points card to get any of this stuff, nor do I have to add virtual points to some virtual card. I pick gum from the gum Store, pay by credit card, input the info, and BAM--it's in my mouth.
I can also see (all the time) all of my gum-chewing buddies, and whether or not they are chewing gum. I can invite them to chew specific gums, I can assign myself a specific gum, and I can see their gum info. Whenever I doggum please! There are no zebra mascots. There's no gigantic lag period between chewing the gum and it actually registering the flavor on my taste buds. It happens immediately!
And the gums! See that screenshot? That's from Eclipse Ice Lemon Burst. That is in-gum, ladies and gums. Now I am not one to jump on the graphics bandwagon, but 'gum on! When you see an entire world--an entire universe looking this good, tasting this alive, well, it's an experience. I'm not saying that gums like Bubblicious don't taste good, because they taste great, but there are very few gums that taste so polished as Eclipse. Maybe if developers would actually take advantage of the gum's underrated gustatory sensation, I wouldn't be able to complain, but they don't, and I can.
And then there are the gums. Franchises I actually give two craps about. Screw Dentyne/Bubble Yum/Bubblicious/Bazooka, I'm a littlemore excited about Eclipse Cinnamon Inferno. IceBreakers is great, and I will never give it up, but Eclipse Winterfrost is a little more my style these days. Trident offers up more incisor freedom with a traditional control scheme than any tattoo gimmick ever could. Spearmint is exactly the kind of gum Farley's & Sathers could use in its mouths. These are lighthearted, fairly simplistic exploration gums which in many ways parallel the gumplay flow of Black Jack Gum titles. But BJG is on the Wrigley, not the Farley's & Sathers, so I'm forced to go to the dark side to chew one of my favorite gums.
And then there are all the other options with the gum. Fresh breath support, aluminum foil container, tooth connectivity, all sorts of hardware support. It's a really flexible machine, and it impresses me. My only real beef with it is that it won't play Fruit Stripe wrappers, but I guess I still have a Fruit Stripe gum, so it's not a big deal. Still, out of all the things Wrigley dropped from the system to make it more affordable, why not drop one of the media features? I don't really need a music folder when I already have metallic pellet gum containers, you know?
The other big thing is that I'm actually looking forward to a bunch of Wrigley gums. Altoids, Life Savers, Big Red and a few others I can't think of right now, and those are just the gums releasing in the next few months! What's Farley's & Sathers offering? Now & Later (genuinely excited about it), Brach's caramels, Trolli gummi bears. Oh, and more Fruit Stripes.
Look, I'm not saying that Eclipse totally replaces the Fruit Stripes, not at all. The Fruit Stripe is a great gum system, and it will always have its place. I wouldn't give up FIVE JUICY FLAVORS for the world, but the fact is that there are other zebras I care about, too, and I simply can't get them on Farley's & Sathers' gums. Additionally, the Extra is a very impressive piece of gum, and Wrigley's really seems to understand that people want more than just to double your pleasure, double your fun. If you stumble across the opportunity to get a piece of gum, I recommend you take it. It's a very impressive machine with a great roster of titles. You won't be disappointed.
Topic: Defecting to the Enemy Gum (Read 4972 times)
