Extra is a brand of

sugarfree A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Artificial sweeteners may be d ...

chewing gum produced by the Wrigley Company in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

, Europe, Australia and some parts of Africa and Asia.

Brand history

Extra was launched in 1984 as the Wrigley Company's first ever sugarfree product, and became one of the most popular brands of chewing gum in the United States within a few years. It was also the first sugarfree gum not to use saccharin, instead using the NutraSweet brand, a sweetener developed by G.D. Searle & Co. that had less bitterness and was believed to be safer in humans and laboratory animals; it was later reformulated with

aspartame Aspartame is an artificial non-saccharide sweetener 200 times sweeter than sucrose and is commonly used as a sugar substitute in foods and beverages. It is a methyl ester of the aspartic acid/phenylalanine dipeptide with the trade names ...

in 1997. The brand identity of Extra gum varies considerably in different markets, often having completely different flavours, logos and slogans for each country. Extra is currently the sponsor of the

Mexico national football team The Mexico national football team () represents Mexico in international football and is governed by the Mexican Football Federation (). It competes as a member of CONCACAF. Mexico has qualified to seventeen World Cups and has qualified conse ...

. In 2011, Extra Oral Healthcare Program partnered with the Chinese Ministry of Health to launch a three-year community oral care education pilot program, which establishes community dental clinics, trains local dentists and establishes oral care records for 7,000 families across 14 communities. The results of the program will inform the Ministry of Health's future oral care policy. In the second project year, the team decided to build an application for oral health teaching among families, especially for some undeveloped cities. In the UK, a similar chewing gum brand owned by Wrigley's; Orbit was renamed Extra in 2015, with the same 14-piece package. A TV ad for Extra chewing gum, seen in September 2017, featured a young woman stood in a football kit on a football pitch whilst chewing, appearing to be preparing to take a penalty kick. A complaint to the ASA was upheld with the ad being described as 'dangerous'.

Flavors

References

External links

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Wrigley's Extra Gum home page
{{Mars global brands Wrigley Company brands Products introduced in 1984 Chewing gum Brand name confectionery American confectionery