Wrigley's "5" gum is the subject of an intense marketing campaign; one can hardly failed to have missed the adverts where a young man lies in a huge pool of ball bearings.

Sadly this gum is a classic example of style over substance.

I tried the "electro" spearmint variety. 12 sticks of oddly green looking gum for 99p. The packaging is interesting, jet black with a novel "catch" to keep the pack closed.

The problem here is that the adversing promises a sensory overload and that's perhaps quite a lot to expect from a stick of chewing gum. The flavour is intense when you first start to chew although where the "electro" sensation is supposed to come from, I'm not sure. It's just like very strongly flavoured spearmint chewing gum.

To give it some credit, the spearmint flavour does last a considerable length of time, at least 15 minutes and is reasonably intense for most of that. But one could just as easily take a piece of cheaper gum every 5 minutes and achieve the same effect and it would probably cost less. 8p a stick is a lot for chewing gum.

On reflection, perhaps it isn't as bad as I'm painting it. It actually is a decent long-lasting chewing gum. But it's over-priced and suffers from massive hype which it can't live up to. Without the ads and at a lower price this would be a very, very good chewing. With the ads and at 8p per stick, it isn't worth it.