Mentos History

The Mentos Mole discovered (through some Van Melle writings) that Mentos were manufactured in Holland beginning in the 1950's. But, we still don't know when they came to America.

Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, drummer with "Weird Al" Yankovic, recalls enjoying Mentos back in the early 70's. He tells us that before they were widely distributed, he actually had to put effort into finding them, usually at an import-type confectionery store.

Just Schimmelpenninck says that his mother has been carrying rolls of DropMentos in her purse for approximately 25 years in the Netherlands.

In about 1988, Hannah Meehan recalls radio ads for Mentos! The ads featured a medieval princess being held hostage by a talking dragon. The dragon is looking forward to eating the knight who will undoubtedly try to rescue her, because knights are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. When the knight in shining armor arrives, he informs the dragon that Mentos not only have the same qualities, they are much easier to chew than armor, and are less likely to irritate the locals. The dragon eats a Mentos, the princess is rescued and they all live happily ever after.

Hannah mentions that, although the knight was undeniably fresh, there was no mention of the word "Freshmaker".

Hannah's radio ad, it turns out, was also an old pre-Freshmaker television spot for Mentos! During a recent on-line Mentos sponsored concert, a Mentos ad-reel was shown featuring several dozen extremely old Mentos commercials.

Among them: The Fresh Knight spot...an animated adventure featuring a knight, a dragon, and some Mentos. Also included were a series of commercials featuring a snappy little jingle, (a slight variation of "Happy Birthday") with the lyrics "Happy Mentos to Me" And a quite funny commercial, obviously shot during the height of the cold war. A Russian Cosmonaut and an American Astronaut are going on the first joint-mission, and they are allowed to bring but one tasty treat. The Russian wants gum, the American a mint. They argue & argue until an announcer comes on and suggests "Mentos...the chewy mint!"

The commercials were, as you can imagine, quite old and looked to be in poor condition (which could be attributed to the fact that we were watching them over the internet). None of the commercials mentioned Freshness of any magnitude.

And finally, February 1998 brought us our first Mentos magazine ad. To the best of our knowledge, Mentos never advertised outside of TV or radio before. It was more an ad for the Freshmaker Tour than the Freshmaker, but it appeared in the February 19, 1998 issue of Rolling Stone on page 57. The full-page color ad featured the Freshmaker Tour dates, and a live-action version of the "Thumbs-Up" design.