Мятные конфеты Mentos: История и особенности

Brand of mints

the Jamaican folk music style

Mentos are a brand of packaged scotch mints or mint flavored candies sold in many stores and vending machines. First produced in 1932, they are currently sold in more than 130 countries worldwide by the Italian Dutch corporation Perfetti Van Melle. The mints are small oblate spheroids, with a slightly hard exterior and a soft, chewy interior. They are typically sold in rolls which contain 14 mint discs, although the "Sour Mix" variety contains only 11 discs per roll. Smaller versions also exist, which typically contain 4 to 6 discs per roll. Certain flavors are sold in boxes in Australia, the United States, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and the United Kingdom. The current slogan of Mentos is "Stay Fresh", while the line previously used extensively in the 1980s and 1990s was "The Freshmaker". Some Mentos packages describe the mints as "chewy dragées". The typical Mentos roll is approximately in diameter and weighs "Mentos" is the singular form.

Mint flavored Mentos contain sugar, wheat glucose syrup, hydrogenated coconut oil, rice starch, natural flavors, gum arabic, sucrose esters of fatty acids, gellan gum, carnauba wax, and beeswax. Fruit flavored Mentos contain sugar, wheat glucose syrup, hydrogenated coconut oil, citric acid, fruit juices from concentrate (strawberry, orange, lemon) (1%), rice starch, gum arabic, natural flavors, sucrose esters of fatty acids, gellan gum, carnauba wax, colors (beta carotene, beetroot red), and beeswax. The formulation can vary based on country of manufacture.

Part of Mentos's popularity in the US and Canada can be attributed to its campy TV commercials and catchy jingle, which debuted in late 1991 and were used well into 2001 on American and Canadian television. Individuals facing various day to day dilemmas consume Mentos and are subsequently inspired to solve their problems at hand in a creative, often humorous fashion. For example, a job interviewee sits on a freshly painted bench, staining his suit, and then solves the problem by rolling around on the bench until his suit has pinstripes. Another features a woman whose parked car is boxed in; she calls a crew of construction workers over who lift her car onto the road for her. These unusual behaviors are typically witnessed by nearby, sometimes antagonistic characters, and a roll of Mentos is boisterously displayed by the commercial's respective protagonist to the observer as an explanation for their actions. The ad campaign was parodied in multiple television shows and music videos, including the Foo Fighters' "Big Me".

First publicly demonstrated by chemistry teacher Lee Marek on the Late Show with David Letterman on September 14, 1999, and later popularized in a June 2006 viral Internet video by Eepybird, a Mentos mint expedites a rapid release of carbon dioxide when dropped into a carbonated liquid, such as a soft drink. MythBusters concluded that the potassium benzoate, aspartame, and CO2 gas contained in the Diet Coke, in combination with the gelatin and gum arabic ingredients of the Mentos, all contribute to the formation of the foam. However, kinetic experiments with various candies have shown that the presence of gelatin and gum arabic in candies does not enhance the fountain. Rather, it is the physical structure of candies that conveys the fountain effect. The structure of the Mentos is the most significant cause of the eruption due to nucleation. MythBusters reported that when fruit flavored Mentos with a smooth waxy coating were tested in carbonated drink there was hardly a reaction, whereas mint flavored Mentos (with no such coating) added to carbonated drink formed an energetic eruption, supporting the nucleation site theory. According to MythBusters, the surface of the mint Mentos is covered with many small holes that increase the surface area available for reaction (and thus the quantity of reagents exposed to each other at any given time), thereby allowing CO2 bubbles to form with the rapidity and quantity necessary for the "jet" , "geyser" , or "eruption" like nature of the effusion. This hypothesis gained further support when rock salt was used as a "jump start" to the reaction. A paper by Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, confirmed that the rough surface of the Mentos candy helps speed the reaction. Coffey also found that the aspartame in diet soda lowers the surface tension and causes a bigger reaction, but that caffeine does not accelerate the reaction. On the other hand, it has been shown that a wide variety of beverage additives such as sugars, citric acid, and natural flavors also enhance fountain heights. In some cases, dissolved solids that increase the surface tension of water (such as sugars) also increase fountain heights. These results suggest that additives serve to enhance geyser heights not by decreasing surface tension, but rather by decreasing bubble coalescence. Decreased bubble coalescence leads to smaller bubble sizes and greater foaming ability in water. A Guinness World Record of 2,865 simultaneous geysers was set on 17 October 2010, in an event organized by Perfetti Van Melle (Philippines) at the SM Mall of Asia Complex, in Manila, Philippines. This record was afterwards beaten in November 2014 by another event organized by Perfetti Van Melle and Chupa Chups in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico where 4,334 Mentos and soda fountains were set off simultaneously. The resulting geyser can shoot as high as The unofficial record, reached in MythBusters, was over 34 feet (10 m) with the use of a nozzle.