Ice Breakers: The Complete UK Guide to America's Most Innovative Mint

In 1996, Nabisco launched a sugar-free mint aimed squarely at the fresh-breath market that chewing gum had owned for decades: small enough to carry anywhere, strong enough to do the job, and with nothing to dispose of afterwards. The result was Ice Breakers — and the brand's history since then has been considerably more dramatic than a mint has any right to be.

Ice Breakers is now part of the Hershey portfolio, one of the best-known mint brands in the United States, and a steady seller in the Sweet and Glory range. In the UK, they remain a genuine discovery for most customers — and a revelation for the ones who find them.

The Nabisco Origins

Ice Breakers launched in 1996 under Nabisco Holdings' LifeSavers division. Nabisco positioned it against the established mint and gum brands — a product that sat between the two formats, offering the portability and discretion of a mint with the strong flavour hit more associated with gum. The format became the round, flat container with a hinged flip-top lid, now one of the most recognisable packs in American convenience stores.

The flip-top puck does a lot of the brand's work. It opens with one thumb, fits a pocket or a car door, and makes offering a mint to someone else an easy gesture — which is exactly what the name suggests. The shape gives Ice Breakers a physical identity as distinctive as the mints inside.

The $135 Million Acquisition

In 2000, The Hershey Company bought Ice Breakers from Nabisco for $135 million. The deal also included Bubble Yum bubble gum and Breath Savers mints — a wholesale expansion into the gum and breath freshening category that Hershey had not previously dominated. For a company whose identity was built on chocolate, acquiring Ice Breakers was a statement of intent: Hershey wanted a bigger share of the gum and mint shelf, not just the chocolate aisle.

The acquisition proved well-timed. Under Hershey's ownership, Ice Breakers grew consistently. By 2006 Hershey was reported to hold the third-largest share of the chewing gum market, and it saw Ice Breakers as the brand to grow that share. The company invested in advertising, celebrity partnerships and new formats, including Ice Cubes gum, and Ice Breakers became one of the leading names on the American mint shelf.

The celebrity partnerships from this period are worth noting as a cultural artefact. In 2003 Jessica Simpson fronted the campaign for Ice Breakers Liquid Ice, a liquid-filled mint, and in 2004 the brand signed Hilary and Haylie Duff as spokeswomen — a deliberate alignment with the pop culture moment of the mid-2000s.

The PACS Incident

In 2007, Hershey launched a product under the Ice Breakers name that became one of the more unusual product withdrawals in confectionery history. Ice Breakers PACS were powdery mint mixtures encased in two blue dissolving layers, sealed into small packets. The format — a tiny blue envelope filled with white powder — received national attention in the United States for its resemblance to packets of street narcotics.

Critics, including some law enforcement voices, publicly raised concerns about the product's appearance. Hershey denied that any resemblance was intended, but pulled PACS from the market shortly afterwards. The episode became a case study in testing packaging concepts beyond focus groups. A mint product intended to be innovative and convenient had been pulled from the market because of what it looked like, not what it contained.

The Ice Breakers brand recovered completely. The PACS incident is remembered primarily as a corporate curiosity rather than a lasting reputational event — partly because the product itself caused no harm, and partly because Hershey moved quickly to discontinue it and redirect attention to the rest of the range.

The Duo Innovation

Of all the product developments in the Ice Breakers range, the Duo format is one of the most distinctive. Launched to address a specific consumer tension — the choice between a fruity flavour and a minty fresh-breath benefit — the Duo mint is made in two layers. One side is fruit-flavoured; the other is cool mint. The two flavours coexist in a single piece and interact as you eat it, moving from the initial fruit hit through to the mint finish.

The Duo format addressed something real: customers who wanted the flavour pleasure of a fruit mint but the functional benefit of a proper mint had previously been forced to choose one or the other. Ice Breakers Duo gave them both in one piece. The Raspberry, Strawberry, Watermelon and Cherry variants in the range pair different fruits with the cool mint base — each offering a different fruit-to-mint balance that keeps the format fresh across multiple purchases.

The Range at Sweet and Glory

The Ice Breakers range at Sweet and Glory covers the core mint, Duo, Sours and Sparkling formats.

The core mints — Cool Mint, Wintergreen, Spearmint and Cinnamon — are the classics, and Cool Mint is the one most customers recognise. The Sours range brings the Ice Breakers format into the sour candy category — fruit mints with a sour sugar coating that delivers a sharp initial hit before transitioning to the cool mint finish. Sours Original and Sours Berry are the two variants.

The Duo Mints — Raspberry, Strawberry, Watermelon and Cherry — are the range's most distinctive products: the two-sided fruit-and-mint format that delivers both flavour and freshness in a single piece. Cherry Limeade extends the format with a citrus-forward combination. The Sparkling Raspberry Lemon Seltzer is a newer addition — an Ice Breakers mint designed to deliver the flavour profile of a sparkling drink, part of the wider trend for drink-inspired candy. See our candy to can guide for more.

For Retailers: What Makes Ice Breakers Different

Sugar-free drives a specific customer. Ice Breakers mints are sold as sugar-free, and they are sought out by customers who want fresh-breath products without sugar. This customer is not browsing the confectionery aisle looking for something sweet. They have a specific need and they are looking for a specific product. Stock Ice Breakers in an accessible location and this customer finds them reliably.

The container is part of the appeal. The round flat flip-top pack is one of the most recognisable containers in American convenience retail. Customers who have encountered Ice Breakers before — through travel, through American friends, through the internet — recognise the container immediately. It functions as its own visual shorthand for the product inside.

Pairs naturally with the Hershey range. Ice Breakers sits within the broader Hershey family at Sweet and Glory. A display that groups Ice Breakers alongside Hershey's chocolate, Reese's and the wider Hershey portfolio tells a coherent brand story and works well for customers who are already familiar with the Hershey name.

Shop Ice Breakers Wholesale in the UK

The Ice Breakers range — from Cool Mint through Sours, Duo and Sparkling — is available wholesale at Sweet and Glory. Browse the full candy range for the complete American confectionery selection.

No minimum order. Free first parcel on orders over £150 ex VAT (additional boxes £7.10 each). Free pallet delivery over £650 ex VAT. Dispatched from Manchester. Create a free account to browse and order.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Ice Breakers Duo? A mint split down the middle into two halves — one fruit-flavoured, one cool mint — so you get both in a single piece. It was designed to solve a real tension: people who wanted a fruit flavour but also wanted the fresh-breath benefit had previously been made to choose. The fruit hits first and the mint finishes, which is why the format holds up across repeat purchase. Raspberry, Strawberry, Watermelon and Cherry are the pairings.

Are Ice Breakers sugar-free? The mints are sold as sugar-free, sweetened with sweeteners rather than sugar. Check the ingredient panel on each variant for the full declaration.

Why is the Ice Breakers tin shaped like that? The flat round container with the hinged flip-top is as much a part of the brand as the mints. It opens with one thumb, fits a pocket, and makes sharing a mint easy — and it is the reason people recognise the pack before they read the label.

Who makes Ice Breakers? Hershey, since 2000, when it bought the brand from Nabisco for 135 million dollars in a deal that also included Bubble Yum and Breath Savers. It was a deliberate move outside chocolate and into the gum and breath-freshening category, and by 2006 Hershey was reported to hold third place in the chewing gum market.

What are Ice Breakers Sours? The same mint format with a sour sugar coating, so you get a sharp hit first and the cool mint finish underneath. It puts the brand into the sour category as well as the breath-freshening one, which is a useful bridge — a sour-candy customer may pick them up alongside Warheads or Toxic Waste.



Related guides: Hershey's complete UK guide · Bubblegum: the complete guide · Trident gum complete guide · Most popular American sweets UK · American candy wholesale buyer's guide

Sources

Wikipedia, Ice Breakers (history, Hershey acquisition, Liquid Ice, PACS): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Breakers_candy
New York Times, Hershey Foods to acquire Nabisco mint and gum brands (7 November 2000): nytimes.com
Hersheyland, Ice Breakers Duo sugar free mints: hersheyland.com

Written by Sharon Wilson, Sweet and Glory. Sweet and Glory has imported American and world confectionery into the UK from Trafford Park, Manchester, since 2015.