As I’ve discovered in recent weeks, offering someone their first taste of Flintts Mints elicits one of two reactions: either gleeful joy or a visible disgust that borders on agony. LIke playing the bizarro art-punk band Deerhoof for an uninitiated listener, anyone having their first experience with Flintts tends to ask the same thing as soon as they’ve gotten over their initial shock: “What the fuck is happening?!”

These reactions have much less to do with the way that the mints taste than their bold and bizarre effect. Almost immediately after putting one in your mouth, your saliva glands jump into action, flooding your mouth with moisture; your tongue and gums soon feel like there is a mild electric current running through them. Flintts Mints – which do not contain any cannabis – are being promoted as a cure for the ubiquitous plague of dry mouth. They stand the chance of monopolizing the space; their only competitors, like XyliGum, only contain Xylitol, a much milder ingredient. Flintts Mints launched this spring; now, the jury is now out on whether enough consumers and retailers, will get behind the divisive product for it to succeed.

“It does require a little bit of open-mindedness,” pointed out Russell Adler, the company’s founder, of customers and retailers alike. “Our consumers tend to be stimulation seekers and novelty seekers,” he added.

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