Horrible vs. Really Horrible: Hubba Bubba Seriously Strawberry Flavour Bubble Gum; Trident Splash Strawberry and Lime Flavour Sugarfree Juicy Gum

I feel it is part of my duty as a Chartered Strawberry Yogologist to sometimes explore the more remote side of strawberry-related foodstuffs. Like, Out There. So I bought two different strawberry-flavoured gums and here we go.

Firstly, they are both fairly disgusting and, I think, have probably not been anywhere near an actual strawberry at any time in their short and no doubt sordid life-cycles.

Hubba Bubba Seriously Strawberry Flavour Bubble Gum has an initially quite nice taste, if you like lab-produced strawberry flavour that is. Actually I do quite like that, but I am just weird so, like, hey. It is also honestly sweet, containing sugar as a key ingredient. Sadly this all fades pretty fast and what you are left chewing tastes like you're licking the underside of a silage lorry which accidentally drove through a roadkill storage-dump on the way to the powdered aluminium factory. I advise you to get rid of this gum before it reaches that stage. So it's briefly pleasant(ish), then horrible.

Trident Splash Strawberry and Lime Flavour Sugarfree Juicy Gum is a monument to the taste of aspartame and little else. When you first bite it the lime stuff is quite excitingly bitter and you (very briefly) think woo yeah we are on to something here. However, that fades even faster than the Hubba Bubba's initial pleasantness and leaves you with a revolting sweet aspartame blandness which gives me the impression it will last for ever. It won't get worse, it just started dire and stayed there. If there was even a moment with a hint of even the lowliest factory-strawb flavour, it was over so fast that only Glexons from the planet Graaart, to whom our minute is a lifetime, might have noticed it. So this one is even more briefly pleasant(ish), then really horribly sweet and aspartamishly bland and repulsive, possibly for the rest of your life, but I wouldn't keep it in my mouth more than a few depressing seconds. Maybe it tastes great after a day or two ... and maybe it does not.

Conclusions:

1. Don't buy either of these products as they're both vile, but if you must buy one then get the Hubba Bubba and spit it out before you reach the EndTimeTaste™. This is your only hope. Spit, Tamsin! The Trident thing is too depressing for words. I just can't be bothered.
2. If you want gum to chew buy something else. Buy Wrigley's Spearmint, or Juicy Fruit: they are both much nicer.
3. If you want chewy strawberry get Fruitellas. I suspect them of not being all that intimately acquainted with real strawberries either, but they are still nicer by roughly 160km. OK they are not gum: they are, however, chewy. What do you think this is, Which? (Stop press: maybe Fruitellas do have fruit in. Watch this space.)
4. These two products are a very saddening experience for a Chartered Strawberry Yogologist. Maybe we are innocents, not yet ready for the outside world, and should be protected from stuff like this.
5. Gak!