Tic Tacs - the two-calorie breath mint shaped like a little capsule. These nifty sweets come in a variety of flavours. The phenomenon started out with the ever popular freshmint Tic Tac, and from it the Tic Tac tree¹ grew to incorporate other flavours such as cinnamon, spearmint, orange mints, wintergreen and lime mints. The inventive folk at the Ferrero Company also came up with the idea of having two flavours separated in the same container.

The Ferrero Company began in Alba, Italy in 1946 and is now the third largest confectionery company in the world. They also produce Nutella (a delicious hazelnut spread), Ferrero Rocher (a chocolate ball in a casing of wafer and chocolate) and Kinder Surprise (a milk chocolate egg that has a little toy inside that you need to assemble).

No matter how bad your breath is, these jewels seem to be able to fix your problem.

Celebration

Recently Tic Tac celebrated its 25 years in Times Square, New York City. To herald the occasion, a huge Tic Tac cake was made out of those nifty little Tic Tac boxes.

Seasonal packaging is available for several different festive holidays. For example, for Halloween the boxes are dressed up in pictures of pumpkins and witches. For Easter, they have bunnies on them.

The Sugar of Life

With a slogan like 'Get a Bang Out of Life', how could it not contain the fuel of our life - sugar. The ingredients on a box of orange mints are:

• Sugar
• Dextrin
• Tartaric acid
• Rice starch
• Arabic gum
• Natural and artificial flavourings
• Magnesium stearate
• Ascorbic acid
• Carnauba wax

The ingredients for the other flavours will vary slightly.

Tic Tacs are such a universally-recognised brand that jokes made about them are instantly seen to be referring to the mints, even though they don't mention them by name.

The Many Uses

• You can eat them while standing in line (or queue) at the supermarket.

• You can eat them while driving down the road to pick up your date.

• You can pop one in your mouth after your luncheon with the boss (or perhaps even before, if brushing your teeth in the morning has not been your strong point).

• You can eat one while sitting at a computer and typing out entries to the Guide.

Some of us are perpetual 'crunchers', crunching away at sweets even though they are as hard as rocks; Tic Tacs aid us in the battle of protecting the enamel on our teeth. Some of us are the sucking-on-sweets kind of people. Tic Tacs are sweet enough to be sucked on their own. For those who like the feeling of 'more' in their mouth, the option of sucking five Tic Tacs at once is always there.

They can perhaps be used as an encouragement to play the popular game Tic-Tac-Toe. Instead of using noughts and crosses, different coloured Tic Tacs could be used and the victor would be able to eat the 'winnings'.

The Tic Tac box could be decorated to become a 'tooth box' for lost teeth for kids. The tooth fairy will be able to pick up the kid's tooth and drop off the reward.

Basically, they are nifty, spiffy, and delicious.