What Happened To Stride Gum?

It was available for sale in the U.S. for less than 20 years, but Stride gum still blazed like a comet across the candy market before disappearing from sight. Or, to pick a more apt comparison, it blazed across the candy market like a guy who jumps out of an airplane without a parachute and then free-falls for 25,000 feet before landing in an enormous net somewhere in the California desert. Stride didn't have anything to do with comets, but it did sponsor daredevil Luke Aikins to complete that very stunt in 2016 as part of a series of zany collaborations and sponsorships that kept the gum in the American pop-culture conversation over the years.

However, if you look for it in the U.S. today, you'll come up short. What happened to it? Mondelez International, which makes Stride, indirectly acknowledged its fate in a 2023 press release. Following declining sales before and during the pandemic and a decision to shift toward cakes and other baked goods, Mondelez announced it was selling much of its gum portfolio, including Trident, Chiclets, and Bubblicious. It would hold on to Stride, but not in Canada, Europe, or the U.S. If you're lucky, you might still come across the odd leftover pack on a dusty hardware-store shelf in the United States. The main action is now halfway across the globe in places like Australia and China — where gum is big business, and Stride is still on the market.

In its relatively short time on the American market, Stride — the sugar-free, "ridiculously long lasting gum" — kept a relatively high profile. In 2006, after the gum launched, the brand boasted of a sweetener system to slow the release of aspartame during chewing. In 2009, Stride collaborated on a promo with actor Zachary Quinto, and in 2011, it enlisted Shaun White to help it launch a new flavor named after the champion snowboarder: Whitemint. Things were going well enough by 2012 that Kraft, its owner at the time, announced an expansion into China, the second biggest gum market in the world after the U.S. (One Asian country where gum isn't big business? Singapore. Most gum is banned there, largely over concerns about littering.)

But the Covid-19 pandemic hit gum hard. In the first quarter of 2021, Mondelez reported steep declines in its gum and candy business, and the company (whose other brands include Oreo and Chips Ahoy!) was already hinting about moves in a different direction. That might have been a prudent business choice. In 2023, Mondelez's global sales grew 14% over the previous year to $36 billion.

Mondelez may have fewer gum brands in its portfolio, but it still has a lot to chew on. Do you need something to chew on? Fear not! Stride may be gone, but we've still got great gum to recommend.