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Product testing. Product testing. Product testing. Then more product testing.

These companies do lots and lots of tests with people, surveys, and all sorts of stuff before they ever ever put a product out on the shelf-- in other words, they tried a ton of stuff and the flavors you see out there are the ones that worked the best.

Mint tends to have a "refreshing" feel, flavor and smell, so is often used to indicate something being clean and fresh.

Lets just take an example. Would you want brownie flavored toothpaste? Probably not, you'd feel like it didn't clean because you just had a whole brownie and its full of chocolate and sugar, that doesn't feel like your mouth is clean. Or would you want banana flavored? Well some people HATE banana flavor, so no luck, you just lost a big audience and others may not want to have banana in their mouth for a few minutes every day, if they did they'd eat a banana.

As an aside, cinnamon used to be around a little bit but has fallen off. Bubble gum flavor (generally meant for kids) can still be found!

And after being literally raised on ad after ad after ad talking about "minty fresh breath" - we now are conditioned to believe mint is, in fact, "refreshing" - whether it is to us personally or not.

Sometimes perception is reality

Also we’ve been ingrained to associate mint with freshness, gum, literal breath mints, mouthwash, etc.

I can’t even eat mint food because I associate it with stuff you spit out.

>Mint tends to have a "refreshing" feel, flavor and smell, so is often used to indicate something being clean and fresh.

Right it's the alcohol-like burn of menthol from the mint that feels cooling and refreshing. The slight burn feels like its cleaning.

I smoked menthol cigarettes for nearly a decade. Thought my breath was always fresh and kissable. I was not correct.

I mean compared to other cigarette smokers, maybe you got the edge up.

I thought the same with cloves, btw.

Still miss those and black and milds.

Burns your mouth? Aww petal.

Mint won the flavor wars, over years and years.

Some of the first flavored chewing gum was... pine-flavored. Cloves, licorice, cinnamon, and more got tried. I used to love cinnamon flavored toothpaste as a kid. Somehow, peppermint, regular mint, spearmint, and wintergreen sold best.

In Taiwan, I saw a lot of odd flavors like green tea, but mint was still most popular. And kids' brands come in bubblegum and citrus, etc, so there are some other flavors put there.

>so no luck, you just lost a big audience and others may not want to have banana in their mouth for a few minutes every day

Hehehehe 😏

Licorice used to be a fairly common flavor but mint has taken over. If you're lucky you might find unflavored

I dated a menthol smoker. Can affirm.

“Because people like it” is not a particularly useful answer in my opinion. The question to me is “why do people like this”

I remember Miss Piggy bubblegum flavored toothpaste

Same reason like vanilla. Or chocolate Or cold drinks. Or hot drinks. Or lots of popular flavors. Sometimes "because people like it" is the only real answer.

Well. How they decide it is they test and see what people like.

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I work in market research. What people like or don’t like is a fine finding, but usually we try to go deeper - what are the specific aspects and drivers for that behaviour. “I like this” is not that useful for informing business decisions.

Yeah for sure. I’ve done it too. Just keeping it easier to understand