Chews you can use: No matter what your party affiliation, you can have some fun with the upcoming elections by chewing this gum—take Bill and Dick’s word for it.
After the gum’s introduction in February and subsequent coming-out at the All Candy Expo May 20 to 22 in Chicago, Klein worked hard to introduce the three—at that time—presidential candidates to his product. “Each candidate has had the gum in their hands,” Klein said. “I was with Senator Obama last Tuesday {June 3} and shook his hand. Senator Clinton has seen it and I had a client meeting with Senator McCain the following day, and I gave it to the client. They loved it; they thought it was great.”
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In addition to chewing the gum, Klein said many folks are keeping the packets as mementos. “We’ve actually had a lot of people collecting the packs,” he noted. “They’re buying them as souvenirs and getting candidates to sign them. It can be used as a great handout for a local official, since it is labeled only for each party, to give out at functions. When you think about a button you wear for one day, a pack of gum with 12 pieces you can pull out of your pocket 12 times.”
The election gum has caught the attention of national media outlets as well. “We were on ABC News, Fox, featured in the Chicago Sun-Times and on XM Radio’s POTUS 2008 channel,” Klein said. (POTUS stands for President of the United States.) “We launched at the All-Candy Expo, and the Chicago Sun-Times called our product the show-stopper. I had a guy on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam handing it out.”
Klein, who operates a Toronto-based marketing and advertising company called Drivertise International, comes by his love of goodies honestly. His mother, Rhonda Klein, operated a candy store called Sweet Arrangements, “somewhere,” he sort of remembered, “along East Genesee Street, heading west past P&C.” He sold lollipops out of his backpack when he was a student at Hebrew Day School. “Syracuse is a huge part of my life. I love coming home in the summer to get black cherry ice cream at Sno-Top in Manlius.”
Bonus Gum markets other chewable products as well, all sugar-free, including mint flavors and so-called function gums: energy, cranberry and green tea. The energy gums contain guarana and taurinet, an ingredient in energy drinks like Red Bull, cranberry touts antioxidants, while the green tea variety, Klein said, has all the invigorating benefits of that ancient Chinese secret.
While the function gums are made in Europe, Klein said the election chew comes out of a factory in Buffalo. Locally you can currently find them at Sound Garden, 124 Walton St., and Empire News, 189 Walton St., just around the corner from Bonus Gum’s Syracuse offices, inside Mr. Shop, 259 W. Fayette St. Klein, who visits Syracuse about 10 times a year, said he is working on getting distribution at area Wegmans, Byrne Dairy stores and Nice N Easy convenience stores. The election and mint gums retail for 99 cents and $1.09, respectively, while the function gums range in price from $1.39 to $1.59.
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“We are just setting up, really,” he said. “We started delivering in February and we are just getting our rollout. We have to fit into everyone’s turnover cycle. We continue to hit the Northeast and West Coast very hard, and we have a great appreciation for all the buyers who already believe in us. Distribution is very challenging because there are so many different levels of distributors and everyone throughout the line has to make decisions. It just takes time. It’s a process.
“The election gum has been terrific in opening doors for us,” he continued. “It has expedited our rollout tremendously. Everyone sees it as fun. It’s not just gum, but a way of showing your party support. Everyone has realized that all the way down. This is going to be a phenomenal election year. Let’s have fun with it.”
—Molly English-Bowers
