Freshen Up is no longer made. The gum that went squirt — a soft shell around a liquid centre, launched by Warner-Lambert and later a Cadbury Adams brand — has not been in US retail distribution for years, and no manufacturer currently produces it.
We are not going to give you a year
You will find 2015, 2016 and 2019 confidently stated all over the internet. Every one of those dates traces back to the same cluster of unsourced content sites, and they contradict each other. There is no Mondelez statement, no trade-press report, and no press release. Anyone giving you a specific year is guessing.
What can be said from a real document: when Mondelez sold its gum business to Perfetti Van Melle — a deal that closed on 2 October 2023 and covered the US, Canada and Europe — the brands named were Trident, Dentyne, Stimorol, Hollywood, V6, Chiclets, Bubbaloo and Bubblicious. Freshen Up is not on that list. By 2023 there was nothing left to sell.
One thing to watch
A relaunch has been announced. Trade press reported in early 2025 that MKJ Brands intends to bring Freshen Up back, including a liquid-centre gum. As of today freshen-up.com carries the words "Launching Soon" and nothing else, no product has shipped, and we have not been offered any to buy. We will stock it the day it is real — but an announcement is not a product, and right now you still cannot buy Freshen Up.
The good news: several gums you think are gone are not
If you came here for Freshen Up you probably assume the rest of that shelf went with it. Mostly it did not. Mondelez stopped making Beeman's, Black Jack and Clove around 2014, and in August 2018 sold all three to the Gerrit J. Verburg Company, which announced shipping from that November after four years off the market. Verburg makes a teaberry gum too. Bubblicious, widely written off, was relaunched by Perfetti Van Melle in November 2025 and added a new line in 2026.
We stock the Verburg revivals and the surviving classics. They are on this page.
Is anything actually like Freshen Up?
Honestly, not really — the liquid-centre stick gum is a format almost nobody makes now. If it was the burst you were after, Bubble Tape and the filled bubble gums are the closest format we carry. If it was the flavour and the era, the Verburg gums are the better answer.
