4 out of 5 pre-teen vandals choose Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice

To enliven any news story, journalists are all about gory details. But we came across one such detail today that seems more about some kind of product placement gone wrong than anything else. Apparently, during a school trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts, some 12-year-old stuck a wad of gum on a $1.5 million painting. And right there in the second paragraph is the key information—it wasn’t just any piece of gum, but a piece of Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice gum. Why is the brand of gum relevant to this story? To give the kid points for chewing sugarless? Extra’s tagline is, “Long-lasting flavor. Extra’s got it.” Whether the “chemical residue” from the gum will leave a long-lasting stain remains to be seen.

—Posted by Kathleen Sampey

March 1, 2006 | Permalink