With the World Cup starting later today and Snus Vikings having our amazing guess the result game for the tournament, with fantastic rewards, offers and bundles available, I was feeling obligated to write a blog post about the tournament and tie it in with some of the flavours of nicotine pouches that we sell but every subject I could think of was feeling a bit obvious.
What I wanted to avoid is a nice generic “10 Nicotine Pouch flavours that make us think of Mexico City” or something like that, linking it to the opening game, or “10 flavours that scream ‘Miami’”, where Brazil, Columbia, Portugal, Scotland, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia and Cabo Verde will be playing in the group stages.
The first problem I had was that lots of the flavours associated with Mexico City are things that we didn’t have a relevant flavour for. There’s not much I can do with roast pork, with corn and beans all cooked in garlic, onions and cilantro. There just isn’t much call for a nicotine pouch that tastes like that.
It’s the same problem with Miami and Florida. Once you get past “Oranges”, there’s a lot of fantastic seafood to eat in Florida, but no one is making a shrimp or stone crab flavoured pouch (and if they do, they should probably be put on some kind of list). Between the two cities I managed to get Oranges, Strawberries (Florida is the largest producer of winter strawberries, apparently), Lime (Key Lime pie and lots of Mexican dishes) and Chillies.
Now, as far as products that we stock, this wouldn’t be a problem as we have loads of choice in every one of those flavours. For Orange we have KILLA Exclusive Orange, PABLO Exclusive Orange, VELO Orange Spark, CUBA Orange, Helwit Orange, HIT Aplesin (the Swedish for Orange), ELF Fantasy Orange, CAMO Orange Bubble Gum (which sounds very, very Florida), XQS Orange Apple and we even have Nic Nac Blood Orange Nicotine Lozenges, for those who prefer a lozenge to a pouch.
Strawberry flavoured pouches would have been even easier. Classic Strawberry? We have Helwit Strawberry, CUBA Strawberry, 77 Strawberry, KLINT Strawberry Mini, FUMI Strawberry Mini and if you want something thinner than a pouch, NICLEAF has Strawberry in several strengths. Want something a bit more flavour? FUMI Tangy Strawberry. Bit of a mint kick as well? LOOP Strawberry Ice and DENSSI Strawberry Freeze.
How about Strawberry Kiwi? Well, SNU Strawberry Kiwi, PABLO Gold Strawberry Kiwi, Fix Strawberry Kiwi, LEO Strawberry Kiwi Lime and Strawberry Kiwi Lime Zero.
Strawberry Lychee; got that in PABLO Exclusive Strawberry Lychee and KILLA Strawberry Lychee.
Got ICEBERG Strawberry Banana Gum, ICEBERG Energy Strawberry Mango Caffeine pouches, PABLO Strawberry Watermelon and KILLA Strawberry Cheesecake.
And that’s not even half of it but you can use the search bar and find them all yourself. Not as many as first gen Pokemon but not far off and there are nearly as many lime flavoured nicotine pouches as there are Strawberry. There are a lot that would have been a really good match for the Mexico City opening game as they are a lime/chilli mix like VELO Lime Flame, LOOP Jalapeno Lime, BAOW Chilli Lime, NOAT Spicy Lime (in their really nicely designed and much more convenient packaging) and BAGZ Chilli Lime.
If you fancy something more refreshing there’s XQS Cola Lime, KLINT Cola Lime, and CAMO Cherry Cola Lime and if you want to double down on the citrus, there’s SNU Lemon and Lime, VELO Sour Lime and, if you want another form factor, the NicPix Lemon Lime Nicotine Toothpick.
When it comes to Chilli flavours alone, you don’t even need to use the search bar as we’ve got so many we’ve got an entire flavour category for those pouches and some really punchy flavours like VELO Guava Jalapeno, LOOP Habanero Mint Hyper Strong (if you’re brave), LOOP Hot Rhubarb, CHAINPOP Cherry Chilli and ICE Reaper XL. We’ve got enough choice that you could do an alternative to the Sean Evans show “Hot Wings” (although that would be a little slower paced)
But as I said, the whole premise of the article seemed a bit trite, a bit “what everyone else would write” or “what AI would come up with for an article idea”, so I didn’t want to use it.
Then I had a lightbulb moment due to the wonderful, predictable and entirely appropriate for the season’s weather which we have been “enjoying” since the lovely heatwave broke. I have been using nicotine pouches to wean myself off cigarettes but I’m not completely off them yet, and I was trying to have a quick cigarette break outside in the rain and wind, juggling the cigarette, phone and umbrella and trying to not have the wind turn the umbrella inside out. It made me think of yesterday with the thunder, lightning, hail and torrential rain for 20 minutes before bright sunshine, which inevitably made me think of the last time I was in Florida.
If you haven’t ever had the pleasure of a trip to the home of “Florida Man”, the weather is…interesting. It’s the state that retirees move to so they never have to deal with cold weather any more but it’s also where you can go from sunbathing to drowning in the rain and then back again in about 3 minutes. Walk into a shop in the blazing sun and cloudless blue skies in every direction, stop to pick up a few snacks and some drinks and you walk out of the shop into the sea trying to retake the land by parachute drop and cloud cover so thick that all the automatic headlights on the cars have switched on.
I was really pleased with that association. I was confident that no other writer (and definitely no gen AI) was going to make that link and write anything like this.
However…
While smoking in the rain, or trying to make sure your vape doesn’t short circuit in the damp is a pain which could easily be avoided by using nicotine pouches instead, where you can get your nicotine fix without having to go outside to smoke or vape, or can carry on using the pouch while walking or doing things outside; what flavours are associated with rain?
Can you taste a thunderstorm? There’s petrichor; the smell after rain; but that’s not a flavour of nicotine pouch you can buy. That’s more like a scented candle smell than a pouch flavour.
There isn’t a PABLO Waterspout flavour, no VELO Hurricane and although there were suggestions that White Fox might launch a “snake in my house because my backyard is flooded” flavour, that rumour didn’t have any legs….
I’ll see myself out.
