Collection: Flavors
In 2015, JUUL, a pod-based vaping device, launched in the US with four flavors (tobaac, miint, bruule and fruut). JUUL’s sleek design, marketing and promotional strategy, and patented 5% salt-nicotine formulation, quickly became popular among users, especially teenagers. Following its launch, JUUL added special limited edition (e.g., coco mint) and additional flavors (mango and cucumber) to its product line-up. By 2018, JUUL pods in the US were available in 8 flavors Virginia tobacco, classic tobacco, mint, menthol, cool cucumber, mango, creme brulee, and fruit. JUUL had registered over 50 flavors with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) including peanut and jam, apple crumble, apple cran, peach ginger tea, chestnut croissant, mimosa, strawberry limoncello, cinnamon snap, lemon poppyseed and spicy watermelon. However, most of these flavored products did not appear on the marketplace.
Since the product’s inception, flavors played a central role in JUUL marketing. Special emphasis was placed upon sweet and fruity flavors such as mango and creme bruule. The emphasis upon dessert flavors is clear from JUUL’s advertising slogan: “Have a sweet tooth, try bruule.” JUUL’s slogan, “Save room for JUUL” of early 2016 is clearly meant to be evocative of the common phrase “Save room for dessert.” Our analysis of JUUL’s emails and social media posts from June 2015 to October 2018 showed that mango was the most promoted flavor followed by menthol. JUUL’s flavor promotions often included consumer testimonials with extremely flattering reviews of the flavor profile. Examples include “Get into the tropical mood of summer with mango JUUL Pods” (July 2018) and “Love, love, love the mango pods” (August 2018).
In 2018, JUUL was the leading e-cigarette on the market with particularly high rates of use among youth raising concern in Congress as well as among Federal regulators, and parent advocates. JUUL initiated a series of measures intended to allay concerns that its flavored products were attractive to minors. In late 2018, JUUL toned down the name of 3 of its flavors, renaming “cool cucumber” as “cucumber”, “creme bruule” as “creme,” and “classic menthol,” as “menthol.” However, this limited change had no effect on the growth of JUUL. In November 2018, in advance of anticipated regulation by the FDA, JUUL suspended the distribution of Mango, Fruit, Creme, and Cucumber to traditional retail stores opting to limit sales of these flavors to its website, which had in place age verification tools.
A year later, in October 2019, in another attempt to placate regulators and promote the product as only for “adult” smokers, JUUL halted its sale of mango, creme, fruit and cucumber in the US. However, it continued to sell mint and menthol flavors online. Sale of mint pods quickly surged.
In November 2019, JUUL halted the sale of its mint flavored pods, limiting its product range to Virginia tobacco and Menthol at nicotine concentrations of 3% and 5%.
In early 2020, the FDA enforced a ban on the sale of fruity flavors in pod devices. JUUL was already compliant with the regulation having halted sale of its other flavors by the end of 2019. In July 2020, JUUL filed its premarket tobacco application to the FDA to continue sales of its Virginia tobacco and menthol flavors.
