Fruit Stripe Gum to bite the dust after a half century of highly abbreviated rainbow flavors

SAN FRANCISCO — Fruit Stripe Gum, something of a childhood icon for many gum chewers over the past five decades, will soon head over the rainbow with its multicolored zebra mascot Yipes — seemingly for good. The manufacturer of Fruit Stripe Gum, the Chicago company Ferrara Candy Co., gave the magazine Food & Wine a statement Tuesday that it is discontinuing the product; on Wednesday, an unidentified company spokesperson did the same for CNN. Fruit Stripe may have been best known for its oversized packs of spectral-striped gum sticks, each bearing a distinct fruit flavor that typically faded away quickly upon chewing. For years, the packs contained temporary tattoos of brand mascot Yipes the rainbow zebra that kids could apply to their arms, legs and faces; gum chewers often joked that the tattoos lasted far longer than the gum’s flavor did.