Pacers (confectionery)

"Pacers" mint and packaging as seen in 1981 television advertisement

Pacers is a discontinued British brand of mint flavoured confection, manufactured by Mars.

Originally known as Opal Mints, they were plain white coloured chewy spearmint flavoured sweets, launched as a sister product to Opal Fruits (now known as Starburst). The product was subsequently relaunched as Pacers around 1976, and later, three green peppermint stripes were added to the sweet,^[1] possibly to align it with a similar American product of the same name.^[2] Television commercials for the sweet alluded to sport and fitness, with participants wearing green and white-striped kit, featuring the slogan "Peppermint striped for two-mint freshness".^[2] The brand was discontinued in the 1980s.

At one point the Glasgow Celtic football team were nicknamed "The Pacers" because of the similarity of their kit to the sweets.^[3]

References

1. "Pacers". Child of the 1980s. Retrieved 11 March 2012.
2. Berry, Steve & Norman, Phil – "The Great British Tuck Shop", Friday Books, 2012. pp.230–31
3. "Remembering retro sweets". What Britain Loves. Retrieved 11 March 2012.