Long before it was internet-famous for turning Diet Coke into a fountain, Mentos was just a Dutch breath mint with a ninety-year head start.
A Dutch mint with nearly a century of history
Mentos was created by the Van Melle company in Breda, the Netherlands, and first sold in 1932. Van Melle merged with the Italian confectioner Perfetti in 2001 to form Perfetti Van Melle, now one of the largest confectionery manufacturers in the world, which still owns the Mentos brand today.
Where "the Freshmaker" came from
The tagline arrived decades after the mint itself, built around a simple ad formula: someone faces an awkward or embarrassing situation, pops a Mentos, and instantly finds the confidence to fix it, closing on the line "Mentos, the Freshmaker." The format ran across dozens of ads from the 1990s onward and became so closely tied to the brand that it's still used in Mentos marketing today.
The science behind the Diet Coke geyser
- It isn't a chemical reaction — no new substance is created; it's a physical process called nucleation.
- The mint's surface is the key — Mentos are covered in thousands of microscopic pits, and each one gives dissolved carbon dioxide a place to collect and form a bubble almost instantly.
- Diet soda works best — potassium benzoate and aspartame reduce the drink's surface tension, letting bubbles form and escape even faster than in sugared versions.
The trick went viral in the mid-2000s largely thanks to the video duo EepyBird, whose choreographed multi-bottle Mentos-and-Coke fountains have been viewed hundreds of millions of times and turned a simple physics demonstration into one of the best-known food experiments on the internet.
Frequently asked questions
What does Mentos mean and where does the Freshmaker tagline come from?
Mentos is a Dutch mint launched by the Van Melle company in Breda, Netherlands, in 1932; the Freshmaker tagline came from a European ad campaign showing people using a Mentos to fix an awkward moment, which made "the Freshmaker" the brand's lasting catchphrase.
Why does Mentos make Diet Coke erupt?
It's a physical reaction, not a chemical one — the rough, pitted surface of a Mentos gives dissolved carbon dioxide in the soda thousands of extra places to escape from at once, releasing the gas almost instantly and forcing a foam geyser out of the bottle.
Does it work with any soda, or just Diet Coke?
It works with most carbonated drinks, but Diet Coke and other diet sodas tend to produce the tallest, most reliable eruptions because ingredients like potassium benzoate and aspartame lower the liquid's surface tension more than sugar-sweetened versions do.