What Exactly Is The Airheads Mystery Flavor?

Mystery-flavored foods are a bit of marketing brilliance, naturally selling themselves on the twin temptations of sugar and secrecy. There are mystery flavors of Dum Dums, Fruit Roll-Ups, Mountain Dew, and more. But before any of these came the White Mystery Airhead. Launched in 1993, Mystery Airheads have befuddled candy fans for two and a half decades. Throughout the years, they've remained a pop culture phenomenon, even launching an Airheads White Mystery Taco Bell Freeze that was equally as baffling to the taste buds as its candy inspiration.

White Mystery Airheads cloud our judgment of taste by playing with the way our senses interact. Our perception of flavor depends partially on visual cues like color. That's why, in blindfolded taste tests, some people think all Skittles might be the same flavor. Without color to clue them into the individual candy flavors, tasters can't even recognize the same familiar flavor they've had before.

The lesson from Skittles is that you don't need to invent a new flavor to confuse consumers — you can simply take the flavors you already have and disguise them. This is the basis of Mystery Airheads, which are actually a combination of the other Airheads flavors.

The standard Airheads flavors are strawberry, cherry, orange, grape, green apple, and blue raspberry. White Mystery Airheads are made by combining these flavors. Usually, Airheads are colored according to their flavor with combinations of Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 6, and Yellow 5 dyes. Because the colors of all Airheads candies are artificial, removing them from the recipe leaves the product bright white.

There is no consistent formula for the White Mystery Airheads flavor. It changes from one batch to the next as part of a clever, cost-saving move by manufacturers. Instead of stopping the assembly line and cleaning all the equipment between batches of different flavors, they let it all keep running, causing a brief period in which the new and old flavors combine. 

The combined flavor is used to create mystery Airheads, and it's also the method used to make mystery-flavored Dum Dums.

Mystery Airheads wouldn't exist if it wasn't for a piece of fan mail. Matthew Fenton, who was the Assistant Brand Manager of Airheads in the mid-1990s, recalls searching for a new Airheads flavor that could follow in the footsteps of 1992's wildly successful Blue Raspberry launch. Fenton habitually read the heaps of fan mail his company received, most of which was written by teenagers. 

They sent ideas for flavors, asked for free candy, and even submitted hand-drawn proposals for new Airheads logos, but there was one particular letter that caught Fenton's eye. The fan suggested that Airheads make a white version of their candy with a mystery flavor that clever customers would have to deduce for themselves.

Fenton liked the teen's idea, and Mystery Airheads were prepared for trial. Another flavor was also developed, with the idea that market research would help the company pick just one to release. Fenton took samples of each to a classroom for students to try, and afterwards, he overheard the kids talking enthusiastically about the mystery flavor, trying to guess what it was. The brilliance of the gimmick was clear, and Mystery Airheads were chosen as the new flavor.