Do we like them?

Do we like Mentos (Perfetti Van Melle)?

Makes Mentos mints and chews, Fruit-tella and Chupa Chups sweets and gum; Italian-Dutch group

Our score: 4 out of 10. Harmless sweets, but the evidence we found was thin and mostly negative: an ad fine, a packaging lawsuit and greenwashing claims. We'd hold off backing them.

Perfetti Van Melle is the group behind Mentos, Fruit-tella and Chupa Chups. It was formed in 2001 when Italy's Perfetti merged with the Netherlands' Van Melle. It's now one of the world's biggest sugar-sweet makers.

In 2015, Confectionery News reported a US class action accusing the company of slack-filling Mentos gum containers, meaning boxes with too much empty space. The company said the case was meritless and that it would fight it.

In 2017 Confectionery News reported that Italian regulators fined the company over dental-health claims in its gum ads. The company said the claims were scientifically sound.

On the green side, the group is a UN Global Compact participant and files palm-oil reports with the RSPO. Still, it was named in a Changing Markets Foundation greenwashing report on packaging, so we give it a middling-to-low score.