Three years ago wafer-thin strips hit the shelves in the form of Pfizer's Listerine PocketPaks. Since then, dissolving breath freshener strip sales in the US hit $200 million and in the first nine months of 2004 alone, 128 different products hit markets around the world, according to the market research firm Productscan Online.
One of the new kids on the block in all this is the supplement strip, which will make life a lot easier for adults and children with an aversion to swallowing pills, who make up around 30-40 percent of the US population.
Marlton, New Jersey-based Momentus Solutions is one of the pioneers in this field. The company recently launched Healthy Moments - a range of vitamin, herbal and mineral products in strip form.
Adults have a choice of 32 varieties, including flavors such as Black Cherry, Tangerine Cream and Bavarian Chocolate Cake, while children have a more limited choice of eight flavors ranging from Awesome Orange to Wacky watermelon and are marketed with Arthur, the spectacle-wearing cartoon character.
Neil Kozarsky, president of Momentus Solutions, told NutraIngredientsUSA that he believes his company is the first to sell a complete line of quality vitamin strips nationwide. He is also particularly proud that the children's range is certified as being "pediatrician accepted".
It is still unknown, however, whether this convenient method of taking supplements is actually any more, or indeed any less, easy for the body to absorb.
"People tell us vitamins are absorbed better through the mouth, but we need to investigate this through clinical trials," said Kozarsky, adding that his company is in the process of putting this into motion.
For now in any case, Momentus Solutions is focusing its efforts on North America, but Productscan Online said that the strip trend is not confined to the US - this year there have been breath strip introductions in the Netherlands, Japan, South Africa, the Philippines, Colmbia and the UK.
Leading UK vitamin retailer Boots is thought to be the first to bring vitamin-containing strips to the European market, using technology developed by Aquafilm.
In an interview earlier this year, Walter Zackowitz, managing director of international sales at US premix company Watson Foods, predicted the real winner will be energy-boosting strips.
"Consumers of products like Red Bull tend to be young, innovative and keen to use convenient formats," he noted. "With strips you can dose yourself as often and when you like, they are easier to carry around than a can, and you meet the needs of people who have difficulty taking pills."
Zackowitz noted, however, that there are some technical difficulties with including vitamins.
"You can only fit 17mg of nutrient in a strip, so they are better suited to trace nutrients like B vitamins. And you can only put so much vitamin into a film before you get pH problems and the colour begins to change. We have found the maximum dosing to be about 12-14 mg of vitamin C to start with, making a claim of about 9mg on the pack, although we would like to improve this to 10mg."
Other major challenges for film makers include finding the threshold dissolution rate for the films - by nature they must dissolve on the roof of the mouth but they also need to survive some moisture to prevent curling and clumping together in the dispensers. The outer packaging is also key to the product's success.
But Zackowitz claimed that significant improvements in such technology by US companies at least will allow for a number of new product launches in coming months.
"The early starch-based films were of poor quality and made with really crude technology. Also consumers didn't know how to use them, sticking them on the tongue with all its taste receptors, instead of letting them dissolve on the roof of the mouth."