What Flavor is the Mystery Airhead?

If you grew up in the 1990s, you no doubt had your fair share of Airheads candy. For me, they evoke childhood memories of summer at the community pool, right up there with Fun Dip, Pop Rocks, Nerds, and candy cigarettes (I was a really cool ten-year old). And when the Airhead mystery flavor dropped, my elementary school collectively lost its mind trying to figure out what it was. What is the mystery flavor Airhead? Has the code been cracked after all these years? Read on to find out. 

What is the mystery flavor Airhead?

The Airhead mystery flavor hit the shelves in the summer of 1993. Up until then, this taffy candy was dealing with all the standard flavors of the fruit candy world: cherry, watermelon, strawberry, green apple, blue raspberry, and the like. One of the genius marketing strategies for Airheads was that the brightly colored wrappers matched the brightly colored candy inside.

All of a sudden, there’s an Airhead with a silvery white label that says “mystery” on it. This kind of excitement was familiar to any child who experienced the thrill of opening a pack of baseball cards; the potential for what was inside was almost too much to bear. 

And when you opened that mystery Airhead, what you saw was mind boggling: a pure white slab of flavors unknown. It looked like a melted glue stick, reformed into a flat brick, allowing kids to imprint onto it whatever flavors their tongues could imagine. The mystery Airhead is an example of marketing genius.

It’s also an example of money-saving ingenuity. In the Airheads factory, the taffy is batch made according to flavor, meaning they crank out all the green apples in one go and then switch to cherry, and so on. Working like this, they would have to clean the machines every time they swapped flavors. 

The mystery Airhead is what happens when they just let two flavors mix together without stopping the machines. All they have to do is not add the artificial coloring and viola: a white mystery candy that is just a combination of whatever two flavors happened to be rolling out that day.

Does the Airhead mystery flavor change?

The formula for the mystery flavor is not set in stone. Technically, a mystery flavor you ate in 1993 could be different than one you ate in 2023. It’s all about the odds of what was rolled out on the machines the day they were made. 

What are all the Airhead mystery flavors?

I’m not a math guy. But let’s assume that a factory is consistently churning out eight basic flavors of Airheads: cherry, watermelon, orange, grape, blue raspberry, green apple, lemon, and strawberry. Assuming that a mystery Airhead is always the combination of two flavors, that means there are 28 different dual-flavor combinations. How many do you think you’ve tried?


About the Author

Luke Field

Luke Field is a writer and actor originally from Philadelphia. He was the former Head Writer of branded content at CollegeHumor and was also a contributing writer and actor to the CollegeHumor Originals cast. He has extensive improv and sketch stage experience, performing both at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and with their Touring Company. In addition to writing, he also works as a Story Producer, most recently on season 4 of Accident, Suicide, or Murder on Oxygen. Keep your eyes peeled for his brief but impactful appearance as Kevin, the screaming security guard, in the upcoming feature The Disruptors, directed by Adam Frucci.