Snu

SNU prints its ladder in plain words. Low, medium, high. Nine, twelve, eighteen milligrams per pouch. It is one of the few brands that does not dress the numbers up in dots, colours or Nordic mythology, and for a range this fruit heavy that plainness works. You pick a taste, then how hard it hits.

Then there is the fourth rung, where SNU gets awkward with itself. Three flavours, and only three, carry an extra strong 45mg pouch. Nothing sits between 18mg and 45mg. No twenty five, no thirty. You step off a gentle brand straight onto a shelf with the heavy hitters, inside a can of cherry cola.

Most of the range never goes near it. But the option is there, and it catches people out.

SNU is a slow starter, and you should want that from a fruit brand. Uptake runs around five to ten minutes on the 9mg and 12mg, a long way off the one to three minutes you get from a dry, high pH heavy hitter. No lurch. The pouch warms, the flavour arrives well before the nicotine, and the two only meet in the middle of the session.

That gap between taste and effect is the thing to understand here. On a mint pouch the cooling tricks your head into reading the hit as bigger than it is. SNU has almost no mint to lean on, so there is no free amplification. A 12mg SNU feels like 12mg, which sounds obvious until you have spent a year on menthol and forgotten what an honest number feels like.

The 45mg pouches break every line of this. Same slow flavour, completely different curve, arriving hard at four to five minutes once it gets going.

Every spec sheet on this brand says mild. Three cans in the range say otherwise.

Ten cans at the strength most people actually reach for. The full picture: most flavours run 9mg to 18mg, and three push all the way to 45mg. Every rung below is buyable today. Nine flavours across three tiers, evergreen and kept in rotation at TSL.

Twenty slim, all white pouches per can, tobacco free, built from pharmaceutical grade nicotine, plant fibre, flavourings and pH adjusters. Standard construction. What matters is the moisture, and SNU sits on the wetter side of average.

That is a flavour decision, not an accident. A fruit profile needs liquid to carry it, and a bone dry pouch would have this range tasting of nothing by minute ten. The cost is drip. SNU produces a fair amount in the first two or three minutes, and because the flavours are sweet, that drip is sweet too. If you find sugary saliva at the back of the throat unpleasant, you will notice.

There is very little bite on the first load. No sting, no burn, just a slow soak. Comfort is good and you can leave a 9mg in for the best part of an hour without your gum complaining.

The can also has a scratch panel that lets you smell the flavour without cracking the seal. Small thing. Actually useful in a range this fruit led.

Against Velo the split is clean. Velo runs mint and fruit in parallel and lets you set the level from very light to firm. SNU has decided fruit is the range and mint is a courtesy. If you drink mints, buy Velo. If you never touch them, Velo is carrying half a catalogue you will never open.

Against 77 it is a question of ambition. 77 hunts for flavours nobody else has thought of. SNU is not doing that. It does eight things you recognise from a shop fridge, and does them straight. Familiar, not inventive.

Against Killa and Pablo there is no argument at 9mg to 18mg. Those brands are built to hit. SNU is built to taste.

The verdict: SNU is the range for people who do not like mint. Nobody else has written one.

SNU is British and growing fast, mostly through convenience shelves, which creates the usual problem. A corner shop takes two flavours, always the mint and always the one on the poster, and you never see the range that makes the brand worth buying. Given that the fruit is the point, a shelf holding the mint and nothing else has missed it entirely.

The 45mg pouches make it worse. A small extra strong line on three flavours moves slowly through general trade and turns up in shops almost never. Want SNU Cherry Cola at 45mg? You are buying it online or not at all.

We work closely with suppliers to keep all nine flavours and as much of the ladder as we can get on the shelf and moving. Freshness matters more here than on most brands, because a fruit pouch that has sat six months tastes flat in a way a mint never quite does.