XQS The Spearmint Nicotine Pouches

What is actually on this listing

We hold a single product image for this listing, which is the can photographed as you would see it on a shelf. There is no gallery, no cutaway and no size-comparison shot, so the dimensions described on this page are described in words because that is all the material there is.

This is an age-restricted nicotine product for adults aged 18 or over who already use nicotine. The compliance section near the foot of this page sets out the position properly.

The pouch itself: size, seat and duration

The format is the part of this product most worth writing about at length, because it is the part people get wrong when they arrive from a different shape of can and expect everything to behave the same way. What follows is a practical description of the object and of what people do with it. None of it is an instruction and none of it is a recommendation.

Portion size

XQS uses a slim, dry pouch. Slim in this category means a narrow rectangle with rounded ends rather than a squat oval, and dry means it does not arrive wet to the touch and does not run. The practical difference between a slim dry portion and a broad moist one is chiefly bulk: a slim pouch takes up less room along the lip and is less obvious to anyone looking at you, while a broad one is easier to locate by feel and harder to lose track of. Neither is better and neither is a measure of anything. They are simply two shapes of the same category, and people generally settle on one and stay there.

Weight is the other honest distinction. A dry pouch is light, which is why it tends to stay where it is put, and a heavier moist portion tends to want to slide along the ridge. If you have previously found that a pouch migrates while you are talking, a dry slim format is the one that most often solves it. That is a mechanical observation about shape and mass, not a claim about anything else.

Where it sits, and how it settles

The portion goes under the upper lip, laid flat along the ridge above the front teeth, with the long edge running horizontally rather than the pouch standing on end. It is placed rather than pushed. Once in, it does not need holding, moving, chewing or attention, and the usual advice from people who use the format daily is to leave it entirely alone once it is seated, because fiddling with it is the main thing that dislodges one.

The first thirty seconds or so are the part you are aware of. A dry pouch takes a moment to bed in against the lip and there is a texture to it during that period that most people stop registering quickly. If a pouch has been placed at an angle it will let you know in that first half minute, and resetting it then is easier than living with it. After it has settled, the format's defining feature is that there is nothing to do.

Talking, drinking and eating are the three things people ask about. Talking is unaffected in practice. Drinking is fine; hot drinks are the one people find changes the experience most, and cold ones least. Eating a full meal with a pouch in is possible but is the thing most likely to shift or damage the portion, and most habitual users take one out first for that reason rather than any other.

How long one stays in

The commonly reported range is somewhere between about fifteen minutes and an hour, with a long tail on both sides. Some people take one out after five minutes. Some leave one in for well over an hour. There is no correct figure inside that spread, we are not proposing one, and the numbers above are a description of what people report doing rather than any form of guidance. What is true in a mechanical sense is that a pouch's flavour is at its most distinct early and tails off, which is why the duration question tends to answer itself for most people after a week of using a format.

The tin as an object

The container deserves a paragraph of its own because it is the part you handle most. It is a shallow rigid cylinder, roughly the diameter of a small jar lid and considerably flatter, with a one-piece lid that lifts clear of a lip and presses back onto it. The closure is a friction fit rather than a screw thread, which means it opens one-handed and also means a tin carried loose in a bag with keys in it can be persuaded open by pressure. A pocket is a better home for one than the bottom of a rucksack.

The printing on the top face carries the brand, the flavour name and the declared figure. That is the only labelling on the outside, so a tin sitting on a table reads as a tin of something to anybody who is not close enough to read small print. The underside is plain. There is no window, no counter and no indicator of how many portions remain, so the only way to know how far through a can you are is to look inside it.

Ten tins together is a different proposition from one. They stack, but they are not a pocket quantity by any stretch — this is a drawer or a cupboard purchase, and the sensible pattern is one tin carried and the rest kept somewhere cool, closed and out of reach.

Taking it out, and the compartment in the lid

A used pouch comes out with a finger and goes in a bin. Where there is no bin, the recess moulded into the underside of the tin's lid is the designed answer: lift the lid, drop the used portion into the shallow catch compartment, close the tin, deal with it when you next pass a bin. It exists so that nobody has to choose between a pocket and a pavement.

Two practical notes on that compartment. It is shallow, so it holds a used portion or two rather than a day's worth, and leaving several in it over a long period is how a tin ends up unpleasant to open. And it is inside the same tin as the unused portions, separated only by the lid, so an emptied compartment is a tidier can in every sense. Empty it, close it, carry on.

Disposal is ordinary household waste. The tin, when the ten cans are eventually finished, is a rigid container and belongs wherever your local authority says rigid containers belong. That is a question for them and not for a shop.

Spearmint as a word, and the limit of what our tags can say

Let us be direct about the data problem, because it affects every mint listing we publish and this one in particular. The lid says The Spearmint. Our flavour record says mint. That is the entire tag. The brand's peppermint can carries exactly the same single tag, so at the level of filed catalogue data our system cannot separate a spearmint from a peppermint at all, and any page claiming that it can is claiming more than the record supports.

What we can do is set out what the word means in general flavour usage, clearly labelled as that. Spearmint describes the softer and greener side of the mint family. The aroma is leafy and slightly sweet, closer to a bruised herb than to an extract, and it sits lower and wider in the nose than the sharper mints do. On the palate it reads round rather than narrow: the cool character is present but gentle, the sweetness is more evident, and it does not cut the way the sharper mints cut. It is the mint most people associate with chewing gum, and it is generally the one preferred by anyone who finds a stark, high mint too much of a single note.

Placed against its siblings in the family: peppermint is the sharper, more pungent and less sweet reading, with a lifted, almost camphorous top; menthol-named products go further again and lead with a frost-forward cold character in which the herbal part recedes. Those are descriptions of three flavour words as the trade uses them. They are not scale readings, they are not measured, and our catalogue holds no number for cooling, sweetness or intensity on any can we sell. Nobody publishes such a number, so nobody can honestly quote one.

On aroma specifically: with a dry product in a rigid tin, the smell that greets you on opening is a condensed version of the flavour rather than a separate thing, and it is the most direct information available before committing to a portion. It is strongest on a freshly unsealed can and settles a little after that, which is ordinary behaviour for anything aromatic kept in a container that gets opened repeatedly. If you are choosing between two mint cans and have both to hand, opening each and smelling them one after the other will tell you more in ten seconds than any description written by a retailer, this one included.

The practical upshot for a buyer is unglamorous. You are buying the manufacturer's name for the flavour, backed by a generic tag. That is normal in this category. Stating it is better than dressing up a guess as a specification, and a ten-can purchase is a large enough commitment that it deserves to be stated.

6mg on a lid, and the shelf it puts this can on

The declared figure here is 6mg and there is no alternative version. On our shelves that files it under the Low Strength band, which holds just 15 listings — by far the smallest of our strength shelves, and a useful page precisely because it is short enough to read end to end in a couple of minutes.

For context on how the shelves are laid out rather than as any kind of ladder to climb: the bulk of what we stock is filed on the Medium Strength shelf, with Strong and Extra Strong above it. Those are filing categories that make 385 listings searchable. They are not a progression, nothing about them implies a direction of travel, and we attach no expectation whatsoever to which one somebody browses.

We cannot tell you which figure suits you, and we are not going to try. A declared milligram figure is a number the manufacturer prints on a can. It is not a measure of experience. It does not translate reliably between brands, between pouch sizes or between dry and moist formats, and two cans both marked 6mg from two manufacturers are not equivalent in any exact sense. Read the figure as what it is — a label — and read the shelf bands as a way of narrowing a search. Nothing on this page says that a larger number is better, more advanced or more desirable, because none of that is true.

Moving between cans on our own shelves

This is the section that earns its place on a page for a 6mg can, because people rarely keep one listing forever and the differences between cans are less obvious than the labels suggest. Below is what actually changes when you move, and what does not.

What changes when you change brand

Pouch shape, pouch weight, dryness, the depth of the tin, the feel of the lid and the number of portions inside are all brand decisions, and none of them is standardised. Moving from this can to Clew Cool Mint, also £39.90 keeps you in the same broad mint family at the same price point while changing every one of those physical variables. Moving to Edge Mint at £14.95 changes the price bracket dramatically as well, which usually means a different pack quantity rather than a different quality of can — always check what a price covers before reading anything into it.

Denssi Cold Mint, £39.90 is another same-price comparison and its name points at the colder end of the family rather than the leafy one, so it is the most direct way to find out whether the cold-forward reading suits you better than a spearmint reading does. Elf Bar Cool Storm at £29.90 sits between those two on price and is a third take on the same cold theme from a different house.

What changes when you change format

Slim against broad, and dry against moist, are the two format axes that matter, and they matter more than most people expect. A moist pouch behaves differently in the mouth from the first second: heavier, more mobile, more present. A broader pouch is more noticeable along the lip. Somebody who dislikes one specific can quite often dislikes its format rather than its flavour, and trying the same flavour family in a different shape is the cheapest diagnostic available. 77 Melon Mint at £39.90 and UBBS Spicy Cherry at £19.95 come from two different houses with two different physical approaches, and both are in stock.

What changes when you leave the mint family entirely

The largest move available is out of mint altogether, and it is worth describing because people who have used one mint for a long time often underestimate how different the rest of the shelf is. Cuba Black Apple Juice at £39.90 is a sweet orchard-fruit construction with no cool element filed against it at all, which makes it close to the opposite of a spearmint reading while sitting at exactly the same price. Fumi Dark Spice, £27.90 goes further still in a different direction — warm and spiced rather than cool and green, and the can we would put in front of somebody who has decided that every mint in the catalogue now tastes like every other mint.

The practical value of keeping one non-mint can beside a mint one is variety rather than anything else. A single flavour used exclusively becomes background noise faster than two flavours alternated, and that is the commonest reason people give for keeping a second tin on the go. It costs nothing to test the idea with one cheap can rather than a second pack.

What does not carry across

The declared figure does not carry across. This is the single most common mistake made when moving between cans, and it is worth stating bluntly: a number printed on one brand's can is not a promise of equivalence with the same number on another brand's can, because the pouch size, the moisture and the construction all differ and none of that is disclosed in the figure. Nor does a flavour name carry across. Two cans called Cool Mint from different houses are two separate flavourings that happen to share a marketing word, and our single mint tag will not distinguish them for you either.

Price does not carry across in any meaningful way either. The listings referenced on this page run from under fifteen pounds to just under forty, and almost all of that spread is pack quantity rather than anything about the can itself. Before comparing two prices, check what each one covers.

Two cans worth knowing are currently unavailable

Two of the nearest listings to this one cannot be bought at the moment, and it would be unhelpful to link them without saying so. ZYN Apple Mint, listed at £19.99, is showing as out of stock — it is the apple-and-mint construction nearest to this can in our catalogue, and the page is live and worth a look if you are planning rather than buying today. Rush Berry Ice Light at £19.99 is likewise unavailable, and it is the berry-with-a-cold-note listing that sits closest to this one. Both pages carry the live position, so if you are reading this some time after it was written, check there rather than trusting this paragraph.

What does not change at all

The age restriction, the addictive nature of nicotine and the fact that none of these products is a medicine do not vary by brand, by format, by flavour or by declared figure. They are constant across every can on this site and across every link on this page.

The XQS shelf around this can

We hold fourteen XQS listings in total, collected on the brand's own page. The notable structural fact about the range is that it is priced flat — effectively everything we carry from this house is £39.90 — so the range cannot be read as a good, better, best sequence. It reads only as a set of flavours and declared figures, which is a cleaner way to read a range in any case.

Within it, the cold-leaning entry is Arctic Freeze at £39.90, which takes the frost direction rather than the leafy one and is the natural comparison for anyone who found this can too soft. The fruit side of the range runs from Black Cherry, £39.90, which is the dark and sweet corner, through Berrynana Twist at £39.90, the most compound thing the brand offers here with berry and banana characters together, to Citrus Cooling, £39.90, which bridges the fruit and cold halves. Blueberry Mint, £39.90 is the one that keeps a mint base and builds a fruit onto it, which makes it the smallest step away from this can that the brand offers. Cola Lime at £39.90 is the soft-drink entry and the furthest from a spearmint in the line. All six are in stock as written.

For contrast with a differently structured range, the Cuba shelf and the Pablo shelf are our two largest brand pages and both spread across several price points rather than sitting on one. Reading all three brand pages against each other is the quickest way to understand how this market prices itself.

Keeping ten cans in decent condition

Buying at pack quantity turns storage from an afterthought into a genuine consideration, because nine tins will be sitting somewhere for weeks. The rules are dull:

• Closed lids. An open tin on a desk loses its aromatic top note faster than anything else will take it away. Close it between portions rather than at the end of the day.
• Cool and dark. A drawer or a cupboard beats a windowsill, a dashboard or a shelf above a radiator every time. Heat is the enemy of a flavour, and light does the printing on the lid no favours either.
• Dry. A dry pouch wants to stay dry. Do not store tins in a bathroom, and do not move them in and out of a fridge, which invites condensation for no gain whatever.
• Sealed until needed. Leave the nine unopened tins sealed. There is nothing to be gained by opening them early and something to be lost.
• Out of reach. Ten tins is a quantity that has to live somewhere, and wherever that is must be out of the reach of children and of anyone under 18.

The date printed on the can by the manufacturer is the only date information that exists. We do not publish production or batch dates on our listings and could not supply one if asked.

Quantity, when there is no variant to choose

With one declared figure and one price, the only real decision on this listing is whether ten cans of one flavour is the right shape of purchase for you.

The case for it is straightforward: the per-can cost is lower than most single tins on the site, and reordering is something you then do four times a year rather than fortnightly. The case against it is equally straightforward: it is ten cans of one flavour, and a flavour you have not previously used is a poor candidate for that commitment. A spearmint reading in particular is a flavour people feel strongly about in both directions, and it is the sort of thing worth meeting once at single-can prices before meeting it ten times. The Edge listing at £14.95 and the other lower-priced cans linked above exist for precisely that purpose.

There is also a middle path that people use often: one pack of something known, plus one or two cheap single tins of something unfamiliar in the same order. Nothing on this site requires an order to stay inside one brand, one flavour family or one strength band.

Buying it, receiving it, and proving your age

The listing is live and the can is in stock as this is written, so it can be ordered normally. Stock positions change and the product page always shows the current one; where this page and the product page disagree, the product page is right.

Every order is subject to age verification. This is an 18+ product, checks are applied, and ID may be requested on delivery. A courier is entitled to refuse to hand over a parcel where age cannot be established, and the parcel going back is the ordinary result of that rather than an exceptional one. If you will not be in, arranging delivery to somewhere where nobody can prove their age is the most common cause of a failed handover we see.

On returns: an age-restricted consumable cannot be taken back into stock once it has left us, so a pack purchase should be treated as a decision rather than a trial. Damaged or incorrect deliveries are a different matter entirely and are normal to raise.

Routes to this page

Four routes lead here and each answers a different question. By declared figure, the can sits on the low band with the other 14 listings there. By house, it is one of the fourteen on the XQS page. By flavour, it is one of 148 listings on our mint shelf, which is the largest flavour shelf we keep and stretches from the softest leafy readings to the most frost-forward ones. And the full shop listing holds every can we carry in one place, which is the right starting point when you do not yet know what you are after.

Questions we are asked about this can

Is this just the peppermint can with a different lid?

We do not hold the information that would let us answer that. Both cans carry the identical single flavour tag mint in our catalogue, so the filed data does not separate them. What does differ on the record is the declared figure — 6mg here against 10mg on the other — and the name the manufacturer chose. Spearmint and peppermint are distinct terms in ordinary flavour usage, described further up this page, but that is the general meaning of two words rather than something our tags confirm.

How many tins come for £39.90?

Ten, according to the pack quantity on our record. That makes the per-tin figure considerably lower than most single cans on the site, and it also makes this a commitment to one flavour repeated ten times. Both halves of that are worth weighing before ordering.

Is there a stronger version of this exact flavour?

Not on this listing, which holds 6mg and nothing else. The same brand's other mint can is filed at 10mg under a different name and has its own page. Browsing by figure rather than by flavour is easier from the strength shelves linked above than from here.

Which figure should I pick?

We cannot say, and it would be wrong of us to pretend we could. There is no figure this page can identify as right for any individual, the shelf bands are a filing device rather than a ranking, and a shop has no basis on which to make that call for somebody. If you already use nicotine you will have your own sense of what a declared number means in practice, which is the only input that counts.

Is 6mg low?

It is the lowest band we file cans under, which is why it appears on that shelf. Beyond the filing, the question does not have a real answer: a declared figure is not a measure of experience and does not compare cleanly across brands or pouch formats. The number describes what the manufacturer has declared for this can and nothing further.

Does the pouch move around while I talk?

Generally not, once it has settled. A slim dry portion is light and tends to stay where it is placed; heavier and moister formats are the ones people report sliding. If a pouch does shift, it is usually because it was placed at an angle rather than flat, and resetting it in the first half minute is easier than tolerating it.

What is the tray under the lid for?

Used portions, when no bin is available. Lift the lid, drop the used one into the recess, close the tin, empty it at the next bin. It is shallow by design and is not a place to accumulate several over days.

Are all the cans you have linked here available?

Most of them, but not all. Two are currently out of stock and are flagged as such where they appear above: the ZYN apple-and-mint listing and the Rush berry listing, both at £19.99. Everything else linked on this page was in stock at the time of writing. Stock moves, so the individual product pages are the authority.

Where is this made?

We do not hold that information and will not invent it. Our record carries brand, product name, price, declared figure, flavour tag, pack quantity and stock position. Countries, factories, company histories and founding dates are not on it, and a product page is not the place for guesses about any of them.

What is in it?

We do not publish composition detail for the cans we list and are not going to summarise a manufacturer's formulation from memory. The information printed on the physical can and its packaging is the manufacturer's own and is the thing to read before buying if that matters to you.

Can I order several different cans at once?

Yes, and many orders are exactly that — a pack of something known plus a cheap single tin of something being tried. There is no requirement to stay inside a brand, a flavour family or a strength band within one basket.

How many portions are in one tin?

We do not hold a per-tin portion count against this listing, only the pack quantity of ten cans, so we cannot give you a number and are not going to estimate one. The manufacturer prints what it prints on the can itself, and that is the information to go by. It is a genuine gap in our record rather than something being withheld, and it matters when comparing a pack price against a single-tin price elsewhere on the site.

Does a dry pouch feel different from a moist one?

Yes, and it is the difference most people notice first when moving between brands. A dry portion is lighter and tends to stay where it is placed; a moister, heavier one is more present along the lip and more inclined to move. That is a description of physical shape and weight, nothing more. Neither format is better than the other and people generally settle on whichever they got used to first.

Why do two cans with the same flavour name taste unalike?

Because the name is a marketing word rather than a specification. Two houses can both call a can Cool Mint and be selling two entirely separate flavourings, and our own catalogue tag — a single word, mint — will not tell them apart either. The only way to know is to try one, which is the argument for a cheap single tin over a pack when something is unfamiliar.

Will you tell me if a flavour is coming back into stock?

We do not publish restock dates, because we are often not given firm ones and a date that then slips is worse than no date at all. The product page for any out-of-stock can is where its position will change when it changes.

Legal and safety, stated in full

• This product is for adults aged 18+ who already use nicotine. We sell it to nobody else and we never suggest that anybody who does not already use nicotine should begin.
• Nicotine is an addictive substance.
• It is not a licensed stop-smoking medicine and is not offered, described or intended as one. It is not intended for non-smokers, for anyone who does not already use nicotine, for under-18s, or for anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding.
• We make no health, medical or therapeutic claim about this product in any direction, and nothing on this page should be read as one.
• Orders are age-verified and ID may be requested on delivery. A courier may decline to complete a delivery where age cannot be established.
• Store it out of the reach of children and of anyone under 18.

To sum up

XQS The Spearmint is a ten-can pack at £39.90 carrying one declared figure of 6mg, filed on the shortest of our strength shelves, with a slim dry portion and a catch compartment in the lid. The flavour tag on our record says only mint, which is less than the lid says and worth knowing before a pack purchase. If you would rather see the wider field first, the mint shelf is the broadest view of this family and everything we stock is the broadest view of the lot.