ZYN Icy Mint | 5 Cans

ZYN Icy Mint: The Original Ice, Still in the Fridge

ZYN Icy Mint is the previous-generation icy pouch that refused to leave quietly: a cooling blend of mint, eucalyptus and menthol at 12.5mg per pouch in the moist Slim format, still stocked here for everyone who learned to love the older can. A 5-can pack costs £19.99 at NicotineBuzz, £4.00 a can, against the £6.50 the official store charges for a current-range single.

Ranges move on and most old packs vanish. This one did not, and the reason is simple: a lot of people calibrated years of habit around exactly this strength and exactly this recipe, and they keep buying it. Swedish Match, maker of the world's No.1 nicotine pouch brand and part of Philip Morris International, folded the Icy Mint name into its 2026 refresh, but the earlier 12.5mg cans remain in circulation as their own product. We treat this page as that product's home, not as a redirect in disguise.

Icy Mint and Menthol Ice: One Family, Two Generations

The obvious question first. ZYN's current official range sells this idea as Menthol Ice at 13.5mg, the five-dot XX-Strong can that now tops the UK ladder. Icy Mint is its predecessor, one notch gentler at 12.5mg and wearing the older labelling. Same icy intent, two different cans, both on sale, and the choice between them is genuinely useful rather than confusing. Pick Icy Mint if the can you remember is the can you want, or if 13.5mg has ever felt a shade past your ceiling. Pick Menthol Ice if you want the current official spec and the strongest ZYN we stock. Nobody needs both open at once, though the comparison order has been placed more than once.

The Taste: Mint First, Then the Deep Freeze

Icy Mint opens on clean peppermint rather than medicine. The eucalyptus is present but sits behind the mint instead of leading it, which makes the first few minutes feel closer to a serious mint sweet than a lozenge. Then the menthol arrives and stays. The cold builds to a level that earns the name, holds through the middle of the wear, and tails off into a long clean finish with barely any sweetness. Users reach for the usual vocabulary: crisp, clean, cold, no surprises.

Set against its 13.5mg successor, the difference is real but subtle. The newer can pushes the eucalyptus harder and lands its cold faster; Icy Mint is a touch rounder and more mint-forward, and the smaller strength gap means the whole experience sits half a step gentler. People who find the current can slightly clinical tend to be the same people who quietly stockpile this one. Honesty requires the usual caution too: this is still a strong, cold pouch, and sensitive gums will notice the first five minutes.

Strength: What 12.5mg Actually Means

ZYN prints strength per pouch and tracks it with lid dots, and 12.5mg is not a number the current official UK ladder uses. The modern rungs run 1.5, 3, 6, 9, 11, then 13.5; the odd half-milligram values like 12.5 belong to the earlier EU-spec generation this can comes from. In practice it sits between the 11mg X-Strong tier and the 13.5mg XX-Strong tier, closer to the latter, and the moist Slim construction releases flavour and nicotine quickly.

Two practical notes follow from that provenance. First, these cans typically hold 21 pouches, the older EU count, where current official cans hold 20 or 21 depending on the line. Second, the labelling differs from the current five-dot system, so do not be surprised if the lid art looks dated next to a 2026-refresh can. Strength is per pouch, never per can, on both generations. A pouch wears comfortably for 25 to 60 minutes and the catch lid stores the spent one.

What the Long-Termers Report

Because Icy Mint's remaining buyers are almost all veterans, the feedback has a particular flavour of its own. The recurring praise is loyalty-shaped: the release is slow and steady, the cold is dependable rather than showy, and the recipe has stayed consistent across years of cans, which is precisely why its regulars never left. Several describe keeping Icy Mint as the daily driver and the 13.5mg successor as the occasional heavy round, which is about as tidy a use-case split as two siblings can have.

The criticisms are equally settled. Nobody pretends the packaging looks current, a minority find the mid-wear cold plateaus earlier than the newer can, and everyone who writes about it eventually mentions the same anxiety: that one day the stock will not be replenished. That day has not arrived. In the meantime the sensible read on the feedback is that this is a known quantity in a category that keeps changing, and for its buyers that is the entire point.

Reading the Older Label

Put an Icy Mint can next to a 2026-refresh can and the differences jump out. The older lid does not carry the current five-dot strength art, the milligram figure sits at a value the modern ladder skips, and the format word on the rim says Slim where new cans lead with Regular. None of this changes what is inside. It does mean that if you are checking cans in person, the reliable identifiers are the name and the 12.5mg figure rather than the dot count, and that any listing showing this name with current-generation artwork is probably a mislabelled Menthol Ice. The can-to-can consistency, helpfully, is the one thing that never needed updating.

Who Still Buys Icy Mint, and Who Should Not Start Here

The buyer profile is specific. Long-term users who settled at this strength years ago and see no reason to move. People stepping down half a rung from 13.5mg without wanting to fall all the way to 11mg. And a stubborn contingent who simply prefer the older recipe balance and will keep buying it until the supply genuinely dries up.

Do not start here if you are new to nicotine pouches; a 12.5mg moist Slim is close to the top of the ladder and the sensible first rung is a 3mg Mini from the low strength collection. Look elsewhere too if you want mint as flavour rather than as climate, where Spearmint and Cool Mint do gentler, sweeter work. And if you want the icy idea with fruit attached, the 12.5mg Icy Blackcurrant is this can's fruit-flavoured generation-mate.

The Cold Shelf, Compared

Quick sorting: Icy Mint for the original at half a step down, Menthol Ice for the current maximum, Icy Blackcurrant for this generation's fruit-and-ice, Cool Mint for anyone still climbing. The cold end of everything we sell is gathered in the mint flavour collection, the top tier across brands in the high strength collection, and the complete brand line-up on the ZYN hub.

Specs at a Glance

The construction is the standard ZYN build: nicotine salt on plant-based fibre, food-grade flavouring, pH adjusters and a sweetener, moist in this format. On tobacco, ZYN's own careful wording applies here as everywhere: the nicotine is derived from tobacco, but the pouch contains no tobacco leaf. The all-white and spit-free labels you meet on specialist pouch sites describe the same thing in the trade's vocabulary. Used pouches go into the catch lid and then a bin.

Buying the Old Can Sensibly

A previous-generation product invites a bit of strategy. If Icy Mint is your daily can, buying in fives rather than singles is the obvious move, both for the per-can price and because replenishment of older stock is never guaranteed on a schedule. Storage matters more than people expect: a cool cupboard keeps the menthol bright for months, while a warm windowsill or a summer glovebox flattens the cold faster than anything else you could do to it. Check the date on the base as you would any pouch can.

One habit worth avoiding is the panic stockpile. The sensible ceiling is a month or two of supply, because if the day comes when this can genuinely runs out, its successor is one notch up the ladder and already on our shelf, and the adjustment most switchers report is measured in days rather than weeks. Buy comfortably, not fearfully. And mix the basket while you are at it, since every pack of anything counts toward the cheaper tiers.

Price, and Why the Old Can Is the Cheap Can

Current-range ZYN sells for £6.50 a can on the official store. Our Icy Mint pack is five cans for £19.99, which is £4.00 a can, and the mix-and-match tiers then count every pack in the basket: two packs at £17.50 each (£3.50 a can), four or more at £15.00 each, £3.00 a can, across any flavours and brands we stock. A previous-generation can at a below-current price is one of the quieter good deals on the site, for as long as the stock holds out. If the goal is stepping away from nicotine entirely rather than buying it colder, the free NHS Better Health service is the honest signpost, and our guide to what snus and nicotine pouches actually are untangles the vocabulary. NicotineBuzz sells to over-18s only and verifies age at checkout.

Updated July 2026. Strength, format and provenance checked against current retailer listings at the time of writing.