Flavor development in the vaping industry is something that’s always evolving. Vape juice brands are constantly coming up with new ideas, and sometimes, those ideas are so successful and revolutionary that they start trends. The most successful vape juice trends are so paradigm altering that they continue to influence the industry for years – and those are the trends that we’re going to discuss in this article. Are you new to vaping? If you are, you might assume that the flavor selection in the world of vape juice has remained pretty much the same over the years – but that’s not the case at all. In fact, there have been a number of important revolutions in flavor development as time has gone by, and those revolutions have continued to influence the vaping industry ever since.
These are the biggest vape juice trends in the history of the industry.
These Vape Juice Brands Have What You Want
Nothing in vaping is quite as satisfying as discovering a new vape juice brand that really gets you. Every company has its own distinct philosophy when it comes to flavor development. When you find a brand that really works for you, it's likely that you'll enjoy almost every product that brand makes. Here are a few of our favorite vape juice brands today.
- Naked 100: If you've never tried Naked 100 e-liquid before, you need to stop reading this article right now and grab a few bottles because Naked 100 is probably the biggest vape juice brand in the world today. They earned that fame by creating some of the finest tropical e-liquids on the market, and flavors like Hawaiian POG and Lava Flow remain staples of the vape juice industry today. Every bottle of Naked 100 juice is exactly the same, and this brand has no equal when it comes to quality.
- Dinner Lady: Dessert is the best part of dinner, right? That's what the mixologists at Dinner Lady apparently had in mind when they launched what has since become the world's biggest brand of dessert-themed vape juice. Lemon Tart is Dinner Lady's stone-cold classic, and it remains perhaps the best lemon vape juice ever to hit the market. Capturing the flavor of sweetened lemon custard layered over a flaky pie crust, Lemon Tart is an absolutely essential product for anyone with even a passing interest in citrus flavors. There's no "furniture polish" flavor here at all -- just pure lemony goodness that never lets up.
- 7 Daze: Not every vape juice brand can claim to have created one of the industry's greatest hits, but that's exactly what happened when the original Reds Apple by 7 Daze hit the market a few years back. There were plenty of green apple e-liquids on the market at that time, but no one had managed to create a red apple flavor that truly tasted like the real thing. Reds Apple tasted like a big glass of apple juice, and it was a real revelation that continues to infuence the vaping industry today.
Tobacco Vape Juice
When vaping first began, tobacco vape juice was the name of the game. It was the only game, in fact, because that’s where the first e-liquid makers concentrated all of their energy. The original assumption was that people who switched to vaping would mostly be interested in having flavor experiences that reminded them of cigarettes. So, for the first year or two in which vaping existed, tobacco e-liquids were more common than anything else. In the end, it turned out that most vapers didn’t actually want their e-cigarettes to resemble tobacco cigarettes at all – but it took the e-liquid industry a while to come to that realization.
Although tobacco is no longer the most popular e-liquid flavor on the market, there are still plenty of tobacco fans today. The most important contribution that the e-liquid industry made to the vaping community during those early years was a flavor called RY4, which blended a tobacco base with dessert notes like vanilla and caramel. RY4 became an extremely popular flavor within the vaping community, and you can still buy RY4-inspired vape juices today.
Sweet Vape Juice
The first major revolution in vape juice was the creation of the first non-tobacco e-liquids. As soon as vape juice flavors like apple, vanilla, coffee and strawberry began to hit the market, many vapers started buying those flavors and never looked back. The even bigger trend, though, was the fact that e-liquid companies started sweetening their products with sucralose in the early 2010s.
Before companies began adding sucralose to their e-liquids, the problem was that vape juices with sweet flavor profiles didn’t actually taste sweet; they tasted sweetish. Without sweetener, an e-liquid can taste interesting. With sweetener, it can taste just like a real candy or dessert. The sweetener trend in the e-liquid industry is still with us today; it’s never gone away, and virtually all mainstream e-liquids now include at least a little sucralose.
Cereal Vape Juice
Cereal vape juice was one of the first new flavor categories to create a wider trend that really influenced the preferences of the vaping community as a whole. Although it’s unknown exactly who created the first great cereal e-liquid, someone made the discovery that you could add a small amount of malty flavoring to a vape juice, and the overall result would taste strikingly similar to toasted grains. Once you’ve created a tasty cereal base, the sky is the limit. If you add cinnamon and butter flavors, you’ve got a cinnamon toast flavor profile. If you add fruit flavors, you’ve got an e-liquid that tastes like “fruity loops” cereal. Cereal is a high-calorie indulgence for most adults, so it’s no surprise that cereal vape juice became extremely popular and remains popular to this day.
Custard Vape Juice
Speaking of high-calorie indulgences, is there anything more indulgent than the concoction of cream, egg yolk and sugar that is custard? Everyone knows that they’re doing themselves no favors when they eat custard – it’s like it’s made of pure calories. So, when someone figured out that you could create a realistic custard vape juice by combining notes of vanilla and cream with just a hint of eggy flavor, members of the vaping community got on board in a big way. For a while, custard e-liquid was the biggest thing in vaping, and practically every boutique e-liquid maker had at least one custard flavor on offer.
Custard remains one of the most popular dessert e-liquid flavors today, but the biggest way in which custard contributes to the e-liquid industry isn’t as a single flavor. Once e-liquid makers got the custard flavor profile down, they began adding it to everything. Custard can add a deliciously creamy finish to any vape juice, and you’ll find it just about everywhere today.
Mango Vape Juice
A few years ago, a maker of a certain pod-based e-cigarette caused a major furor with the release of the first successful mango vape juice in pod form. Mango pods became the must-have vaping products of the year, and it wasn’t long at all before just about every vape juice maker had at least one mango e-liquid on offer.
To this day, many of the most popular e-liquids are either mango flavored or use mango as part of more complex flavor blends. In many tropical e-liquids, for instance, a little hint of mango is the thing that gives the entire flavor blend its tropical flair – even if mango isn’t specifically mentioned on the product’s label. Without that special tangy/musky blend that makes tropical fruits so unique, an e-liquid would just taste like a run-of-the-mill fruit blend. The mango vape juice trend really was a special event in the history of the vaping industry because it contributed to the creation or improvement of a wide variety of different flavor profiles.
Blue Raspberry Vape Juice
After a year or so, the mango craze began to fade away, and mango became just another thread in the wider tapestry of e-liquid flavors. Fruit in general, though, is definitely not just a vape juice trend and will never be. As long as fruit flavors have existed, they have been the flavors that the vast majority of vapers have preferred. That’s unlikely to change any time soon.
The specific flavors that people want, though, can definitely vary – and when mango e-liquid began to fade away, the era of blue raspberry vape juice began. If you were a kid during a certain decade, you can probably remember a time when just about every snack, beverage and candy in the world turned blue. Blue raspberry was a major snacking trend during the ‘90s, and it’s now one of the biggest e-liquid flavor trends.
The funny thing about blue raspberry flavor is that anyone can recognize it instantly even though blue raspberry isn’t actually a real fruit. It tastes a bit like raspberry, but it’s also something completely unique. Blue raspberry is easily one of the most popular fruity e-liquid flavors today, and nothing else is quite like it.
Fruit and Menthol Vape Juice
Vaping has become a truly international phenomenon. While the United States may be the world’s biggest market for vaping products, the e-liquid makers of this country aren’t the only flavor innovators out there. One of the biggest vape juice trends in history actually came from Malaysia. Smoking is extremely common in Malaysia, and when the alternative of vaping appeared, Malaysian smokers were quick to latch on to it.
When Malaysian e-liquid companies began to appear, it turned out that they had some completely unique ideas about what a great vape juice should taste like. Maybe it has something to do with the tropical climate, but it turns out that Malaysians love menthol like no one else. Malaysian e-liquid companies add a bit of menthol to just about all of their products, and you can usually expect to taste menthol in any Malaysian e-liquid unless the label specifically says, “no mint.”
To experience the Malaysian concept of a great vaping experience, you should look no further than the spectacular selection of Nasty Juice products like Cush Man. Cush Man is a mango e-liquid with an unbelievably realistic flavor profile that’ll have you thinking you’re eating a fresh, juicy mango. It’s the hint of menthol on the finish, though, that truly takes Cush Man to an entirely new level. It might be the most popular mango e-liquid in the world today.
Nicotine Salt Vape Juice
One of the most important e-liquid trends over the past several years actually doesn’t have anything to do with flavor at all. Rather, it has to do with the molecular composition of the nicotine in the e-liquid. We’re talking, of course, about nicotine salt vape juice.
So, what is it that has made nicotine salt so important to the vaping industry? The answer is that nicotine salt enables vape juice companies to create e-liquids that are more satisfying – because they’re higher in nicotine – but don’t cause throat irritation. Nicotine salt e-liquid has been transformative for new vapers because it has enabled the small e-cigarettes that newbies typically use to be just as satisfying as tobacco cigarettes.