Pablo X Ice Cold Nicotine Pouches

Cold first, then warm. The opening minute is the familiar Pablo Ice Cold hit: a sharp peppermint-menthol frost across the gum, arriving together with the 24mg sting. Nothing about the first thirty seconds tells you this is a different can.

Then the base comes through. Where regular Ice Cold stays clean and dry all the way down, X Ice Cold has a rounded, slightly toasty tobacco flavour sitting under the mint, the kind of warmth you get from the paper end of a menthol cigarette. It is not smoky and it is not heavy; think of it as the menthol with a bit of weight behind it. Some people say it tastes less sharp than Ice Cold even though the cooling is identical, because the tobacco note fills in the gap the plain mint leaves.

The mint fades first, around the half-hour mark, and the tobacco note lingers slightly longer, which gives the end of the session a warmer, gentler finish than regular Ice Cold. The nicotine outlasts both. Most regulars take it out at 25 to 35 minutes.

One thing: the flavour base. Everything physical and chemical is the same.

If you tried regular Ice Cold and thought it was too clinical, too much like chewing gum, X is the fix. If you tried X and found the tobacco note unwelcome, go back to plain Ice Cold. There is no strength reason to choose one over the other.

Specifically: heavy ex-smokers, and especially menthol smokers who switched after the 2020 menthol cigarette ban and never found a replacement that felt right. The tobacco base is what pure mint pouches lack, and it is the reason this can exists.

The strength warning applies in full. At 24mg, a first-timer typically gets nausea, sweating and a headache, and that is a reliable way to put somebody off pouches for good. Work up through 6, 11 and 17mg before trying any original-line Pablo.

Menthol cigarettes were banned in the UK in May 2020, and a large group of smokers lost the product they had used for years overnight. Some moved to ordinary cigarettes, some to menthol vapes, and a growing number to nicotine pouches. The trouble most of them hit with pouches is that the mint versions taste like chewing gum, not like a menthol cigarette. The cool is right; the substance behind it is missing.

That missing substance is the tobacco. A menthol cigarette is a tobacco product first and a cooling product second, and the flavour you remember is both together. X Ice Cold is one of very few pouches that tries to recreate that pairing, with the menthol on top and a tobacco flavouring underneath, without any actual tobacco leaf.

It is not a perfect copy, and nothing without combustion will be. But for a lot of ex-menthol smokers it is the first pouch that tastes like it was made with them in mind, and that is usually what decides whether someone sticks with pouches or drifts back.

Pablo runs three tiers. The Gold Edition sits at about 17mg, the original line (Ice Cold, X Ice Cold and Red) at 24mg and 30mg/g, and the Exclusive line at 30mg and 50mg/g in a smaller pouch.

Within the original line, Pablo Red is the sweeter spearmint, Ice Cold is the clean peppermint-menthol, and X Ice Cold is the one with tobacco. All three are the same price and strength. Above them, Pablo Exclusive Frosted Ice is the coldest Pablo at 30mg, for people who find even 24mg polite; it has no tobacco note.

If you like the tobacco idea but not the strength, the choice widens considerably at lower levels, though tobacco-flavoured pouches are rarer than mints. The Moreish Puff Tobacco Salts are the vape equivalent, if you are still using a pod kit alongside pouches.

Standard routine, with the habits a 24mg pouch needs.

For the right person, it is one of the more thoughtful strong pouches on the market. The tobacco base is subtle rather than gimmicky, it takes the clinical edge off the menthol, and for an ex-menthol smoker it tastes closer to the real thing than any pure mint. Strength and build are identical to Ice Cold, which is to say serious and well made.

For anyone who is not a heavy ex-smoker, it is the wrong can twice over: too strong, and a flavour aimed at somebody else. Most people who dislike it are simply people who never smoked menthols.

Buy it if you smoked menthols heavily and miss the taste, or if you already use Pablo Ice Cold and want more warmth. Skip it if you want pure mint, if you are new to pouches, or if 24mg is a stretch.