The Mint Extra, originally Extra Mint, was an early evening version of The Mint, which was developed and was shown on ITV's newly launched ITV Play channel. Extra Mint was presented by one presenter and gave away much smaller sums of money to winners. It featured very different games than the late-night edition. Understandably, there was no Mint to be opened in this version of the show and the vault was covered up by a false wall with a painting hung on it.
At a defined point in Extra Mint players have a chance to win a 'VIP pass'. This VIP pass was used to get a free chance at opening the mint when the 'proper' version of the show aired later that evening. This basically meant they get a call from the show and are put straight though to the studio where they were to give the presenters their code.
One of the presenters from The Mint hosted Extra Mint for the full three hours without the assistance of a second presenter. They work on a rota and their schedule normally correlated with the days that their late-night shifts fell on.
On the 14th of May 2006 the last episode of the Extra Mint was shown, and was replaced at the time by, Friends Reunited: The Common Room."
However, a similar show, The Mint Extra, began airing on weekends since 9 September 2006. The Mint Extra was also going to be showing on selected weekdays in the future between 20:00-22:00, however will be known as Mini-Mint (will follow same format).
As pointed out by presenters on the show, the new series was called The Mint Extra and not Extra Mint (like the cancelled previous show was).
Some other regular presenters from the main programme also presented The Mint Extra.
With there being no vault to open, a different jackpot game is played which offers viewers the chance to win the show's top prize of £5000. This is an alternate version of the late-night Mint's Instant Cash game (see above for full details). In this version there are seven teapot lids to be overturned. The player turns them over and tries to spell as long a word as possible, with the ultimate aim being to spell the words 'Mint Tea'. The player receives £50 for every letter they use to spell a legitimate word (of which there are 64 possible combinations with these particular letters). If the player cannot spell a word from the initial letters they have chosen, the game is over.