ZOMG, Candy!

I think Nestle deserves a prize for making a candy with a name that’s so much fun to say: Sluggles. Sluggles sluggles sluggles sluggles. And so friendly sounding! I wonder if that’s why the Snuggie caught on more than the Slanket, because the former was way more fun to say than the latter?

Tangent aside, these are a fairly new addition to the Nestle/Wonka line. I bought them at the same time as the Puckerooms, and both were released together as Wonka’s inaugural gummies.

Sluggles came in four flavors - orange, lemon, strawberry, and grape - and four shapes. I hereby dub them almost-snail, worm, stepped-on, and standard-slug. Like the Puckerooms, all the flavors came in all the shapes.

The gummies were soft and immensely sproingy, a textural combination that I find ideal for maximal chomping addictiveness.

Orange was blandly sweet with a zesty citrus aftertaste. Lemon managed a brightly zest lemon flavor but was more muted than I would’ve liked.

Strawberry and grape were both bland. The formal was floral and sweet, while the latter was mostly sweet with a grape-y finish.

Compared to the Puckerooms, these gummies were rather disappointingly mild. I loved the texture, but I wanted punchier flavors.

At least the shapes are fun, and sluggles is still fun to say. An O.

And finally, here are Cybele’s review and Sera’s take.

When I was a kid, SweeTarts were my favorite non-chocolate candy. I loved them in the big coin-sized rolls; in the smaller, Smartie-like rolls; and, of course, in the little paper sleeves of 3 SweeTarts each that are still ubiquitous players in Halloween and Kiddie mixes.

It somehow totally escaped my notice that my favorite brand of compressed sugar candies has since been expanded to include gummies. I picked up a bag of heart-shaped SweeTart gummies in a post-Valentine’s Day sale.

The gummies came in classic SweeTart shades of purple, pink and purple+pink. It was two hearts melding to form one. D’awww/gag. While the shapes weren’t nearly as creative as other gummies in the Wonka line, they were cute and served their Valentine’s Day role well.

The chew was firm but not stiff. In other words, they didn’t immediately yield to my bite, but they didn’t put up much fuss either. Tiny grains of superfine sugar coated the gummies, adding a bit of textural grain (while also creating a mess when I spilled the bag).

To me, the two colors tasted the same: super grapey, with dark tannins. They tasted almost exactly like purple SweeTarts, except perhaps a tad sweeter and thus rounder.

I’d like to see them in a wider array of flavors, as a whole bag of identically themed gummies gets boring after a while. Still, I managed to snack through the ~70 gummi bag on my own, though it took a couple of weeks and quite a few episodes of House. An O.

I bought a bag of Wonka Sour Puckerooms Gummies on sale for just a dollar (along with a $1 bag of their new Sluggles Gummies, which shall be reviewed in the future). I hope the Puckerooms’ on-sale-ness doesn’t mean that they’re on the way out! I found them adorable, creative, and most importantly, tasty!

I love the bright, colorful, slightly psychedelic-hippy-ish packaging on these babies. And I love that, when Wonka chose to make a sour gummy, they thought outside of the cutesy animal box and went with cutesy fungi instead.

The mushrooms come in three shapes and three flavors, but the shapes don’t correspond to a specific flavor. In other words, all three flavors come in all three shapes: a pointy mushroom, and bulbous mushroom, and a mushroom-cloud-y mushroom (aka a bulbous mushroom with a little stretch to the stem).

The Puckerooms are really more sour than sweet - the white sour coating is basically sugar. The chew is soft but also quite sproingy, making them fun to chomp on.

Red is cherry. I expected the somewhat medicinal flavor of artificial cherry. Instead, I found it more reminiscent of Hawaiian Punch.

Purple is grape and tastes of deep purple or black grapes. It’s like grape juice concentrate. I’m usually not a purple-grape candy person, but these were actually enjoyable for me.

Yellow-and-orange is lemon-orange and is by far my favorite. The colors are pretty, and its clear citrus zesty notes brightly sing on the tongue.

You can really only go so far with mass-produced gummies, and I think Wonka’s made it to the pinnacle with their Puckerooms. The shapes are fun and the texture is spot on. My only critique is that I wish there were more flavors. Please? An OM.

I picked up this box of Snowy Bears Sour Gummi Candy as a post-winter-holidays sale item. I don’t really see why these had to go on sale, as they’re not really holiday-specific, but I’m not complaining about getting to save a few cents!

Like most sour gummi candies, these bears were covered in granulated sugar and sour stuff. Also, like most sour gummies, they weren’t that sour. The gummi chew was lightly stiff, with minimal spring-back and just a little chew.

The gummies came in three colors and flavors. Red was sour to start before it gave way to cherry with deep red notes. I was pleasantly surprised by how much depth there was to the flavor and how long that flavored lingered in the finish.

White was pineapple (after a slightly sour start), with a standard but nice pineapple core-flavored bite.

Finally, green, too, started out lightly sour. It then turned into a mellow floral fuji apple/apple juice flavor.

I was impressed at how tasty these non-brand name gummis were. They packed an impressive flavor punch, and I’m pretty sure the whole box cost less than $1 when I bought it. An O because they’re not terribly unique, but if they were super cheap-o again, I may pick up another box to munch on.

I’ve often seen bags of Haribo Sour S’ghetti in stores but usually opted for more familiar gummis. I finally took the Sour S’ghetti plunge when they showed up at Aldi for around $1 a bag, a deal that was too good to pass up.

The s’ghetti are ~2 inch gummi noodles covered in granulated sugar. They have a super stiff chew that really gets stuck in your teeth. The noodles come in three flavors: apple, strawberry, and blueberry.

Apple is green, yet tastes more mellow and floral than granny smiths do. It also lacks the sour tang of granny smiths.

The red strawberry is a slightly medicinal red fruit flavor. Because of that, I originally pegged it as cherry, but the bag has pictures of strawberries on it, so strawberry it must be.

Finally, the blue blueberry just tastes of sweetness and fruitiness. There’s a strong finish I can’t quite place - either fruit punch or blue Gatorade?

There’s nothing extraordinary about these gummis. I didn’t mind the stiff texture, though some may be annoyed. The messiness of the granuated sugar coating (it got everywhere) was a bit annoying, but I was more miffed that it was sweet rather than sour. These weren’t nearly sour enough for my taste. In fact, I didn’t find them sour at all!

I give them an O. I probably wouldn’t buy them again, even if they were on sale.

I covered Yummy Earth’s organic gummy worms on Wednesday. Today, I’m reviewing their organic gummy bears.

Since the gummy bears share 2 out of 3 flavors with the worms, I expected them to be pretty much the same. Nope!

First of all, the bears have a much, much stiffer chew. It’s almost unpleasantly stiff. They’re softer than Jujubes and are still definitely gummies, but they are reminiscent of Jujube-ness and sort of get stuck in my teeth.

On the plus side, they taste AMAZING! The flavors are uber-concentrated, making Yummy Earth’s bears taste even better than Yummy Earth’s worms.

Sour Apple Tart is still clear and still tastes like a granny smith, but it’s darker, with more complexity than its worm counterpart. There’s a nearly imperceptibly slight bitterness that’s reminiscent of apple peels.

Strawberry Smash is lightly orange/pink. It tastes sweet and fruity, like a usual strawberry flavored gummi but with a slightly more concentrated flavor.

Pomegranate Pucker (red) is by far my favorite. It’s much more tart in bear form and tastes more deeply red, with a little astringency on the finish. A lovely sweet fruitiness lingers on the tongue after the bear is gone. This one definitely tastes authentically of pomegranate, and it’s wonderful.

I had trouble deciding which I liked more. The worms are texturally more pleasant with great flavors. The bears’ texture is just a bit too firm for me, but their concentrated flavor profile blows the worms out of the dirt. In the end, the bears win out and get an OMG.

Yummy Earth, can you mix up a batch of gummy something elses (llamas?) that combines the best of both worlds?

I’d been meaning to try Yummy Earth’s line of all natural, organic candy for ages, but I never got around to buying them. Fortunately, they eventually made their way back onto my candy radar and into my stash when Yummy Earth contacted me and offered to send me some free samples of their gummies and lollipops.

Today, we’ll chat about the gummy worms and hit up the gummy bears on Friday.

First up, the gummy worms. They look different from most gummy worms. Instead of a long worm made of multiple colors and sometimes flavors, they’re single unit entities and look more like little snakes (worms don’t have eyeballs!).

Texturewise, the gummies have a soft, sproingy chew that’s slightly softer than that of Haribo gummies. The opened bag smells intensely fruity, almost winey, in a good way.

They come in exotic flavors. Pomegrante Pucker (red) doesn’t taste noticebly of pomegrante, but it’s still yummy - deeply red, sweet, and fruity.

The clear worms are Sour Apple Tart. It’s mellow with a slightly sour green apple flavor. Finally, Tangy Tangerine is orange and tastes authentically of orange citrus. I even get notes of orange pith! It’s tart, tangy, tangerine-y deliciousness.

They’re uber fruity and thus super addictive. I’d take these over artificially-flavored gummies anyday. An OM.

Back when I reviewed Albanese’s Krunchy Bears, I lamented that I just missed out on reviewing their 12-flavor gummi bears - I learned that they were sold at my alma mater’s campus convenience store just before I graduated and after they’d already closed for the summer.

Well, the local campus convenience store got renovated over the summer, and their candy bulk bins are gone, so I guess I didn’t miss out there after all. Fortunately, several (but not all) of Rochester’s Wegmans carries them, and at the low price of $2.99 a pound. Hooray!

The twelve flavors make for a beautiful bunch of brightly and differently colored, translucent gummies that were super fun to shoot. I had to get extra help to identify them all.

The names are rather corny, but I forgive them. Twelve is a lot to have to come up with! The texture is neither stiff nor soft - they’re chewy with just a bit of sproing.

Here are the separate flavor reviews, in the above sort-of spectrumed order:

Groovy Grapefruit (light pink) - hands down my absolute favorite! Lovely citrus and zest notes. The grapefruit flavor is perfect. You can almost taste the membranes (I meant that in a good way), and the flavors last throughout the chew. Mmm. I could eat these all day.

Freshhh Strawberry (dark pink) - super sweet and mellow with just a bit of strawberry bite.

Wild Cherry (red) - Whoa! Bright cherry flavor that really smacks you in the taste buds. It’s got a great and assertive candied cherry flavor that steers well clear of being medicinal.

Ornery Orange (orange) - genuinely fruity, citrusy, sweetly orange.

Lickin’ Lemon (bright yellow) - not so genuinely lemon-flavored, with an almost pseudo-floor cleaner flavor. It was still good, though, and had an extra zesty finish.

Bodacious Banana (light yellow)- it definitely has a whiff of banana smell/taste to it, but I didn’t find it as offensive as I find most banana-flavored candy. Still, not my favorite.

Poppin’ Pineapple (white) - awesomely accurate with strong core-y notes.

Luscious Lime (light green) - this was weirdly grassy, and I didn’t get lime. It tasted just generically citrus-y and sweet, with no zesty notes whatsoever. A tad disappointing.

Granny Smith Apple (dark green) - notes of sour apple plus fuji, with just a tinge of citrus. Strongly reminiscent of green apple Jolly Ranchers.

Rrripe Watermelon (light aqua) - also reminiscent of Jolly Ranchers, but watermelon this time, with the addition of floral scents.

Rockin’ Raspberry (dark blue) - seedy to start, then quickly dissipates to sugary sweet blandness.

Concord Grape (purple) - just barely tinged with grape popsicle flavors. Nothing standout, but decent.

I like popping these into my mouth without looking at the colors and trying to guess which flavor I’ve got. I’d like to think I could do better than chance, but it’s actual pretty hard. If you can get these at $2.99 a pound and can pick out your flavors, they’re an OMG-worthy treat. I buy a bunch every time I make it a Wegmans that sells them.

I bought these Haribo TropiFrutti somewhere in Spain. I saw them in lots of shops in Europe, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in the U.S.

The texture of these really sets them apart. They have this weird shell that’s hard to the touch and sort of tough to chew. It reminds me of the crust that forms on chewy candy that’s been left out to dry up. The gummi inside is soft, and when they TropiFrutti are eaten, they textures mix together.

They come in six colors and a variety of shapes - fruit shapes plus toucans and palm trees. We’ll start at the top of the photo and work our way down.

Banana is yellow. I don’t particularly like banana flavored candy. The distillation of fresh banana flavor into artificiality just doesn’t appeal to me. This one tasted of sweetness, plus the scent of bananas. It did not appeal to me.

The dark red toucan also came in the shape of a bunch of grapes, so I thought it was grape. But when I tasted it, it carried a raspberry-like seedy bite. I’d guess that it was raspberry, but there’s a picture of a passionfruit on the wrapper, so maybe it’s passionfruit?

The orange wedge tasted mildly orange with a bitter bite. It was weird and soapy/grassy rather than zesty. Yuck.

The white pineapple tasted just like pineapple, with an authentic core-y bite.

The pink strawberry carries a mild berry flavor. I don’t associate strawberries with tropical-ness, but at least it’s not weird tasting.

Last but not least, the palm tree. I think it was kiwi? It had mild grassy notes and a sweet flavor that I identified as kiwi (though maybe only because there was a kiwi on the bag).

All in all, I’m a little conflicted about what rating to assign this. On the one hand, I didn’t enjoy most of the flavors and disliked the texture. On the other hand, I managed to eat most of the bag, though just a few at a time per sitting over the course of a couple of months.

In the end, they get a –. I decided it was telling that I couldn’t manage to stomach eating more than a few at a time.

I was carded when I bought this bag of Haribo Fruit Salad. Why was I carded for gummi candy? Because I bought it in the specialty foods section of a liquor store, and apparently you have to be 21 to buy anything in the store, even if it’s just harmless Haribo.

Before we begin, I must apologize for the lack of photos. My friend Cassie and I indulged in these right after I bought them, so the bag got too beat up to be shot. I managed to save enough for a review and at least one photo!

They come in five flavors of gummi. All are soft, with just enough bite to feel it against the teeth but no bounce, and all are covered in granulated sugar.

From the top left, going clockwise:

The white wedge is grapefruit. There’s a zesty citrus bite to it that’s distinctively grapefruit. It adds a little bitter to the sweet that I found quite intriguing.

The red cherry tasted flat. It starts off sweet, then goes into a deep red cherry flavor with just a hint of medicinal tinge.

The orange wedge had a genuine tangerine flavor. Zesty and sweet and just slightly sour. It was great!

I think the yellow circle was lemon. It was sweet and tart, with a bit of floral acidity. The finish was sugary. All in all, it was pretty mild and sweet, which is why I only think it was lemon.

Finally, the green button was lime. It had a zesty grassiness that had a weird bite. I found it off-putting and blech.

I’ve seen these in the bulk bins at Wegmans, and I’d pick out the grapefruit and orange. They get OMs. The lmeon and cherry get Os, and the lime gets a –.