ZOMG, Candy!

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.

Today brings the anxiously awaited conclusion to my review of Surf Sweets‘ product line that I began on Wednesday. First up (or is it fourth up?), their Gummy Swirls.

The Gummy Swirls were little gumdrop shaped gummis about the size of the first joint of my pinky finger. They came in two versions, pink/white swirled and orange/white swirled. Pink/white was strawberry, I believe, and its flavor was of lightly muted “red” candy. I’m not sure if the muting came from the white swirl or from the all-natural ingredients. A bit of each, perhaps? My guess is that orange/white was orange-flavored, except I didn’t find it to taste very orangey. Instead, I got more of a pear profile. The gummy itself was fairly firm and sproingy, while the sugar coating added a bit of textural grain.

Surf Sweets’ Gummy Worms were absolutely gorgeous, proving that one doesn’t need artificial colorings to make something look tasty. They came in red and yellow and red and lighter yellow/clear. Cherry and pineapple, maybe? The flavors weren’t terribly distinct, but they were nice and fruity. Appearances aside, however, there wasn’t much to separate these gummy worms from their artificially-flavored (and much cheaper) counterparts.

While the Gummy Worms were fairly run of the mill, I found the Super Sour Worms to be truly exceptional. Like Wednesday’s Fruity Bears, these were more like a fruit pate or a fruit gem, which may be why their moniker leaves out the word “gummy”. The sour sugar coating on these is mostly sweet and only lightly tart, but it’s just right.

The red and yellow one tastes of cherry - as I’ve written many times, I have difficulty differentiating red-flavored candies, but this one had a bit of a bite to it, so I’m going with cherry - with a sour finish of lemon. The orange and white one tasted like a lovely sweet yet tart orange. Either the white part was also orange flavored, or it was too lightly flavored to compete against the brightness of the orange.

The Super Sour Worms were my favorite of the Surf Sweets bunch. I couldn’t stop eating them, so they get a ZOMG! The Gummy Swirls and Gummy Worms, while good, weren’t exceptional, and, as I said on Wednesday, I’m too poor to shell out extra for all natural and organic when artificial and full-of-pesticides tastes pretty much exactly the same, so they get Os. If you’re not poor like me and care about what you put into your body, or your kids’ bodies, then the whole Surf Sweet lineup is probably perfect for ya - they taste all-natural, but in a good way, and you or your kids won’t miss unnatural flavorings/colorings one whit.

I love Altoid’s Sours, and I will eat them until my tongue goes numb. When I saw that Walgreen’s sold a knock-off version called Zip Sours for $1 a tin, about half to a third the cost of Altoid’s Sours, I decided to give them a try. After all, they were cheap, so there wasn’t much to lose.

The Zip Sours came in “black cherry” and “orange splash”. Never mind that one of the halved oranges on the “orange splash” tin looks more like a grapefruit.

I found the Zip Sours to be lacking in both zip and sour. Orange splash had a bright, citrusy flavor and presented a reasonable imitation of Altoid’s Tangerine Sours, just without the sour part. My orange splash sours were also a bit damp, despite the foil seal under the Zip Sour tin lid. I should note, however, that I find the same issue cropping up with Altoid Sours, where the candies tend to stick and clump a bit due to dampness.

Black cherry was less yummy, as it carried a dark, medicinal tinge to it, though at least my black cherry candies were nice and dry, as hard candies should be. Still, flavor-wise, I didn’t care for them.

The Zip Sours tins are slightly smaller than those of the Altoid’s Sours, but I still think you get more candy for your money. I give black cherry an O and orange splash an OM. While they aren’t that sour, the orange splash flavor was nice, and I ate so many of them in a row that my mouth eventually went numb. Apparently there’s some sour there after all; it’s just not that noticeable to the palate.

I’ve seen these giant Smarties (BUY!) (not to be confused with Nestle’s Giant Smarties; outside the US, Smarties are an M&M-like sugar coated candy made by Nestle) in Walgreen’s candy aisle for a while now and finally decided to buy a roll.

I adore Smarties (BUY!), even if they don’t taste like much. These giant Smarties are basically larger versions of normal sized Smarties. Cybele on Candy Blog has a nice photo showing the size comparison, though I’m a little confused as to whether her Mega Smarties are the same as my giant Smarties (check out comment #12). Mine were also quarter-sized, so maybe I bought Mega Smarties?

The giant (Mega?) Smarties taste just like normal Smarties - the same sweet, lightly fruity and tart taste of compressed sugar. Yum! In the large version, the flavor differences are really noticeable because there’s so much more Smartie. I liked being able to really taste the flavor, but I think the Smartie was too big, and too much Smartie in one take. For some reason, the big ones didn’t come in white like normal Smarties do. Not that I could tell what flavor white Smarties are.

Like Cybele, I wished that the giant Smarties were more crumbly. Normal Smarties shed chalky power everywhere, and they quickly crunched up into dust. The giant Smarties are crunchier and sturdier and break into harder, grittier bits rather than that nice, soft dust. They’re not as hard as SweeTarts, but they’re getting there.

An O for the giant Smarties. Fun to try once, and visually entertaining, but I prefer the smaller version. The giant Smarties are texturally not as appealing, and they disappear too quickly because of their large size. Normal Smarties forced you to pace yourself.

They’re not sour! If you’re going to call your product Mentos Sours (BUY!), they should actually be, you know, sour. That being said, they were still pretty tasty, and I’m ashamed to admit that I polished off the entire roll in one sitting. For some reason, that always happens when I buy Mentos. Maybe because the roll packaging makes saving some for later harder? Or because when candy comes in rolls, the next candy is always right there, just begging to be eaten? Or it is because the Mentos texture of hard shell, chewy innards, and unique finish is addictively yummy? Hmm…

I was kind of annoyed at how wasteful the packaging was, especially since I ate these while I wrote the Blog Action Day post about environmentally friendly candy. The outer, completely unnecessary wrapper is printed entirely in English, while the inner wrapper has English and French on it. I guess Mentos made all the inner rolls in one place and changed the outer roll wrappings based on where they’d be sold.

The three Mentos Sours flavors are watermelon, green apple, and lemon. Or melon d’eau, pomme verte, et citron. The lemon (yellow) is nice and tangy, though I wish it were more tart and sour. The light green ones are green apple, which has a nice, slightly tart Granny Smith apple finish. The watermelon (dark green) has a sort of tart initial bite that quickly mellows out. I personally don’t think watermelon is a very good flavor to make sour and include in a sour mix that only has three flavors. I would have preferred another citrus fruit in this mix instead.

Overall, I’ll give the Mentos Sours an OM, mostly because I find Mentos to be frighteningly addictive. If they were actually bitingly sour, they may have been able to earn that extra G.

I find it so weird that some candy companies feel the need to add adjectives to their flavors. It’s not blue raspberry flavored; it’s ragin’ blue raspberry. Of course, now that I’ve pointed that out, I can’t think of any other examples, but they’re out there! I know they are.

The Hubba Bubba Sour Gummi Tape (BUY!) is a play on their Bubble Tape (BUY!). Aha! That’s where stupid adjective modifiers are popular: Gushing Grape, Lightning Lemonade, Snappy Strawberry, etc. Like Bubble Tape, Gummi Tape comes in a six-foot roll in a plastic dispenser.

I haven’t had Bubble Tape in at least a decade, so I don’t remember how effective the dispenser was for gum, but it doesn’t work very well for the Gummi Tape. It’s serrated edge is too dull for tearing the gummi against, scotch tape style, and closing the dispenser on the tape bypasses the serrated edge and also doesn’t cut the gummi. You have to clamp the dispenser shut, squeeze hard, and pull hard to have any hope of cutting the Gummi Tape so that you can share it. Of course, while you’re doing this, the sugar coating gets everywhere. I found it easier just to bite pieces right off. Boorish, maybe, but Gummi Tape isn’t exactly haute cuisine.

Gummi Tape is similar to the sour belts you can buy out of bulk candy bins, only it’s a little thicker and firmer. The texture was reminiscent of a flattened Sour Patch Kid, so not too bad in the sticks-in-your-teeth-department. The taste was your standard artificially sweetened blue raspberry candy (not one of my favorite flavors, by the way) and not terribly sour. Nothing exceptional or surprising there.

I like gummis, and I liked this enough to be willing to try it in other flavors. Right now it looks like it only comes in Ragin’ Blue Raspberry and Shocking Strawberry, which Cybele reviewed (I laughed inside when I read that she had the same issues with the sugary mess). If they made it in apple or something citrusy, I’d give it another shot.

This only gets an O because Au’somes did the concept way better with their Fruit Juice String. Cybele has a review of that as well (I bought a roll of Fruit Juice String from a sketchy convenience store in Austin before I started this blog, polished it off on the drive home and alas! have yet to come across another one). Here’s the Au’somes website, which distressingly does not mention the Fruit Juice String, but it’s still in their nutrition info pdf, so I hope it’s still being made.

These days, candy that only costs 25 cents a box is definitely a rarity. I’m guessing that Cry Baby Tears (BUY!) are a retro/nostalgia candy that have been around for a while. From the looks of the packaging, Cry Baby Tears are supposed to be so sour that they make you cry. They certainly were tart and puckery, even if they didn’t actually bring me to tears.

Cry Baby Tears are little tear-shaped compressed sugar candies with Cry Baby stamped on them. You can’t tell from the pictures because the New Haven humidity wreaked havoc on them, but it’s there. They’re also not supposed to be all yicky and mottled looking. Again, the humidity. Grr!

Cry Baby Tears come in grape (purple), watermelon (green), cherry (red), lemon (yellow), and orange (orange). The cherry flavor is the weakest and overpowered by the sour, while the lemon packs a puckery kick, and the orange has a nice finish. The candies themselves are sour, and they also have a sour coating for a little extra wallop.

I’d give Cry Baby Tears an OM. They’re good and sour - so sour that I can’t eat too many before my mouth and throat start hurting - and that’s exactly what you want in a sour candy.