ZOMG, Candy!

These tangerine-lemonade flavored Sour Punch Bits came in my free goodie bag from the National Confectioners’ Association. Looks like the American Licorice Company is expanding from just making Sour Punch Straws.

They turned out to be little sour sugar covered cylinders divided into yellow and orange quadrants. Mine got a little sadly damp in this wonderfully hot and humid summer that Rochester’s been having.

Their texture was similar to that of regular Sour Punch Straws, if Sour Punch Straws were solid. That is, they had the texture of a stiff licorice wheat chew.

Citrus fruits are my favorite candy flavors, and these Bits satisfied my love of bright, sweet and tart. They tasted very orange-y with a decently powerful sour finish.

I loved the Bits’ flavor, but I didn’t like that they got all stuck in the nooks and crannies of my teeth. If the slightly softer Straws came in this Tangerine Lemonade flavor, I’d be a happy candy blogger. An O.

The candy blogger in me is hyper-attuned to candy packaging that indicates that its contents are a new product. The pseudo-grammar nazi in me is hyper-attuned to instances of annoyingly unnecessary abbreviations. Thus, Life Savers* Sweet Strings N Sour Rings doubly caught my eye.

Actually, that’s only sort of true. There’s a lot going on on the front of this bag! So I didn’t notice the “New” splotch and the irksome “N” until I was photographing it.

Blatantly obvious statement of the day: the hook with these guys is that there are two types of gummies. The strings are sweet – raspberry and cherry to be precise – while the rings are sour – fruit punch and green apple.

I was a little disappointed that the strings were straight sticks instead of the jaunty S curves depicted on the bag. Luckily, my disappointment was tempered by the discovery of a single mutant ring that was doubly flavored – a chimera, if you will.

The strings were on the softer side of the gummi texture spectrum, with no bounce and a pretty yielding give. They were coated with sweet sugar.

Cherry (the darker red) was mellow and floral with a plasticky/artificial undertone, while raspberry was very sweet with a seedier, less floral taste than that of the cherry.

The rings had a bouncier chew to them. They were covered in sour sugar that was actually noticeably sour. Hooray!

After the sourness dissipated, green apple mellowed out into a round sweetness. Fruit punch, while blue, tasted like a red fruit punch. Hawaiian, to be exact.

The only flavor that I really actively enjoyed was the sour fruit punch. The rest were fine in terms of flavor strength, but the individual flavors weren’t my personal favorites, so the bag, which I did eventually finish, gets an O.

*Life Savers is officially two words, but even Amazon thinks that it’s one word!

Haribo Fruity Pasta claims that it’s “extra sour” on the bag, but it’s not. It also claims that it’s “gummi candy”, but it’s not quite what I would consider to be gummi. And for good measure, they didn’t really look like pasta either.

There’s plenty of sour sugar in the bag, on the gummis, and in the gummis’ nooks and crannies, but it was more sweet than sour. As for the gummi part – the texture was neither soft nor squishy. Instead, it was like chewing on stiff plastic, and the little bits that resulted were sticky, dissolved slowly, and got stuck in the nooks and crannies of my teeth.

To me, the “gummis” didn’t look much like pasta. The plate on the bag already looked weird with its super short strands. The actual pieces looked even weirder, like tiny, truncated lasagna noodles.

Red was strawberry – a little floral and a little plasticky, like Twizzlers but fruitier. Yellow was pear, with a mild fruit flavor and a slightly pear-y bite.

Green was apple, but it didn’t taste like green granny smiths. Instead, it really nailed the flavor of a golden delicious apple, especially on the finish.

In summary, I found these to be neither sour nor gummi nor pasta, but they were fruity, and the weird texture was strangely compelling in an off-putting way. I wouldn’t buy them again, but I did slowly work my way through the whole bag over the course of a few months 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.

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.