When the first vapes hit the market about 20 years ago, the companies that made them assumed that most people would want to buy cigarette-themed flavors like tobacco and menthol. In the end, though, that turned out not to be the case. People actually gravitated toward sweeter flavors like candy and fruit because they didn’t want to be reminded of cigarettes and didn’t want to feel tempted to revert to smoking.
So, if you like sweet vapes, extensive surveys have shown that you’re definitely not alone.
This article is our comprehensive guide to candy vape flavors. Why do candy-flavored vapes taste as sweet as they do? Do sweet vapes contain sugar or have other drawbacks that you need to know about? What are some of the best candy vape flavors that you need to try the next time you visit your favorite vape shop? Let’s dig in and learn more.
Table of Contents
What Makes Candy Vape Flavors So Sweet?
Candy vape flavors taste sweet because they contain one or more of the following ingredients.
- Sucralose: This is the main ingredient that makes any vape juice taste sweet. Sucralose is a sugar-free sweetener that’s sold in stores under the brand name Splenda and is used in a huge number of snacks and drinks. You can tell that a vape contains sucralose because it’ll taste almost as sweet as if it had been sweetened with real sugar. You’ll even taste the lingering sweetness on your mouth and lips after using the vape.
- Ethyl Maltol: Although ethyl maltol isn’t a sweetener in the strictest sense of the term, it somewhat resembles the flavor of cooked or burnt sugar. Combined with a fruity note, it creates a flavor profile that tastes a lot like cotton candy. On its own, ethyl maltol can make a vape taste vaguely sweet. Combined with sucralose, it creates a very realistic candy flavor. Many candy vapes contain at least a little ethyl maltol even if they’re not specifically trying to recreate the flavor of cotton candy.
- Vegetable Glycerin: Vegetable glycerin is one of the main ingredients of almost all vapes, and it’s used in combination with propylene glycol to create the base of the e-liquid. While propylene glycol is mainly used for its ability to carry flavors, the primary feature of vegetable glycerin is that it creates large clouds. Vegetable glycerin also has a slightly sweet taste, so it enhances vapes with sweet flavor profiles.
Do Candy-Flavored Vapes Have Sugar or Calories?
You might have noticed that sugar wasn’t one of the ingredients on the list above. That’s because vapes don’t contain sugar. There are several reasons why sugar actually wouldn’t work as a vape ingredient, but here are the two biggest ones.
- Sugar doesn’t have the same sweetening power as sucralose, which is about 600 times sweeter than sugar. You can add sucralose to vape juice without upsetting the balance of flavors and nicotine. If you wanted to sweeten the e-liquid with sugar, though, you’d have to use a lot more.
- Sugar would most likely gum up the vape’s wicking system, impeding performance and causing harsh “dry hits.”
Candy vape flavors don’t contain any ingredients with significant caloric content. Even if they did, though, you absorb calories through your digestive tract and not through your lungs. So, vapes are essentially calorie free.
What Are Some of the Most Popular Candy Vape Flavors?
One of the reasons why candy vape flavors are so well loved is because the companies that make vape juice flavor their products with the same food-grade natural and artificial flavors that candy makers use. With a bit of tinkering, it’s possible to hit on a blend of flavoring ingredients that tastes almost exactly the same as a popular brand or type of candy. There are easily hundreds of individual flavoring ingredients available from dozens of different purveyors, so the variety is nearly endless.
Here are some of the most popular candy vape flavors on the market today.
- Cotton Candy: As we mentioned above, it’s possible to make a vape with an extremely realistic cotton candy flavor profile with the addition of a little ethyl maltol. Cotton candy has a somewhat cloudlike flavor anyway – so when you get to taste that flavor in the form of actual clouds, many people find the experience absolutely magical.
- Bubblegum: A bubblegum flavor has a certain slightly powdery note that makes you think of the dry outer coating on a wad of bubblegum. If you want to try a bubblegum vape, you should definitely look for a strawberry-watermelon flavor.
- Gummy: A gummy-flavored vape has a certain juicy flavor note that really makes you think that you’re chomping down on a big handful of real gummy candy. Although most gummy vapes use a variety of fruity notes to achieve their flavor profiles, you’ve got to try a pineapple-flavored white gummy vape if you really want to experience what a gummy flavor can do.
- Iced Candy: Vapes can capture flavor experiences that wouldn’t be possible or feasible with actual foods. Some vape juice makers have taken to adding menthol to their candy flavors, creating an experience that’s almost like taking your favorite candy, freezing it and grinding it into snow.
- Slush: These flavors combine menthol with fruity beverage bases to give you the impression that you’re drinking an honest-to-goodness slush. People absolutely love these flavors – especially the legendary Blue Razz Ice.
Do Candy Vape Flavors Have Any Drawbacks?
If you’re going to use a vape flavor that’s sweetened with sucralose, there is one drawback that you need to know about first. Although sucralose is very tasty, it doesn’t vaporize cleanly like the other ingredients in an e-liquid. Instead, it forms a dark sludge that condenses over the coil and eventually causes your vape to produce an unpleasant burnt flavor. If you have a refillable vape, using candy vape flavors will mean that you’ll need to replace your pod or coil more often. That’s one reason why disposable vapes are so popular. By the time a disposable vape might have begun to taste burnt, it’ll be out of e-liquid anyway.