Trolli Sour Brite Weird Beards – Review

For whatever reason, NBA players love candy. Famously, Lamar Odom was known for having an assistant who had to stock his van with candy each day (he was dubbed the “Candy Man” by his Lakers teammates). Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard both had nutritionists tell them that they had to cut back on their candy consumption (Dwight was allegedly eating the equivalent of 24 Hershey’s bars a day during his time with the Lakers). I recently listened to a podcast with Jimmy Butler, too, where he told Bill Simmons that he was a recovering candy addict.

NBA players: they’re just like us; they love candy!

Adding to that list is now James Harden, who is the first basketball player (to my knowledge) to have his own signature brand of candy. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a lefty shooting guard for the Houston Rockets (formerly of the Oklahoma City Thunder, but let’s not get into that). Outside of the basketball world, he is probably best known for his beard.

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Recently, with help from that beard, he’s branded himself as being “different” than your average NBA player. With his recent Adidas commercial, he claims that “creators never follow”. In a Taco Bell promotion for the Breakfast Crunchwrap he was a breakfast defector, someone who does not settle for a “normal” fast-food breakfast. He prides himself on his quirkiness; in James’s world, it’s the weird way or the highway.

So you can see how this cross-promotion works perfectly for his image.

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Weird Beards Flavors:

The candy has a fun design that keeps with Trolli’s signature two-tone flavors. Just like with a Trolli Worm for example, each Weird Beard is divided in half. Each piece is James Harden’s likeness, with his beard accounting for one flavor and his face accounting for the other. There are the standard Trolli flavors within in the pack:

• Pink & blue (strawberry and raspberry)
• Orange & green (orange and lime)
• Red & yellow (cherry and lemon)

The red and yellow is funny because that’s actually the colors of his current team, the Houston Rockets. Pink & blue continues to be the MVP of the bunch, but I found myself liking red & yellow for a change. I had forgotten how solid that flavor combination is.

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What is nice is that the Weird Beards are big, too; I would say they’re about the size of a quarter, maybe a little larger. They taste like any other Trolli candy (they are gummy candy covered in sugar for those of you who don’t know). That being said, I wish they had taken a little more risk with the flavors, especially since they are marketed as “weird beards”. I think something really crazy like guava or pineapple could have fit with Harden’s branding a bit more.

The conclusion:

All around, there are no complaints from me. The allure comes from it being a candy made exclusively for an NBA superstar. Plus, it incorporates two of my favorite things into one–basketball and candy. It’s not noticeably different from any other Trolli candy on the market, but it sure is fun to have these around. An OMG.

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