Sour Patch Kid Jelly Beans - Target: Cherry Hill, NJ
As Cybele said in our latest Candyology101 podcast, Easter is the biggest candy holiday of the year. Since there are so many sweets on the shelves, I picked up a few to let you know if they were worth checking out. (Click here to see all of my previous Easter posts. A lot of those items, including the Carrot Cake m&m's, are back this year.)
If any of you have walked down the seasonal candy aisle you've seen that every candy company and their grandma released a version of jelly beans. Seriously, there are so many varieties! It's no longer just fruit, spice, and Jelly Belly. We now have Jolly Rancher, Laffy Taffy, Nerd, several different versions of Starburst, and even Swedish Fish. I grabbed a few of these name brand novelty versions, because a lot of companies just slap their branding onto a product and that's that. I want to see if these candies are really worthy of having their own bean. To start, one of the brands I was most excited for, Sour Patch.
The package's design is pretty lazy if you ask me. Sour Patch took their typical color scheme and design, slapped a bit of pastel purple around the edges, added bunny ears and that's about it. There are some cute touches here and there, like the ladder coming out of the bar-code, and the little graffiti-like touches added by the naughty kid-characters, but it's not one of my favorite branding designs or layouts. I think if they ditched the weak Easter-elements the design would have been a lot stronger. Their current "Sour then Sweet" campaign doesn't really fit in with seasonal packaging anyway. They are attempting to emulate a naughty-but sweet identity for this brand, kind of like a rebellious kid, and those kind of kids wouldn't wear fancy holiday-themed clothes. Who says these Jelly Beans really need to be Easter-y anyway? Ditch the bunny ears and stick to the spray paint and playful designs.
I opened the bag up, and could something be wrong?
The bag's opaque, so I couldn't see the beans inside, but I had seen photos online. I knew what these were going to look like...or at least I thought I knew. They're totally different. The images online make them look like they are covered in sanding sugar, similar to other Sour Patch items, but these are smooth and panned. Did the formula change or something?
There are four flavors, like the classic Sour Patch mix before blue was introduced. I normally do a flavor breakdown, where I discuss each flavor, but really, these taste just like their normal Sour Patch Kid counterpart with one small change...THEY ARE BARELY EVEN SOUR! What is it? Is there something wrong with this bag?
All jelly beans have a panned sugar shell, due to the supposed sour-quality, these have a matte finish, so I assumed they'd be sour. They really aren't. Each flavor tastes like the chewy and sweet inside of a Sour Patch Kid. The outside layer is a bit thicker than normal jelly beans, but it's slightly tangy at best. I tried eating them different ways, chewing them right away, sucking on the supposedly sour shell, but nothing really made the sourness shine though. If I eat a handful of them there's a bit of a sour build up, but an individual bean is barely sour on it's own.
I was actually really disappointed in these. After seeing photos online I assumed they'd be more tangy and similar to their usual Kid-shaped version, but these are significantly more mild. The texture of the thicker shell is enjoyable, and I like it's graininess, but if you are looking for a sour and sweet snack, this isn't it. I wouldn't recommend buying these, and so far everyone I have shared these with has shared my disappointment.
Worthy of having it's own Jelly Bean Version? : No.
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
Like Sometimes Foodie's Facebook page to keep up with all my foodie adventures!
No comments:
Post a Comment