Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Starburst Sweet & Sour Jelly Bean Mix- Target: Cherry Hill, NJ

Starburst Sweet & Sour Jelly Bean Mix- Target: Cherry Hill, NJ
After the Sour Patch beans ended up being a flop I moved on to another supposedly sour take on this seasonal sweet, and this time it's Target exclusive.

Starburst Jelly Beans were my favorite as a kid. I still remember the first time I had them. I was at my cousins' house for the weekend and their father always bought them fancy name-brand junkfood. They had a pantry filled with Oreos, Gushers, Foot-by-the-Foot, Fruit Roll-Ups, and tons of other goodies that were very rare and special treats in my household. One of the items in their pantry was a container of jelly beans. I was never especially fond of jelly beans, but I was a kid and I loved all forms of candy equally. The good and the bad. I tried one of the pink beans and I was instantly hooked. It was so much better than the generic ones I had been eating. Starburst has been my go-to Easter candy ever since.

I normally don't stray from the original mix, but as you can tell from my Chobani review, I'm not a fan of grape flavored sweets. (At least not the American ones.) Upon further inspection, this Sweet and Sour version switches out the evil grape for blue raspberry. I thought this small change up, as well as half the flavors being sour, made this item review worthy, so let's check it out!

The packaging is pretty obnoxious. (Maybe I have been watching too much HBO, but does anyone else see something suggestive in the yellow splash on the front? Seriously, what is with that shape? Why?) The bag is a bright and colorful mish-mash of colors mixed with a few seasonal accents. I like the color choices, but that shape...just... It looks like the Easter Bunny is riding a giant yellow...(I'll let this youtube clip finish that thought for me.)

So while I like the colors, I can't say I love everything about this packaging. For the record, I am a totally mature adult. Moving on!

I opened up the bag and poured some jelly beans into my dish, and right off the bat, adding blue to the mix really livens up the color palette. I love it!
The colors are gorgeous together, but the jelly beans are kind of inconsistent. They vary a bit in size and shell thickness, which isn't really a bad thing, but I felt like it was noteworthy.

This time the flavors are broken up into two teams of three, Team Sweet and Team Sour.

Sweet:
  • Sweet Strawberry (pink) - I tried this one expecting it to somehow be different from the normal strawberry bean in the original mix, but it wasn't. This bean is exactly the same. It's yummy, and one of my 2 favorites in the original bag, but it seem like a lazy choice on Starburst's part. 
  • Sweet Orange (orange) - Yup, this one is just like the original version too. Tangy, sweet, and juicy. It's good, but again, lazy.
  • Sweet Green Apple (green) - Surprise surprise, it's the same! This (along with grape) are my least favorite flavors in the original mix. So this was not a happy moment for me. Same old green apple. I'll eat it, but I wish it were lime.

Okay, Team Sweet was disappointing, maybe the Sour side will be more interesting.
Sour:
  • Sour Cherry (red) - Are you kidding me? What's sour about this little bean? It seems like the normal cherry bean to me, and I have eaten a LOT of Starbust beans in my lifetime. If anything it might be slightly tangier than usual, but it is very very far from being sour.
  • Sour Lemon (yellow) - Thank goodness, this one is actually different! I think it's the tangiest of the bunch, but it's far from being sour. This is kind of like a lemon head. Sweet, tangy, and slightly bitter. I liked this a lot and I think I like this version more than the normal lemon bean.
  • Sour Blue Raspberry (blue) - Okay, this is a totally new flavor, so it's at the very least different. It tastes like blue freezer popsicles, Icees, and Slurpees. It has that generic and artificial 'blue'-flavoring that is really nostalgic for me. As for being sour...it's kind of tangy, but that's about it. It's kind of like you took a taste of concentrated blue sugar syrup. I liked it quite a bit, but my sister wasn't a fan, so this flavor might not be for everyone.

What the heck Starburst? This is pretty much your original mix with a blue bean tossed in and a tangier version of lemon. I'm kind of disappointed. I was looking forward to making sour and sweet flavor combinations, like sweet and sour pink lemonade, but this is really underwhelming. I can't say it's bad, because it's practically the original mix with a slight tweak here and there, but I  bought this expecting a completely different product. The best thing about this is that there's no grape, so unless you're a grape hater like me, this mix is skip-worthy.

Worthy of having it's own Jelly Bean Version? : It's not all that different than Original. Take 'em or leave 'em, but if you're looking for sour, this isn't it.
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