Sometimes Foodie: Teeny Doses of Nostalgia

I was grabbing some poster frames at Michel's and it turns out, their check-out aisle is lined with tons of nostalgic candy. Who knew?

I grabbed two packs of these, one for me and one for my sister, because looking at them almost broke my brain.

Familiar, and yet, wrong? Like that whole Berenstein vs. Berenstain bears debate. (I am one of the kids who swore it was "Stein.") The colors are right, the paper pouch feels right, but something about it looks wrong. I think it's the name? I'm pretty sure these were called, "Tinys," or something like that. Whatever they go by these days, it's still tiny bits of fruity gum in a paper envelope, and the child in me says, go for it!

The colors and layout of the bag immediately give me flashbacks to grocery store checkouts with my mom. I don't remember buying it too often, but it was always there, at kid-eye-level.

Inside, we have four different colors, all of which are pastel. Pretty big difference from what I remembered, so it makes me think that the colors have shifted to a more natural palette. Looking at the back of the pouch there are ingredients like turmeric and paprika extract, so that theory checks out.

There's orange, yellow, green, and pink, but I am guessing they all taste the same.

Just for scientific purposes, I separated out a few clumps of each color and tried them on their own first before moving forward.

And yeah, they're all the same. The outer sugar shell still has a light, satisfying, crunch, and inside the gum tastes generically fruity and slightly like cinnamon? Which isn't listed in the ingredients, but something about it is definitely giving me flashbacks to Big Red. (Oh god, Big Red! Is that still around?) If you left a stick of Juicy Fruit, and a stick of Big Red next to each other in the zipper bag of your purse, and then randomly ate the Juicy Fruit stick after like, a week, it would taste like this. Bubblegum-y, generically fruity, and slightly cinnamon-y.

The flavor is a nostalgic thing for me, as a 90's kid (a phrase that makes me cringe as I type it), so I recognize that me me, this is great, but as far as actual candy goes, this is mid-level at best.

I will say, for the, the size and the candy shell is a lot of fun. I'm a cruncher, and I love the texture of all these tiny bits coming together to form bubble gum.

Decent, soft, chew, very weak but snappy bubbles, and a dose of nostalgia. Not too shabby!

Also, I google'd it, and these WERE called "Chiclets Tiny Gum." They were discontinued at some point, and then someone else bought the rights and brought it back in this new form. If you're an elder millennial (another cringe-worthy thing I have typed today) this is an affordable dose of nostalgia I would recommend checking out.