The world of gummis is filled with candy that looks like other things: soda bottles, centipedes, spiders, body parts (brains, whole hands, eyeballs, lips), dinosaurs, rabbits, birds, flowers, butterflies, toads, frogs, sharks, fast food, fruits, vegetables, cracked eggs,  and of course bears.

Sour Gummy Pop Corn from Flix Candy looks like popcorn. But they go one further, instead of making it popcorn flavored, or some other yellow themed flavor they’ve made them apple, strawberry, popcorn & watermelon. You don’t know until you eat them.

The package is cute, it looks like the tall box of popcorn that they used to sell at the fair and probably at the movies before people starting consuming it by the bucketful.

Here’s the first thing: a caramel corn flavored gummi sounds fabulous to me. It wouldn’t have a year ago, but after the caramel gummis I reviewed last week I truly believe you could make a great Cracker Jack flavored gummi with real molasses, caramelized sugar and milk.

This isn’t that ... so I’ll have to adjust my expectations.

I thought maybe I could tell the difference between them by smelling them, but they all smelled like Bed, Bath and Beyond (a mixture of watermelon, strawberry and carpeting).

Watermelon (yellow) was tart and fresh, though more sour than I actually like my watermelon to be. The bounce of the gummi was satisfying and fresh.

Strawberry (yellow) was sweeter at first and had a good berry flavor but then descended into sour.

Apple (yellow) if that’s what I tasted, this one was the most sizzling of the, it was an odd sort of burnt note along with that chemical green apple flavor of Jolly Ranchers.

The Pop Corn gummi was either elusive or so similarly flavored that I couldn’t tell. After finding the first three flavors in about 8 tries, I ended up just biting the rest of the pieces in the package. Something smelled vaguely like artificial butter flavor, but nothing tasted like it (but who wants sour buttered pop corn?).

These weren’t that good for me, but I get that when watching a movie the look of the candy isn’t that important since I can’t see it anyway. But the flavor mix with apple and watermelon wasn’t high on my list either.

Related Candies

1. Au’some Easter 3-Dees Gummy
2. Trolli Little Green Men
3. Puffy Candy Corn
4. Wonka Puckerooms
5. Big Bite Gummy Bear
6. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
7. Krunchy Bears

Nobel  is not a brand of Japanese candy I know well, though I immediately have affection for them because they make the Super Lemon sour candies that have the charming packages.

A couple of years ago I picked up a package of Puccho that was creme brulee flavored (technically I think it was called Baked Puccho - Custard Cream). I love it so much and though I know it was a limited edition flavor, I’ve been looking for something like it. A chewy, milky and caramelized sort of thing.

When I saw this little package in Little Tokyo I thought I’d give it a go. It’s called simply Nama Carmel Gummy. I could palpate the pieces within the bag and could tell that they were firm but distinct pieces, like tiny little fleshy bricks.

It smells sweet and rather woodsy, like brown sugar and milk. The texture is soft and bouncy but quite firm. There’s a light dusting of what I’m guessing is corn starch, so they’re not shiny.

Honestly, they don’t look like much, but they’re quite dreamy. Instead of being caramel flavored, they’re actually made with milk and cream ... that’s not zinc oxide making it look milky, it is milky. It’s a toasty flavor, not too sweet. The texture is bouncy and chewy more like a Haribo than a Trolli. They’re crazy good though I admit they’re strange. It’s really like eating something that’s a cross between butterscotch pudding and jello. I would definitely buy these again if I can find them.

Of course I can’t find them online.

Related Candies

1. Meiji Pokka Coffee Caramel
2. Meiji Gummy Choco
3. UHA Puccho Custard
4. Das French Salted Caramels
5. Fran’s Gray Salt Caramels

I’m gaga for Meiji’s Gummy Choco, which are little gummi beans of various natural fruit flavors covered in milk and flavored white chocolate. But I’ve also wondered what it’d be like to just eat the gummi centers.

The gummi jellybean centers are called Poifull and are rather harder to find in the United States.

I picked up a few boxes via JBox.com and then ended up finding some more at Nijiya Market in Little Tokyo a few weeks later. The flavors vary from time to time. (Sometimes the yellow ones are pineapple as shown in this box and other times they’re lemon or white peach.)

While it’s tempting to call these jelly beans, they’re not. Jelly beans have jelly centers - that means that they’re a thickened candy syrup, usually gelled using corn starch but good quality ones use pectin, a natural fruit product. Poifull are a gummi product, so the centers are bouncy and chewy and thickened with gelatin. (So my vegetarian friends, you can’t have these.)

They come in four flavors and all are equally fresh and transcendent. The shell is light and a little grainy after chewing, it mostly seals in the soft and fresh flavors of the gummis themselves.

Pineapple - is sweet and bright but more like canned pineapple than the fresh stuff. Not quite as acidic but still quite credible.

Grape - is the darker purple color. The flavor is amazing, like a condensed droplet of concord grape juice. Vivid, sweet and tangy.

Muscat Grape - is the green one and like the grape has an authentic juice flavor. Muscat is a white grape so is often a little milder in its juice form. This one was tasty but didn’t wow me like the others by comparison.

Apple - is the lighter pink one. It’s definitely just like a fresh glass of apple juice, or actually, more like cider. Tangy and with a good touch of apple peel flavors in there.

(I had another box & can review the Lemon - is a mild and marmalade-like flavor. The sugar notes are boiled and toasted and the zest is still quite authentic but lacking most of the bitter qualities. It’s not terribly tart, but still has a nice snap.)

The flavors are much more intense than even Jelly Belly, very well rounded and of course the gummi texture makes them last longer. I didn’t find myself gulping them down like I do with some jelly candies, they’re absolutely more in the gummi style of eating for me. I’ve only found them in these small boxes (and sometimes in the tiny boxes for the Meiji Mini Mix - photo).

They’re pretty expensive since they’re an import product, but as far as I can tell they’re also all natural - so parents can feel good about a super-flavorful product that comes in small portions. They’d make a great addition to an Easter basket.

Related Candies

1. Jelly Belly Sunkist Citrus Mix
2. Kasugai Pineapple Gummy
3. Meiji Gummy Choco
4. Jelly Belly - All Natural
5. Gummi Sushi

The new LifeSavers Gummies Bunnies & Eggs are charming little Easter themed gummis that come in five different shapes and six different flavors.

The bag has the old LifeSavers logo and design elements to it (the rolls are rather different these days). It also features the bug-eyed bunny that appears on the Jelly Beans.

The flavors are Lemon, Apple, Orange, Tangy Cherry, Tangy Punch and Watermelon.

All the candies are sherbet colors, soft, opaque pastels. They’re bouncy and squishy, not quite greasy but they definitely cling together readily.

I expected them to be big, about the same size as the hoops known as LifeSavers Gummies, which themselves are larger than the hard candy version. Instead they’re actually smaller than the little images on the package. These cute and plump little shapes are barely the size of a traditional gummi bear. (I threw an M&M in there for you to see the scale.)

Blue is Tangy Punch - it reminds me of Hawaiian Punch. It’s tangy of course and has an artificial flavor to go with the tropical fruit.

Green is Apple - it’s far less tart than I expected. A little like apple juice.

Orange is Orange - it looks like sherbet and tastes rather like it too, soft and mellow with a light sour note but mostly a juice flavor.

Red is Watermelon  - at first I thought it’d be cherry. The watermelon reminded me of Jolly Ranchers in the best possible way. Fresh, a little more intensely fruity than the real melon and of course an artificial version of the actual flavor.

Lemon is Yellow - I didn’t care much for this one, it had a metallic note, like drinking lemonade in a can.

Pink is Tangy Cherry -  this is not the cherry I associate with LifeSavers. It’s far too mild and though it’s called Tangy Cherry, it’s not terribly sour at all.

On the whole they’re adorable, rather mild but nothing extraordinary. Gummis for Easter aren’t that common, so it’s nice to see a themed product. There is no allergen statement on the package but it does contain gelatin and of course artificial colors & flavors. It doesn’t say anything about gluten or nuts.

Related Candies

1. Au’some Easter 3-Dees Gummy
2. Disney Pixie Perfect Gummies
3. Necco Paas Gummi Baby Bunnies
4. LifeSavers Tangy Fruits Gummies
5. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
6. Lifesavers Jellybeans

I was so excited when I got this sample in the mail last week. Au’some is a rare company that’s able to make both interesting novelty candies but also ones that actually taste good.

Au’some has a line of 3-Dees Gummy candies, that are just what they sound like. They’re three dimensional molded gummy candies and much larger than the standard gummi bear. I reviewed the Super Mario Brothers version a few years ago (along with their Wii controller candy dispenser).

The seasonal versions of the gummis are in special shapes and flavor combinations for the holiday. The Easter 3-Dees Gummy version features two shapes (sitting rabbit and dancing chick) and three flavors (strawberry, orange and mixed berries).

Each package contains six candies, one of each shape in one of each flavors. They’re in a little tray that keeps each one separate and molded to their shape. The fun is when you pop them out of their molds.

The packaging does an excellent job of keeping the candy protected and in the best possible condition for play. I can’t say that it was that compelling when I first looked at it, it really didn’t convey the stunning look of these out of the package. (Here’s another version of the package that you might see in stores.)

I admit that this review is actually more about the pictures, and I also admit that the photos that follow makes these little guys look far larger than they are (blame it on my new camera lens). Each weighs between a quarter of an ounce to a third of an ounce. The rabbits are exactly one inch high and one inch on the longest side of the base.

As a 3D candy they actually stand up, like a little injection-molded plastic toy.

When they say that they’re three dimensional, they’re not kidding. The rabbits, if you can’t tell so far, were my favorite. The middle seam was nearly undetectable. The nicely formed face even had little buck teeth that I could see when looking carefully. The little tucked back ears are simply charming.

The dancing chick isn’t quite as compelling for me, it was harder to tell what was going on, but the figure reminded me of that penguin in Happy Feet. This little chick is a bit rolly-polly and kicking up one of his feet.

The flavors are right up my alley. In this case that means that red is strawberry instead of cherry. It’s nicely tangy and has a rounded floral berry fragrance. It tastes exactly like strawberry Jell-O.

The texture for these gummis is what I’d call short. Some gummies are stringy - if you pulled on the gummi it’d stretch quite a bit before it pulled apart. These gummis are more like actual gelatin desserts. Biting into them they pull apart into little nuggets. Pull them and they break apart with clean surfaces.

Though they’re not a chewy gummi they are intensely flavored and exceptionally smooth. The blue-green color is Mixed Berries and in this case it actually tastes like berries. There’s a good jammy raspberry flavor. It’s tart, floral and not too much like generic fruit punch. In the case of this one there was a slight note of the blue food coloring (a little metallic) but that didn’t detract from it.

The orange flavor is disappointing, only because Haribo has raised the bar so high. It’s sour in the right way, but the overall flavor is that of orange-ade. There are no zest notes that kind of carry it over into the whole orange flavor. Still, the flavor and texture worked well together.

The hesitation on this product is that it’s made in China. The package says “made responsibly in China and I do believe that there are plenty of ethical and conscientious food makers in China - I just don’t know how to tell who is who. The size of these gummis still means they should not be given to very small children - but you probably already know that.

I took a gajillion photos of them:

Related Candies

1. Disney Pixie Perfect Gummies
2. Marich Easter Select Mix
3. Necco Paas Gummi Baby Bunnies
4. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
5. Ausome Jewelry Kit
6. Bubble Roll Message Maker
7. Gummi Lightning Bugs

The third new product in Wonka’s Edible Garden line of gummies is called Squishy Sploshberries Gummies Candy. As the name implies, they’re berry flavored gummies and they have sploshy centers.

What I found most interesting about them, as the gooey center has been done quite a bit already, is the flavor array. These aren’t ordinary berries. Though there’s no Snozzberry the flavors are: Raspberry, Blueberry, Goji Berry and Cloud Berry.

Like the other new Wonka gummis, these are made in the Czech Republic and boast no artificial flavors or colors.

Each piece is about the same diameter as a nickel (about 3/4”). They’re high and domed candies. They’re not greasy to the touch, just soft and matte. They have a translucent amber colored gummi top with a dark red fruity goo center and it all sits on an opaque white base.

The texture is soft and chewy, with a good latexy bounce to it. The molding of each of the pieces is great and for filled gummies, I was pleased to see that none of them had oozed in the bag.

The goo reservoir in the center is rather small, just a little dab. It’s also not liquid, more of a jelly so it’s more moist than the rest of the gummi, but not a flowing syrup.

Raspberry (far right) is vivid and jammy. It’s not quite specific enough to be exclusively a raspberry, sometimes I thought it was more like a blackberry with a little black cherry note to it.

Blueberry (middle) is also lightly tangy. The unique flavors come from the goo center. It’s a little more tannic, more like it has notes of black tea mixed with the more vanilla berry flavors.

Cloud Berry - I’ve never eaten a cloud berry so I can’t talk about the authenticity of the flavor. What I can say is that it pretty much tastes like all the other gummis in this assortment. It might have a little note of green apple, but it’s very pleasant and a little more custard-like, probably because of the white kind of marshmallowy base. This was the most prevalent flavor in the bag, so I had quite a few of them.

Goji Berry - a little more woodsy than the others in the mix. It’s only lightly tart with a vague rosemary or herby note to it, like chewing on fibery goji berries.

I was hoping these would be a little more vibrant, that they’d have a little more pizazz. Wonka candies are usually known for being bold. Candies like Nerds and Runts are very specific. These were kind of tame. I appreciate the risks of making a naturally flavored & colored product and the unusual actual berry flavors instead of made up flavors. On the other side of that coin, all the flavors went together really well so it’s not like I noticed getting a “bad” flavor.

The allergen info on the bag has all the hot targets on it: made on shared equipment with peanuts, nuts, soy, milk, wheat and eggs. Also, it contains gelatin so it’s not vegetarian friendly.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Puckerooms
2. Wonka Sluggles
3. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
4. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies
5. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
6. Starburst GummiBursts

There are some candies I get a hold of and I simply do not want to eat them.

Grave Grabbers from Flix Candy are billed as a handful of fruit flavored gummy! and they certainly do deliver on both the hand and the gummy part.

Maybe it’s that they’re not shaped like something I would normally want to eat. Maybe it’s that they’re made in China. Or maybe it’s that I have such a low appetite for flesh.

They come in three flavors, and each one is individually and uniquely designed. Each piece is 1.94 ounces, and though not as large as an adult’s hand (they’re only about 4.5 inches long), they’re still impressive to handle.

Green Apple is the left hand (hah-hah, the others are right hands!) in a dark green with black fingernails and knobbly knuckles. It also has a lightly textured skin that looks a bit like a lizard’s or snake’s. The gummy texture is soft, but not too soft and sticky that it makes a greasy mess when you play with the candy. The flavor is rather mild but an actual pleasant green apple flavor. Almost realistic with some apple juice notes.

Strawberry is the skeletal one in the center. It’s a light and creamy white with gray cartilage. The fingers are longer than the others, but the palm is also less fleshy. (And the attachment of the thumb makes me think this is chimpanzee hand or foot more than a human hand.) It’s a very mild strawberry flavor. A little light tangyness but it’s mostly the florally & berry fruity that we’re accustomed to. 

Blue Raspberry is a strange thing to call this, since there are no blue raspberries, they’re just a made up flavor and this isn’t even a blue colored candy. Instead it’s more of a zombie hand, sinew & open flesh, even some bones and gory bloody bits showing. The flavor was pretty unremarkable. I lost the package for this one and had to muck around on the internet until I found someone else mention with a picture.

They’re obviously too expensive for Trick or Treat, with a recommended retail of $1.25 (though you may find them cheaper). They’re a fun candy for kids to play with or to use as a decoration for a Halloween spread. The one odd impulse I have with this is to smack someone on the face with them a la a glove for a good old fashioned challenge. Luckily I’m alone in a hotel room today and there’s no one to do that to.

Flix also makes giant insect versions in similar flavors (though bolder colors). I think they’re far more inventive & creative than some of the other Flix items I’ve had, though still nothing that appeals to me.

Related Candies

1. Disney Pixie Perfect Gummies
2. R.M. Palmer Quax - The Yummy Ducky
3. Ratatouille Pocket Slider Lollipop
4. Gummy Fishies
5. Peeps Lollipop Rings
6. Oriental Trading Company Candies

Trolli Little Green Men are one of the newer novelty gummis from Trolli, which is owned by Farley’s and Sathers. They’re just as inventive as other gummi makers like Haribo, with a variety of shapes & flavor assortments.

The package looks like it’s geared towards kids. There’s a flying saucer behind the logo with a little bulgy-eyed alien at the steering wheel.

The bag comes with just one shape & flavor. In this case it’s a little green alien with a bulbous head and Cosmic Star Fruit flavored.

For the unfruity, Star Fruit is also known as Carmbola. It’s a strange looking creased/segmented fruit that looks like a five pointed star when sliced. The texture and flavor is something like a cross between a crunchy apple and the flavor of cataloupe and pears.

The gummis are rather startling looking. They have huge green heads and teensy little potbellied bodies. The heads are about 3/4” around and the whole fella stands only 1.5” high.

They smell fresh, a bit like melon and citrus. They’re soft and pliable, but not sticky or very greasy to the touch. The flavor is immediately lightly tangy but an overall mild berry or pear flavor.

They’re nice in that they’re a big bite of gummi. The flavor is different enough to seem distinct, but not too exotic to seem weird.

Related Candies

1. Puffy Candy Corn
2. Trolli Sour Brite Eggs
3. Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
4. Wonka Sluggles
5. Brach’s Gummi+Plus & Tropical Gummis
6. Starburst GummiBursts
7. The Simpsons Fruit Snacks
8. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears