When Brian mentioned that he had brought back some organic candy from the All Candy Expo, I knew I had to try them. Being a socially-conscious Californian, I was pleased to see that not only are Pure Fun candies organic, kosher, and vegan, they also have no artificial colors or flavors, use pure cane sugar syrup instead of corn syrup, and are made out of fair-trade ingredients.
So now there’s no real way to feel guilty about eating a piece of candy. Well, unless you’re about to head to the dentist for your 6-month checkup. Still, I applaud Pure Fun for creating sweets that cater to a wide variety of people. There’s certainly a market for these products, and I can imagine that the market can only grow wider as more people become aware of where their food comes from.
I received a bag of organic lollipops (called Pure Pops) and a huge selection of Pure Fun’s hard candies to try out.
Here are my thoughts on the hard candies:
Root Beer Float
Ah, licorice. My sworn enemy. We meet again. Root beer barrels always remind me of licorice, and I’ve never liked them, so I decided to get these out of the way first. As expected, I didn’t enjoy the strong, burning sensation trickling down the back of my throat, but there’s a creamy side to the candy that mellows out the flavor a little. Not enough for me, though. Ugh… next please.
Editor’s Note: If you do like Root Beer flavored stuff, these are great!
Chocolate Meltdowns: These are hard candies with a soft chocolate center. The first thing that I noticed is how nice and mellow the sweetness was, probably because my tongue had acclimated itself to corn syrup instead of actual cane sugar, and it had no idea how actual candy is supposed to taste.
- Peppy Pepsin
Sweet with a very mild undertone of mint, kind of like spearmint. The chocolate melded nicely with the mint, but I personally like a stronger mint (like peppermint) with my chocolate. I also like a darker, richer chocolate with mint flavor, and this wasn’t it. This was nice, but not really spectacular. - Raging Raspberry
This isn’t your fake, super-sweet, super-tart, raspberry flavor you might get in herbal tea. I can’t really explain it, but for some reason this raspberry tastes fresher than most raspberry candies I’ve had. I enjoyed this much more than the pepsin flavor; it’s like having the best Tootsie Roll Pop ever, with a light sourness that melds in wonderfully with the chocolate. And like a Tootsie Roll Pop, once the chocolate hit my tongue, I crunched down. Force of habit….
Spearmint Swirl
Like the pepsin, the mint flavor in this candy is very mild. It’s hard to screw up spearmint, though. Don’t expect this mint to knock out your garlic pasta dinner.
Lemon Slice
This candy resembles a slice of citrus fruit, and good thing too, because wow was this sour! I love candies that make your mouth pucker and your salivary glands work overtime, and this was a little slice of heaven for me. Imagine the inner core of a Lemon Head; that’s how this tastes, but better!
Loony Lemon
I tried this right after the Lemon Slice to compare the flavors. This candy tastes more like the classic lemon drop, sweeter than the Lemon Slice. So perhaps this would appeal to people who don’t like their lemon candy super-sour.
Orange Slice
Another piece of candy that looks like how it tastes. This was amazing, like sucking on a hardened piece of orange juice. I can’t figure out any other way to describe it.
Tangy Tangerine
Sweeter than either the lemon or the orange, but this had a bitter undertone that I didn’t find really appealing. It brought back the ugly memories of the root beer candy, teasing the back of my throat with something resembling the pith (the icky white bits) of a real tangerine. Not too appetizing.
Even though I received an entire bag of Pure Pops, I don’t know if I tried all the flavors offered by Pure Fun: Go Goji Berry, Wacky Watermelon, Pure Pomegranate, Tangy Tangerine, Giddy Green Apple, and Loony Lemon. Also, I wish I knew what a goji berry tastes like, because I couldn’t really tell the difference between the Pomegranate and the Goji. They were both slightly sour and quite tasty, but I couldn’t say with certainty how close to the real fruit either of them were. Here are some thoughts on the pops:
Giddy Green Apple
I completely expected a Jolly Rancher type of sour apple flavor (which I never really enjoyed), but this turned out to be my favorite of the lollipop flavors. Again, it tasted like someone took a dollop of apple juice, hardened it somehow (without freezing it), and stuck it on the end if a hard paper stick.
Wacky Watermelon
Sweet and surprisingly juicy, the watermelon turned out to be my second favorite of the pops. I also really love the eye-catching, translucent pink color.
The Loony Lemon tastes like the hard candy (above), and I don’t think there were any Tangerine lollipops in the bag. I’m a bit grateful for that, however, considering that it wasn’t my favorite of flavors.
Brian also tells me that they make some fabulous cotton candy in wacky such flavors as Root Beer, Maple, Cinnamon, Bubblegum, and Licorice. He says he tried Root Beer, Maple, and Cinnamon and they were all great!
Forget everything you’ve ever known about fruit-flavored hard candies, because Pure Fun has hit the reset button. Before this, I believed that Jolly Rancher had this category locked, but with organic ingredients and cane sugar, Pure Fun has managed to create something new, different, and infinitely tastier than the competition.
Buy Pure Fun Candy online:
- at Amazon.com
I think I would really enjoy these! It’s all the chemicals and stuff that goes into regular hard candies that make my mouth hurt if I eat too many in more than a weeks time.
October 25th, 2007 at 11:01 pmI’m looking for orange slice candy that’s made from pure grade B maple syrup, without the granules of sugar on the outside. It would be a somooth orange slice candy. I would love to have the recipe for this
January 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm