Recent experiences have taught me a new golden rule of candy purchasing: candy on sale is not necessarily a good thing. Witness my purchase of a box of Jelly Belly jelly beans which cost less than a dollar – a dollar which I now wish I had back. The Smoothie Blend box consists of 5 jelly belly flavors, all of which are smoothie-inspired fruit combinations. Let’s take a flavor walk through the box, shall we?
Mandarin Orange Mango: These are vaguely peachy colored, and sadly only vaguely citrus flavored as well. The overwhelming flavor is mango. Not terrible, but there was no real taste of either mandarin or orange, which was disappointing. This one fell into the category of take it or leave it – would have been nicer if it was supposed to just be mango flavor.
Mixed Berry: This one looks the most amazing, with a bright blue/purple hue and darker purple spots on it. It was very sweet, mostly blueberry flavored. It was the best by far in as much as I didn’t want to spit it out immediately.
Pineapple Pear: My partner in tasting popped one of these in his mouth, chewed a bit, cocked his head to the side and said, “Alas. Earwax.” He wasn’t wrong.
Strawberry Banana: I had high hopes for this flavor, even though the color was terrible. It was a deeper orange than the mandarin, but with darker reddish/orange flecks on it. I’m not sure why it wasn’t just yellow – who ever heard of an orange banana? Sadly, the color would not have saved it anyway. The flavor was closer to cotton candy than any fruit I’ve ever eaten. The overwhelming feeling was that it was neither strawberry nor banana.
Cherry Passionfruit: Bright red, this one was going to be the saving grace of the entire box, so I saved it for last. I’m not sure if that was a good idea or not! The disgusting aftertaste it left in my mouth was certainly memorable, though not exactly what I was hoping for. While I like a good artificial cherry flavor, this one was so chemically as to make me wonder if they had swapped it with cough syrup flavor.
For the candy sorters among us, you’ll see that the distribution in this pack of cut-price Jelly Bellys was also a disappointment. I ended up with loads of the pineapple-pear, and only two of the strawberry-banana. Not that I really cared, given how totally bad these were.
Buy the Jelly Belly Online:
- at Candy Direct
- at Amazon.com
yick!! But useful; I didn’t know that Jelly Belly could fail so badly! Pineapple Pear was especially disappointing to hear about, because pear is my favorite jelly belly flavor.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:16 pmI used to work in a chocolate store, we also sold some candy items that we didn’t make for variety. One of our most popular items was Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. I being a lover of candy was thrilled when they sent us these samples. These were so horrid we couldn’t even give them away to our customers. Their Soda Shoppe Mix is significantly better.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:46 pmWhoa, bad Jelly Bellys? And they’re NOT Bertie Botts’ Beans? Ewww. Dang, I LOVE Jelly Bellys, too. But having just eaten some particularly delicious Carnival Flavors Skittles (a Limited Edition, but I’m not sure how old they could be as these came from the Dollar Tree store and I haven’t Googled ‘em yet), my favorite being Cotton Candy and Bubble Gum (for once, I get to actually swallow the bubble gum!), I can’t seem to wrap my head around bad-tasting candy right now!
**By the way, if you do try these Carnival Flavors Skittles, combining the Red Licorice and Green Slushie flavors is really good!
March 5th, 2008 at 9:56 pmI have brought the smoothie blend myself from Las Vegas
and guess what? They was worth it. I especially liked the
Strawberry/Banana ones. Your reviews on Jelly Belly are
great. I am glad you do flavour guides and thanks for
the news on the Dark Chocolate beans.
Keep up the good info.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm