I am a huge fan of Archie McPhee. My bathroom is decorated with their matching sushi-themed shower curtain, rug, and trash can; I have their band-aids that look like Crime Scene tape, their toy gun that catapults pigs, their little squeaky monk who’s talking on the phone and drinking coffee…. But you’ll notice something all those items have in common: none of them are supposed to be eaten, or even, like this gum, just chewed.

So here’s the thing: I love the concepts of all of these gums just like I love the concepts of their other products. Gumballs that look like meatballs, wasabi gum – this stuff tickles me to death. But, here at Candy Addict, we are about actually eating things. So: are these just joke gifts, or would a person really want to eat them?

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Q: What do you get when you cross one sour-loving Candy Addict with a whole sleeve of sour power gumballs?

A: One very happy customer with a very sore jaw.

I wasn’t all that excited to get these gumballs, since I’ve had a particularly long run of not-really-sour sour candies to eat lately. The package also said “made in Mexico” and we all know how I felt about those Mexican candies. Gum is one of those things which is difficult to get a good sour flavor with, unless of course you fill it with some sort of lethal mix of citric acid and scary chemicals. Even then I find that sour gum products are sour for about 2.35 milliseconds before they just end up being a chewy, grainy, sweet mess. There was a definite audible sigh as I busted open this sleeve.

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As a kid, gumballs were a staple of my candy diet. But they weren’t just any gumballs, like those generic ones you got out of candy machines for a quarter. They were Rain-Blo gumballs.

They came in that little cellophane tube, perfect for squeezing out one at a time into your mouth. Then, as now, they came in mini, regular and “Jum-Blo” sizes, and were available in several flavor varieties, including a fruit mix in which the gumballs were actually shaped like little fruits. This wasn’t as cool as it sounds, as most of the flavors had just been given a pebbled surface, with the exception of the green watermelon’s stylish stripes. There was also an uber-sour variety called Eye Poppers, upon which I blame my adult addiction to everything ridiculously sour.

Rain-Blo also makes jawbreakers with, naturally, a gum center. I guess when you have a spherical candy as your main product, the natural next step is to pan a few layers of hard candy around the outside of it and make a jawbreaker. I remember that no matter what the original color, they always ended up tasting like wintergreen, and every fifth one or so had a weird harsh chemical taste, but somehow I couldn’t get enough of them anyway. (Hey, I like wintergreen – so sue me!)

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Today’s guest review comes from a true gumball lover blogging at Maison de Gumball….

For sugar lovers everywhere, the search for sugar nirvana has come to a sudden and crunchy close. Yes, that’s right – I’ve found the answer to the age long question of how much sugar can be crammed into a single piece of candy. The answer: too much.

Allow me to introduce you to the Nerds Filled Gumballs. This seizure-inducing treat has a number of unique characteristics previously unknown to the extended chew industry. The sheer quantity of sugar was once believed to be impossible, yet some deranged candy maker has produced the Nerds Filled Gumball. Personally, I enjoy nothing more than settling into a lasting and fulfilling chew of a gumball. Nothing satisfies the molars like the pleasurable elasticity of that sugar coated orb known as the gumball.

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Have you or your kids ever found excuses to skip your multivitamin? I’ve seen ads for Vitaball Vitamin Gum for quite some time, and since I love gum and should take vitamins, I decided to do some research. According to the Vitaball website, their product is acceptable for people age five or older, and should be chewed for a minimum of five minutes.

The original assortment comes with cherry, bubble gum, grape, and watermelon gumballs. Vitaball Wild ‘N Fruity offers lemon, strawberry, orange, and berry. Minis are only available in bubble gum flavor, and three gumballs instead of one should be chewed to get the product’s maximum benefit. A thorough question and answer section explains important details like nutritional content, and whether or not it’s harmful to swallow Vitaball (it’s not). Each regular-sized gumball contains 4 grams of sugar and 100% of the recommended daily allowance of 11 vitamins.

A container of 36 Vitaballs runs about $8 online, and you can check the company’s website for retailers near you. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll try Vitaball, but maybe the novelty of the product will help me commit to a vitamin regimen. I wonder if kids can get out of trouble for chewing gum at school if they claim mom gave it to them as their vitamin?

• Vitaball website
• Buy Vitaball online at Amazon

candy, sweets, gum, gumball, gumballs, vitamins, Vitaball, kids