Everyone knows a Life Saver – the sweet, minty or fruity hard candy with the candy-with-the-hole shape. I’m no Life Savers connoisseur, but I do enjoy them. I like being able to pop one in my mouth for ten minutes of flavor enjoyment. I’m a Life Savers sucker – not a muncher.

I recently tried a different type of Life Saver, one that you almost have to chew, one that is completely different from the Life Savers I grew up loving. These are Life Savers Gummies – the gummy worm version of this iconic American candy gone modern.

What can I say about gummy candy? It’s… gummy. Beyond that, I’ll refrain from giving my personal opinion of candy gumminess. You know if you like gummies or not. Your opinion is the only one that matters since I’m not coming over to eat candy with you. (Unless you’ll be sharing some See’s Chocolate.)

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I’m back for Part V of my jelly bean adventure. For some reason Brach’s calls their jelly beans “Classic Jelly Bird Eggs,” but to me they are jelly beans!

When I think of the jelly beans I ate as a kid, the Brach’s jelly beans are what I remember. In terms of flavor, these jelly beans are similar to the Necco jelly beans I reviewed a while back. If you’re looking for super sweet, chewy jelly beans, look no further. Don’t expect any tartness or realistic flavors – these jelly beans are all about the sugar. They’re artificially flavored, sugary goodness in all its glory.

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I’ve been jonesing for something gummi for a while now. But I found myself unwilling to satisfy my cravings with something I had already consumed. I wanted something familiar, but new.

Such a specific guideline for candy purchase can be difficult, but it didn’t take me long to spot a promising candidate in the candy aisle of my local H.E.B: Trolli Tropic-Os. I am familiar with all the various flavors of these ring-shaped candies, i.e., peach, apple, watermelon, etc… but I hadn’t ever tried this tropical variety.

The bag didn’t reveal which flavor the rings were, but there was an image of a toucan perching on some pineapple, strawberries, coconut, and bananas, so I assumed that the flavors in the bag were going to be matches for those fruits.

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As a kid, whenever my friends and I had a loose tooth that we wanted to fall out so we could get a visit from the tooth fairy, we would eat Now and Laters. Those hard now, but soft later taffy squares were just the perfect thing to stick to your tooth and yank it right out when you chewed.

Maybe it’s because my youngest memories of these candies involved blood pouring from a crevice in mouth, but I never ate them too frequently. I didn’t mind them, but the standard three-flavor pack so bored me with the same regimen over and over that I found myself only consuming them once a year or so.

Every now and then, whenever I pop into a gas station, I can find individual packets of flavors not included in the larger size. I have always wondered about these flavors. Could the reason why these flavors never found themselves in the regular Now and Later lineup be that they’re just not very good? Amongst an assortment of possible candidates, I chose pineapple as the flavor best to conduct my research with.

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I think I have been craving tropical-flavored sweets all this week simply because graduate school applications are starting to be due; whenever I am stressed, I usually return to the sorts of candy that bring me back to a state of tranquility. And if you can’t go to Hawaii to relax, you can at least enjoy its flavors.

Tropical LifeSavers have been a staple of my tropical obsession since I was in elementary school. I never cared much for the other flavors of Lifesavers, but these were different. They sported an assortment of flavors that were nuanced for the candy world at age six because for the most part they avoided the clichéd strawberry, cherry, etc….

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