Yogurt-covered dried fruits have been around forever, and with the recent interest in probiotics, it looks like yogurt-flavored candies are making a comeback. Unfortunately, the dirty little secret is that modern science can’t yet convert pure, wholesome yogurt into a form that can be used to coat things. What you’re really getting with 99% of yogurt-flavored candies is white mockolate with a touch of yogurt powder for flavor – and no matter how many live bacteria you cram in there, there’s no getting around the fact that the stuff is more likely to kill you than make you live longer.

(Anyone else out there remember the days when people actually AVOIDED food that might contain live bacteria instead of considering it a selling feature? Crazy, weren’t we? *bites into undercooked chicken breast*)

Anyway, here’s a new product from a company known for making healthy things like grape juice – Welch’s Fruit and Yogurt Snacks. (This All Candy Expo sample is cherry, but I believe they had other flavors on offer as well.) Welch’s original fruit snacks had a steady presence in my school lunch bags in days gone by – they had a relatively high concentration of fruit and were tasty enough, if I recall correctly.

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Perhaps it’s the attitude of people; relaxed, fun-loving and carefree. It could also be the weather; warm sun, long days, blooming flora, etc. More than likely it’s a combination of both. Whatever the cause, something about summer really gets me in the mood for fruity candy. Soft, hard, sticky, ooey, gooey, gummi – fruit flavored sweets tend to be a personal favorite during the long warm days.

This summer, I’ve been particularly interested in gummi fruit candy. Living in Munich, Germany fruit is always on my mind as I walk by the open-air fruit stands scattered abundantly throughout the city. Of course, I pass on the natural fruit – equally great in flavor and nutrition – and I head straight (bee line, really) for sugar… processed.

One candy I’ve become quite fond of is Storck’s Nimm2 Lach Gummi, a fruit flavored gummi treat with various gummi flavors to choose from – all nice for a warm summer sugar rush. Available for consumption are Joghurt (Yogurt), Frucht & Joghurt (Fruit & Yogurt), Frucht (Fruit), and Sauer (Sour).

Nimm2 Lach Gummi is a well known candy producer headquartered in Berlin. A product of August Storck KG, Nimm2 has been producing fruit flavored candy since 1962.

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When it comes to candy packaging, I am a shallow, shallow person – particularly around mint-type candies. If it comes in an awesome tin, I am all over it, to the point where I have a pretty impressive collection of mint tins accumulating in my desk drawer at work. I am never in my entire life going to have enough tiny widgets and gewgaws to fill all those tins – and yet, again and again I find myself buying candy of questionable quality because it came in awesome and potentially reusable packaging.

Like the other day, when I was skimming the shelves at London Drugs looking for discounted Easter candy… and something else caught my eye: a rack of Yogen Früz Smoothies tins. The clean, modern design of the tin, its colors just evoking the blue and pink of the Yogen Früz logo… its use of the ü, which doubles as a happy face, as a design element… its paltry price of $1.79. Half-price chocolate bunnies aside, I knew I had to have one… quite possibly in every flavor they came in. I managed to settle for just Strawberry Banana.

Once I got home, the doubts started to set in. I enjoy a good frozen yogurt, but yogurt-flavored hard candy? It’s not like there isn’t decent yogurt-flavored candy in the world, but in my experience, all of it is soft. This product appears to be YF’s attempt to join Baskin Robbins and Cold Stone Creamery in the frozen-treats-with-spin-off-candies department. (Can I call them YF? Those umlauts are a bear to insert.) But while those other candies mimic the decadence of a full-fat ice cream cone, YF is going for the same market as its healthy, yet indulgent frozen treats with fruit and yogurt flavors, and even a healthy-sounding title of “Smoothies.”

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As a very early riser, I do most of my writing, candy reviewing included, at the crack of dawn. While I’m not averse to a little candy first thing in the morning, it’s sometimes a nice change to be reviewing a candy that actually tastes like breakfast.

These Fruits & Yogourt gummies are a new addition to Dare’s popular Realfruit Gummies brand – gummies with natural fruit flavors and colors. We’ve previously reviewed them in fruit-snack form as part of our Back-to-School Fruit-Snack Roundup. As far as candy goes, they’re about as guilt-free of a choice as you can get – and pretty darn tasty too, since they actually contain juice and puree from the fruits they’re flavored like, not just a lot of nutrition-light “filler” juices like apple and pear.

So the originals are pretty tasty, but I’m usually wary of candies with “yogurt” in their name. Usually, it’s nothing more than an attempt to make a product look healthier than something coated in chocolate, when said “yogurt coating” is actually just an unholy amalgamation of hydrogenated oil and yogurt flavor – so it’s not only nutritionally equivalent to chocolate, it’s nutritionally equivalent to very BAD chocolate, without even the scant health benefits of the real thing.

That’s not the case here, though – the ingredients list “yogurt powder,” which is made up of modified milk ingredients and bacterial culture – nothing wrong with that, especially since they’re also fat-free. From the moment you open the bag, they really do smell like fruit-flavored yogurt.

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My dad introduced me to the majority of candies I have ever tried. One of his favorites which still exists today is Dots. First established in 1890 by Mason, they were all black licorice-flavored as Crows. In 1945, the original fruit-flavored Dots – which boast the title of most popular gumdrop in the world – debuted in small yellow boxes found in Tootsie’s Fun Size mix. My dad had me sample both of these versions and I didn’t care for either, not being a fan of black licorice and finding the fruit-flavored too sticky and stale.

When I was a teenager, Tropical Dots debuted, which I bought not so much because I thought they would be any good, but rather because it was like seeing the first two installments of a bad horror film; you feel obligated to watch the next one so you’ll be able to claim to have seen them all. To my surprise, I actually loved the tropical version and it has since become a staple candy in my cabinets.

All these years later, I was shopping in a Walgreens in Los Angeles and a purple, movie-sized box of Yogurt Dots tempted me from the checkout line, and for only a dollar too. Having reasoned that Dots have progressively improved with each new version (black licorice = yuck, fruit = eh, tropical = yum), I was excited to taste the newest spinoff.

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