I grew up spending ten cents a pop on Jolly Rancher candies at my small town news stand. Those hard little rectangles (especially the watermelon flavor) were a favorite among me and my elementary school crowd. I still love a good Jolly Rancher today. When I saw these Jolly Rancher Fruit Chews at the Five Below store near me, I thought I’d give them a shot.
In the last installment of our Spring Jelly Bean Hunt, we looked at Necco’s entry in the field. Today, we’ll give the Jolly Rancher brand a shot and see how they measure up.
I love Jolly Ranchers. I had a good time eating Jolly Rancher lollipops. So I felt downright gleeful when I saw the Jolly Rancher Jelly Beans waiting patiently for me to buy them at the store.
As soon as I opened the bag, I knew I was in for a treat. This incredible fruity, sweet, candy smell leapt out of the bag enticing me to dive right in and get my jollies.
Just a general note here on how the Jolly jelly beans work: These guys don’t have a sugary outer shell to contend with. They all start out really sweet, and then get tarter as you chew them. I found that it was much better to eat at least two jelly beans at a time, rather than eating them singly.
I bought a bag of Jolly Rancher Screaming Sours, or at least I think I did. While organizing my closet, yet another task/excuse to put off completing my graduate school applications, I stumbled across the candy.
I know I didn’t buy them in Texas, so they must have somehow sneaked their way with me from Los Angeles, making them at least a year old. Rather than treat this as an ew… old candy moment, I figured all the preservatives in a gummi candy must still make them edible. You never know – this could be like finding a twenty-dollar bill in an old pair of jeans.
Being a Jolly Rancher fan, I immediately gravitated to the Jolly Rancher Creepy Pops. Plus, I love lollipops so I couldn’t wait to try these.
The bag has four flavors: wacky watermelon, spooky blue raspberry, ghastly grape, and eerie apple. Each pop is individually wrapped but you can tell what flavor you’ll be getting because you can see the color through the wrapper.
The following guest review was written by a reader named Meredith. Thanks, Meredith!
These Jolly Ranchers are something new altogether. First of all, awesome name – I just know it’s gonna be a party. And then, they’re opaque instead of clear like regular Jolly Ranchers, and they’re way less sticky, and the inside is hollow, filled with a powder of a different flavor from the exterior. They come in four flavors – mangolemin (mango candy and lemon powder), chorange (cherry candy and orange powder), raspilime (blue razzberry candy and lime powder) and strawapple (strawberry candy and sour apple powder). Consider these the Jolly Rancher version of Zotz.
The candy looks solid but as soon as you put it in your mouth, the ends collapse and the second flavor emerges. The powder has an ingredient I’ve learned is called erythritol – it’s a sugar alcohol and so it has a cooling effect inside your mouth. It’s weird but a nice contrast to the hard candy.
Mangolemin – The mango flavor is overpowering, but as soon as the lemon powder comes out, it mixes with the mango and becomes way less strong and more ambiguous – kind of a citrus fruit punch. This is definitely my least favorite upon first putting it into my mouth, but as soon as the second flavor comes out, it gets a lot better. Just wait a few seconds past the icky mango… it will be worth it.
Chorange – The initial cherry flavor is very strong, almost like a candied cherry. As soon as the orange powder comes out, the flavors mix and the cherry takes on a slightly tangy, almost sour taste. You can barely taste the orange flavor, but once it’s mixed with the cherry it is a lot less intense. It again takes on a kind of a cherry punch flavor, and finishes out being much milder than it started.
Raspilime – The blue razzberry has almost no taste at all – the lime powder comes out and immediately overwhelms the blue razzberry… but that’s not a bad thing. The combination of the two ends up tasting like a Lime Rickey. It has a very slight tartness – much like eating a lime with sugar sprinkled on it – and by the end of the candy you can pretty much only taste the blue razzberry. And it’s very subtle – though you do end up with a blue tongue, so not so subtle there.
Strawapple - This is definitely the best one by far. The initial strawberry taste is really delicious – kind of like a Blow Pop (which is the Blow Pop flavor people always steal from me). As the sour apple powder comes out, it gives a slightly sour apple taste in the back of your tongue, but more than anything it now tastes like a tart strawberry. It’s really good – the strawberry is not overly sweet, just nice and subtle, and the sour apple isn’t too sour. And once the sour apple is gone the strawberry taste is the one that emerges victorious.
These are all really interesting – it’s almost like getting to eat eight different candies – the four initial flavors, and the four flavors that are formed after the powder emerges. The only one that leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste is the mango. The strawberry is the best at the end. The textures of the candies change several times, due to the emergence of the powder and the cooling of the tongue and the candy being hollow. It’s not often that eating a piece of candy is interesting all the way through the experience. The flavors of these candies are constantly changing, which created a whole new (awesome) candy eating experience for me.
P.S. It’s funny to give these to somebody without telling them there’s a second flavor inside. I gave one to my co-worker, who was lying on the couch in my office, and all of a sudden she sat up and gasped like something had bitten her. She HAD been bitten… by a Double Blast.
Buy Jolly Racher Double Blasts online:
- at Amazon.com
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