Sugar Savvy

Ever since I tasted my first Haribo Gold bears, and was introduced Haribo Tangfastics (a sour mix), Haribo is on my list of go-to candies. A perfect texture in combination with sour and fruity flavors, it trumps most other sour gummies. Amongst the collection that I currently have are: Fruity Pasta, Sour S’ghetti and Fizzy Cola. Good news for vegans, the Fruity Pasta and Sour S’ghetti use wheat flour instead of gelatin.

According to Wikipedia, Haribo is the largest manufacturers of gummy and jelly sweets in the world.

Fruity Pasta’s three flavors are all artificially flavored: strawberry, pear and apple. The sour sugary coating isn’t too thick and provides a quick hit before getting to the rather dense gummy part. Strawberry and apple taste as artificial as one might expect. The pear is surprising with its somewhat true-to-life soapy and musty flavors, with particular similarity during the middle notes.

Sour S’ghetti repeats the strawberry and apple flavors, but has a nice pale blue plum. The sour powder is a little more intense on these little pieces, given the relative proportion to gummy. Despite the artificiality on the part of the other flavors, the plum manages to mimic some plummy elements quite closely. It seems that some of the more uncommon flavors are more similar to their real life counterparts.

The texture for the Fizzy Cola is a lot more tough and chewy, which is likely attributed to the addition of gelatin, rather than wheat flour. In addition to the sour flavor, it has the citrusy and slightly caramel hints of cola soda. I love to eat them, but their chewiness has a tendency to make my jaw quite tired when I eat too many.

I don’t know if I can give a fair evaluation, given my love affair with these gummies. There are probably other gummi camps out there, like Trolli. Which company do you think makes the best gummi candies?