Jelly Belly

I normally review only chocolate on Sundays, but I wanted to expand my horizons a bit this week, and move on to regular candy.  You know, flavored sugar.

I don't normally go out and purchase candy, but I gladly eat it.  And luckily for me, my mother likes to throw this sort of thing into gift boxes and Christmas stockings, so I get plenty.

I know it is just flavored sugar, but I do love things like jelly beans, gummy candy, and sour straws.  My multivitamins are the gummy kind, and I look forward to vitamin time every day :)  So it shouldn't be a surprise that I have strong opinions about the quality of my flavored sugar!

Jelly Belly is probably the most popular jellybean manufacturer in the US.  They make 50 flavors, ranging from the standard ones, to sour ones, to the dreadful buttered popcorn.  If you've ever had Jelly Belly, you know what I'm talking about.  It is the flavor that ensures that you never eat a bag of these in a dark room, or absent-mindedly just dip your hand in.  Shutter.

The rest range from nicely flavored to kinda boring.  I'll eat them, but I don't love them.  The size is just too small for my taste, I want more to bite into. They also make me grumpy with their flavor distribution in a bag.  If a bag has say 10 flavors, and 50 beans, I don't necessarily expect a perfect uniform distribution of 5 of each, but having 25 buttered popcorn and only 1 raspberry is just not right! (ok, maybe I exaggerated the % of buttered popcorn just a bit ... ]

• Berry Blue: Sweet, sorta that fake blue raspberry flavor I remember from slush puppies growing up, not like a real fruit, but not bad.
• Blueberry: Ok, not as flavorful as I recall [ Gross actually ] [ Not much flavor at all, not sweet, not tart, not fruity, just there. ]
• Bubble Gum: GROSS. [ Sweet, not a ton of flavor, the tutti frutti were much more bubble gum flavored to me. ]
• Buttered Popcorn: Probably their most famous flavor, as it is totally disgusting.  But damn, it sure does taste like buttered popcorn!  My least favorite flavor, always.
• Cappuccino: yup, super coffee flavor
• Cherry: Very sweet
• Chocolate Pudding: Ok, wow.  Yes, that tastes like chocolate pudding.  Well, like chocolate pudding from a plastic container.  Do not like, at all.
• Coconut: Decent coconut flavor [ Decent coconut flavor, reminds me of sunscreen though ... ]
• Cotton Candy: Pretty sweet, ok. [ Mostly just sweet, no real distinguishable flavor. ] [ No strong flavor, had a hard time figuing out what flavor this was. ]
• Dark Chocolate Covered Raspberry Beans: low quality dark chocolate around the jelly beans.  Sorta like a choco gummy, except not tasty.  Would not get again.
• Dr Pepper: I'm not really not familiar with dr pepper but I think these were similar
• Green Apple: Mostly just sweet, with a tiny bit of apple juice flavor in the finish.  Not bad, but not good.
• Juicy Pear: awful, horrible, horrible flavor, not pear like at all
• Lemon: very fake tasting
• Lemon Lime: This tastes exactly like Sprite! Very sweet.  A bit tangy.  Not bad.
• Licorice: not bad!  tastes like licorice!
• Orange: decent orange flavor.
• Orange Sherbet: This did taste like sherbet.  It had a creaminess to it.  But not a ton of orange flavor.
• Peach: NOMS [ NOMS] [ Not liking this these days ... ] [ Sweet, fake peach tasting, not that great. ]
• Raspberry: Nice berry flavor, not too sweet.  I liked this one.  Unfortunately, my giant bag has only one!!! of these. 
• Red Apple: About the same as the green apple.  Sorta tasted liked apple juice, not a real apple.  Meh.
• Root Beer: yup, tastes like root beer.
• Strawberry Cheesecake: Don’t really get the strawberry cheesecake flavor.
• Strawberry Jam: Pretty tasty.  Decent jammy flavor.
• Sour Apple: Nice sourness!  And sweet.  Pretty good.  Could have been even more sour, but one of the better flavors.
• Sour Cherry: My bag was supposed to have some of these in it, but I never found any.  Perhaps I couldn't distinguish from the Very Cherry?
• Sunkist Lemon: Kinda tangy lemon flavor.  Kinda unremarkable.
• Toasted Marshmallow: yup, tastes like a sweet marshmallow. [ Wow, these really taste remarkably like a marshmallow! ] [ Definitely a marshmallow.  Good flavor, but I'd prefer to just eat a marshmallow ]
• Top Banana: yup, banana
• Tutti-Fruiti: so fake, like bubble gum. [ There is another flavor called bubble gum, but this tasted like bubble gum to me.  Didn't really like. ]
• Very Cherry: These taste like cold medicine.  Well, obviously, the cherry flavored kind.  Do not like at all.