Jelly Belly Fruit Snacks are smooth fruity jelly chews in six flavors and made with seven fruit juices.
The package is simple and appealing, focusing on the fruits and the fruit shapes of the candy inside. They’re entering a very crowded markeplace, there are dozens of fruit snacks already on the market, many with licensing tie ins with cartoon characters.
They come in: Berry, Cherry, Orange, Lemon, Strawberry and Apple. Each flavor is a different color and shaped for the fruit it’s emulating.
(Sorry about the photo, I’m missing the apple one from that array - it looks strikingly like the strawberry, just no little seed bumps.)
Overall the texture is closer to gum drops (like Dots) than jelly beans or gummis. It’s an easy and smooth chew, but still a little sticky.
Cherry - is quite mild, a light woodsy black cherry with a tartness to it, but nothing terribly overwhelming.
Lemon - is vivid - a good blend of tangy and zesty.
Strawberry - is floral and a little bit on the fruit punch side of things. It’s mostly jammy sweet without much sourness.
Orange - is a bit ordinary but hard to be disappointed with a decent mix of juicy and zesty.
Berry - was hard to find in my mixes that I got. Two of the single serve bags that I opened didn’t have them at all. It’s a good raspberry flavor, but a little on the non-descript side.
Apple - is fresh and authentic, a lot like apple cider and nothing like “green apple.”
The caloric density on these is very low. As an all-sugar candy there’s no fat in it but also not much in the way of nutrition… no protein, no fiber. But there is a good dose of vitamin C and of course the fact that you can eat a handful for less than 100 calories can help a lot with a craving.
They’re pretty late to a crowded market where there are a lot of choices. The price point is a bit higher than I think many folks are willing to spend but it’s the kind of candy I might pick in a vending machine or if it came in theater boxes - the idea of a naturally flavored and colored version of Dots or Jujyfruits is probably appealing to parents as well.
Related Candies
- Lemonhead Fruit Snacks
- The Simpsons Fruit Snacks
- Dogs versus Cats (fruit snacks that is)
- Sunkist Fruit Gems
- Fruit Parfaits
Help a non-American reader out, please. Could someone tell me the story behind the idea of calling a certain type of fruit candy a snack instead of candy? I don’t see why all-sugar product shoud or could be presented as snack(food), to me it feels like candy.
I found these at Costco under a different name (“made by Jelly Belly”) and I bought a box of 80… it was gone far too fast. Hopefully I can find these in stores since Costco hasn’t carried them since!
Have you tried Welch’s Fruit Snacks? They are one of my favorite things in the world! I’m actually eating some now. So far I have yet to find a better gummy candy. I’d love to hear what you think of them Great blog by the way!
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