Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Mike and Ike Jolly Joes

Purple is the best color ever. It’s the best of both worlds - half blue and half red, like a melting pot of America. When I was a teenager and on the swim team I had two sets of sweats - both were purple. I loved purple and often wore it head to toe (with purple Robin Hood boots). My attraction to grape candies is based largely on this affinity for the color and possibly influenced my love of grapefruit even though it has no grape in it and isn’t purple.

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I had a good experience with the Mike and Ike Tangy Twisters and was hoping with something at least equal to that, after all, Jolly Joes have been around a lot longer, so you’d think they’d have something going for them.

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They’re very dark, such a dark purple I’d call it eggplant. They smell fake-grapey, with a slight odor of Bic pen ink. When you first place it on the tongue, there’s a slight tangy tingle, but that soon goes away and there’s very little flavor. They’re soft and chewy like a jelly bean, but with very little going on. At the end the flavor is more like cotton candy than grape. Not really very jolly at all.

Special note: this package has both a manufactured date and expiration date ... all in plain English. Hooray for clarity! However, the back of the package was also printed in Hebrew (I think it’s Hebrew, it’s going right to left). I have no idea what market these were intended for, that’s what you get at the 99 Cent Only Store!

Name: Mike and Ike Jolly Joes
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Just Born
Place Purchased: 99 Cent Only Store
Price: $.25
Size: 2.12 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Jelly, United States, Just Born, Kosher

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:13 am Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. Is it just me, or do they look like rat turds?

    Comment by fightin' mad mary on 10/11/06 at 10:16 am #
  2. What doesn’t look like a rat turd these days? JellyBelly has come out with a politically correct jelly bean now for the overly active out there: the Sport Bean. This is essentially just a jelly bean with more sugar and some caffeine thrown in for that extra “runners’ high” I’ve been searching for without success for 26 years. Still, the little turds are addictive…
    Love your work, btw.
    Please say hi to Amy from an old h.s. acquaintance…Rebel

    Comment by StalinKoba on 10/11/06 at 2:31 pm #
  3. Cybele! I don’t know if you saw this already or not:

    http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_sp/episode/0,1976,FOOD_9994_46337,00.html

    It looks like Food Network will finally be airing the Candy Convention filming you saw! Hurray!

    Comment by Sera on 10/11/06 at 3:56 pm #
  4. Hey I’ve received one packet of this candy in assorted flavours all the way from Maryland to Singapore :D

    Comment by shionge_ on 10/11/06 at 10:05 pm #
  5. When Just Born went from having separate names to having all their candies be named flavor variations of Mike & Ike (with the exception of Hot Tamales—that must have been too powerful a brand to mess with), they reformulated the Jolly Joes.  They used to be much more of a grape flavor. It was always an artificial grape flavor, but it was better than it is now.  And this is surprising, as Just Born’s flavors are usually pretty good.  They did the same thing with Rooty Tootys—they had a great, strong Root Beer flavor, but when they brought them back as a limited edition flavor, they made them Root Beer Float, added a vanilla cream element and toned down the Root Beer flavor.

    Comment by Jim Kosmicki on 10/12/06 at 3:20 am #
  6. I just love fake grape candies!  If someone could come out with something that tasted like the first two minutes of chewing Bubblicious grape bubblegum, I would be so happy.  Thanks for warning me off of these.

    Comment by Julilla on 10/12/06 at 8:42 am #
  7. Cybele's avatar

    Jim - I remember those lame Root Beer Float (which can still be found at the 99 Cent Store in my neighborhood ... heaven knows how old those are!)

    Julilla - I’ve been on a grape Tootsie pop kick lately, so I’m down with the fake grape.

    shionge - oh, I hope they were the Tangy Twisters! Those were very sassy!

    FMM - aw, they’re too big for rat turds.

    StalinKoba - there’s caffeine in Sport Beans? Yee!

    Sera - I’ve got it programed to record on Monday! Whee!

    Comment by Cybele on 10/13/06 at 6:42 am #
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