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Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Sugarpova: Sporty & Splashy
The logo on the front of each package is a pair of lips. The packaging and candy shapes have little to do with tennis, except for the gumballs. I’ve actually tried these gumballs before in a larger size, but only in the traditional yellow color. (See the original review here.) I ordered the candy online from an eBay sports equipment store, the bags are priced rather steep at $5.95 for only 5 ounces. That calculates to over $19 per pound, which is pretty absurd for sugar candy that’s not made from special ingredients like all natural flavorings, non-GMO corn syrup or organic sugar.
Sugarpova Sporty Mix Bubble Gum come in five color/flavor combinations: orange, pink, yellow, blue and green. The pieces are about .75 inches across (about half the diameter of the jawbreaker version I tried previously). They’re also available separately, in Pink and standard Tennis Yellow. I chose the mix so that I could try as many flavors as possible. The gumballs are made with sugar, no artificial sweeteners. One of the colorings is carmine, so they’re not appropriate for vegetarians. Yellow is lemon-lime and is rather bland for the most part but with an oddly strong zest note to it. There’s a grainy filling inside the ball, but that just seemed sweet to me. Orange is quite mild, it’s sweet with the only burst of real flavor coming from the sandy filling, in this case, it was tart.
Blue is raspberry and quite nice for a berry flavored gum. The floral notes are a bit perfumey, but it also has a lot longer lasting flavor than some of the others. Pink was difficult to discern completely, I felt it was a pink lemonade flavor, it was different from the lemon-lime, it was more like a standard lemonade drink mix, a little tangy and less zesty. Green was watermelon. I didn’t care for this at all, it had the requisite melon and cucumber notes, but was far too sweet overall. The chew was good, the sugar melts away pretty quickly and the chew is pretty soft and easy to blow bubbles. Eventually, though, after about twenty minutes of chewing, there really is nothing left of the flavor or sweetness and it becomes too stiff for chewing or bubbles.
There are three different styles of gummis in the package. One is the standard fruity gummi, one is what I’d call the yogurt style gummi, which is usually opaque and pastel, and the third is the foamy base gummi, which has a bit of marshmallow in it. The gummi octopus was fun because they were multicolored and each color was a different flavor. So they’re similar to gummi worms. Each piece had three flavors or so, something in a range of lemon, grape, strawberry, raspberry and cherry. It’s all soft with a good texture though the flavor was far more mild than I’m accustomed to with Haribo or Albanese.
The flat swirly fish are what I’d call the yogurt style. There’s a creamy component to the flavor. The pink version was like a strawberry cheesecake flavor. It was sweet and had a creamy note along with a tartness. The floral flavors of the berry were less jammy than some other clear gummis. The green version was similar, milder than a transparent version, with a vague green apple flavor. The foamy base gummis looked like sharks. This is a popular candy, a lot of different gummi companies make a version of these. This is a very flavorful version, soft and chewy, the marshmallow has a strong vanilla flavor and the blue shark top is strawberry. The other red and blue whale looking gummi was similar, except that the domed center had a softer goo inside - not a full syrup, just a softer jelly center. The sea turtles were about the best of the bunch, vanilla base and flavored gummi tops. The orange was like a creamsicle and blue was a nicely rendered raspberry. Fini is a nice, mid-range brand of sugar candy sold rarely in the United States under their own brand. You can find them in bulk bins, mostly as sour sanded, fruity licorice ropes and tape. But there’s nothing to merit the price of these though the packaging is decent enough. As far as Sugarpova goes, they’ve done a good job curating a specific set of candies and packaging them in a way that makes them appealing. But aside from the gumballs, there’s very little unique in the candy line otherwise. The gummis and gum are gluten free. For those people who are sensitive be careful to read the labels on all the packages, as some varieties do contain wheat and soy. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:09 pm
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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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Comment by
Grocery Gems on 9/03/13 at 2:45 pm #
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Comment by
Jason on 9/04/13 at 7:39 am #
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.I just today saw a whole range of Fini sweets in a local discount store. I’ve tried some of their sweets before on holiday in Portugal but had never seen then in the UK before today.
The ones I purchased are called Fini Tennis Gum Balls and the actual candies are identical to the Sugarpova Sporty Mix. So glad I bought them now after reading your review
These candies sound a lot like Sharapova’s tennis game. Looks great and lots of squeals but not much depth. At least the variety of flavors are more than the variety of her strokes.
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