Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Wonka Puckerooms

Wonka PuckeroomsI’m really digging Wonka’s new look and commercials. They take advantage of candy’s inventiveness and imaginative ways that kids (and adults) look at it.

One of their new candies is Puckerooms Sour Gummy Candy. They’re sour gummies (unlike the Sluggles, which are sweet gummies) in mushroom shapes and three different flavors.

The new Wonka’s Edible Garden are made with natural ingredients, including fruit juice and no artificial colorings or flavorings. (But of course they’re gummis and are not vegetarian since they use gelatin ... and in this case cochineal color, too.)

Wonka Puckerooms

There are three flavors and three different shapes (though the shapes are applied to all the flavors):

Cherry - as you can see from the photo, I found a grape & cherry combo, but for the most part the cherry ones were single flavored. It’s a tart cherry with a black cherry darkness beneath but a lingering sour. It got my glands a’tinglin’.

Grape - it’s just so fun for me to have grape gummis, I have a hard time focusing on these for the review. The grape flavor is much like concord grape jam with Pixy Stix poured over it. (Come on, if you’d thought of it as a kid, you would have loved it!)

Lemon/Orange - I loved the look of these, the orange was always on the top, making the stem lemon. The flavors were a good blend of citrus zest and of course a sour punch that lasted beyond the grainy coating and permeated the soft gummi. The lemon and orange were distinct but blended well.

The sourness isn’t blisteringly strong, in fact, I found them barely more tart than the Sluggles, just more consistently tangy from start to finish.

I like the option of really potent gummis made without artificial flavors & colors, so these are real winners. I saw them at Target over the weekend for $1.59 for a 6.5 ounce bag, so it’s not like parents need to compromise here - the kids get a mainstream treat without going to a special store. (Of course that doesn’t mean adults can’t enjoy them.)

Wonka Sour Puckeroom Gummies (updated 2010)UPDATE 11/2/2010: It appears that many folks shared their phallic views with Nestle and they updated both the package and the shapes of the actual candy.

The package is mostly green instead of purple. The Wonka name is minimized and the name of the candy is more focused on Sour Puckerooms Gummies where it was originally just called Puckerooms with a descriptive logline of sour gummy candy below that. I do like the typography on the word Puckerooms better on the new version.

The new shapes are such a compromise from the earlier, well defined mushrooms that they’re mere shadows of the shapes they once were. There are really only two shapes, the pointier one is now gone. There are two slightly different rounded ones with wide round caps and wide bases and then the narrower stemmed one with a wide cap. On the package they look distinctive. In real life they’re

New Wonka Puckerooms (2010)

So, there you go. Wonka is receptive to your ideas.

Related Candies

  1. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
  2. New Flavors: Skittles Sour & Wonka Runts
  3. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies
  4. Wonka Tinglerz & Nestle Buncha Crunch
  5. Organic Zootons
  6. Super Sour Worms
  7. Organic Surf Sweets
Name: Puckerooms
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
Place Purchased: samples from All Candy Expo
Price: $1.59 retail
Size: 6.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 92
Categories: Gummi, Sour, Czech Republic, Nestle, All Natural

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:15 am Tracker Pixel for Entry    

Comments
  1. I appreciate you mentioning when candies have gelatin and other non-vegetarian items in them. My friends often forget that as a vegetarian I can’t eat gelatin, and they give me lovely candies that I have to give away or toss out!

    Thanks for your careful attention to warning vegetarians when you review candies!

    Comment by Carrie Carolin on 7/03/09 at 10:39 am #
  2. I liked them but didn’t love them…I was disappointed with the low level of sourness.  I thought the flavors were nice and the texture was really great, chewy and soft but still gummi.

    Comment by Amy on 7/03/09 at 4:18 pm #
  3. These actually look quite good and fun to eat. I wonder why I haven’t seen them yet?

    Comment by Sara Ebare on 9/08/09 at 5:01 pm #
  4. I wanna try these,they look so good but I can’t find them anywhere.
    Can’t even find the sluggles:( glad someone mentioned I can get em at target-that’s my next stop

    Comment by Cristin on 10/12/09 at 11:13 am #
  5. These are fab-u-lous! I’m hooked! i wish they were a bit more tart though.

    Comment by Jess on 10/25/09 at 1:04 pm #
  6. Thanks for the tip on this one. My girlfriend is a sour fiend and im putting together a sour candy collection for x-mas. However, I find it odd that no one’s commented on how all these puckerooms look DISTURBINGLY UNLIKE MUSHROOMS AND MORE LIKE DICKS?!

    Comment by Eric on 12/06/09 at 5:33 am #
  7. Cybele's avatar

    Eric - this is a family-safe blog and plenty of folks have commented in that fashion, though usually with much more coarse language and they had to be removed.

    Phallic likenesses are pretty common in candy and many foods.

    Comment by Cybele on 12/06/09 at 7:03 am #
  8. OMG!! These dont look anything like mushrooms! They are pervers and I dont think mushrooms was a good idea anyway…we dont need our kids picking them up and eating them thinking they are candy!! Really Wonka? you could have thought that one through a little better, I am shocked!...but yeah they tast good

    Comment by Kerry on 12/16/09 at 9:45 am #
  9. Cybele's avatar

    Kerry - Shocked? Really? Things that look like other things are perverse?

    Honestly, if anything should be shocked or worried it’s that they look like MUSHROOMS - there are more than 30 deadly mushroom species. Children should not be encouraged to pick and eat mushrooms.

    While we’re at it, no one has mentioned psychedelics. Why is that?

    Why does everyone immediately think of the crotch?

    Comment by Cybele on 12/16/09 at 9:51 am #
  10. I think they would work quite well on a gingerbread house.  And yes, they’re very tasty.

    Comment by Kristen on 12/22/09 at 1:02 pm #
  11. I hate to say it, but there is no way that this candy can be conceived as innocent. For starters, the theme is just plain suspicious. Mushrooms? Really? As a child, I had a large palette, but never did I wish my fruit flavored candies to be associated with mushrooms. There’s no logical connection there, neither for “fun” or otherwise. The coloration is just absurd. I encountered one particular shape that’s color was two-fold. The ahem.. “shaft” of the “mushroom” was a lighter color than the “head.” Then name is also suspicious. Puckroom? That sounds oddly similar another word of obscene qualities. Pac-man’s name was changed from Puck-man for that very same reason. People keep touting these as a “wonderful use of imagination.” Well, for the many people I’ve talked to, it doesn’t take much imagination at all to associate these with another, more mature theme at all. The shapes in particular could have definitely been touched up to portray a more cartoonish look. There is absolutely no way that someone along the production team did not notice this during their creation.

    Comment by Daniel on 12/24/09 at 6:16 am #
  12. Cybele's avatar

    Daniel - have you actually eaten them? Who are these many people you’ve discussed the shape of some Czech gummis with? And what’s actually wrong with things being shaped like flaccid other things? (And really, then my photo is upside down, isn’t it?)

    Comment by Cybele on 12/24/09 at 6:25 am #
  13. Ok for the people that have sch-long on the mind
    wtf
    that never came to mind when i got this candy
    ok yes mushrooms they make u trip
    but i doubt my kid is that much of a compete moron to confuse sour gummies with real life mushrooms coming out of cow crap
    ya feel me, sickos
    enjoi ur response from the one and only
    dial a pro hq

    Comment by Dial A Pro Hq on 12/30/09 at 3:31 am #
  14. Why are people having a weird reaction to mushroom shaped candy?

    I have eaten them and 1) liked them a lot! and 2) I think that it makes more sense to eat something shaped like a mushroom than some fruit snack shaped like a tiny Dora the Explorer or Elmo.

    Comment by Nycteris on 6/02/10 at 10:17 am #
  15. I saw these and immediately thought that they looked… suggestive, but when I read what they were supposed to be I could see that they were portraying mushrooms. Get y’alls heads outta the gutter (I say this as I’m watching 2 and a half men :D)

    Comment by Lauren Hill on 7/18/10 at 7:30 pm #
  16. I recently noticed that the bag and shapes of these candies have been changed to give a more of standard mushroom appearance.  I am sure they received plenty of complaints from twisted minded grownups that they looks like little penises.

    In fact when my 9 year old son saw these for the first time, he said “hey dad look!  Weiner candy!”

    Comment by Todd Jumper on 10/26/10 at 10:22 am #
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