GUMMY BLOG 3: Sweet Smiles :)

Sometimes life can really surprise you. When I first started to do a blog rating and reviewing Gummy Bears I thought it would just be for fun and I would be the only one who actually read the thing! Now as I sit down to write my second installment I can see I was 100% correct! This isn’t one of those times life surprised me…not even a little bit!  So, where am I going with this? I have no idea but if it’s true that “You can never get enough of what you don`t need to make you happy” then this blog certainly won’t help, and it sure can’t hurt so you might as well read on for my review of “Sweet Smiles Gummi Bears.”

Sweet Smiles Gummi Bears, made in the good ol’ USA, are distributed by Dolgencorp, LLC in Goodlettsville TN. They are Fat Free...

and they contain Carnauba Wax which is essential in any decent Gummy Bears. If you purchase Gummies without Carnauba Wax in the ingredients or Beeswax you probably just wasted your money.

photo from Wikipedia

Carnauba, by the way,  is from Brazil and in its pure state, usually comes in the form of hard yellow-brown flakes (shown above). Carnauba puts a glossy finish on candy and food products. It’s the same stuff used in car wax, furniture wax, surfboard wax, cosmetics, shoe polish and the list goes on and on.  There I gave the health food crowd something to get all worked up about! Now you can tell everyone that not only are Gummies bad because of the sugar but also because you’re eating shoe polish! (Gimme a break!)

Considering I purchased these in a dollar store and there was virtually no graphics on the bag I really thought these were going to be the absolute bottom of the gummy barrel.  I was ready to really bash ‘em  on here (smush 'em?)  but I was actually in for a treat! Oh, there’s that occasional “surprise” I alluded to at the start of this blog!

These bears were really tasty!  I can’t say much for their texture though. They were a lot better than the  “Nice” gummies but they still felt a little too jelly-like.  Still, they had decent consistency and didn’t have that greasy feel you sometimes find in cheap gummy candy.

But WOW! These things are packed with flavor and its quality flavor! The Lemmon tastes like lemon! The cherry tastes like cherry! The pineapple REALLY tastes like pineapple! The snozzberries  taste like snozzberries!! (woops…forgive the Wonka reference! I got excited!) 

The sculpting on the bears is the typical tumorous looking brick of gelatin that we are all familiar with and which closely mimics the original Gummy Bear design and that's a good thing!

Other winning qualities are the pleasant, waxy, plastic feel to them and the fact that they are a little plumper than some other brand Gummy Bears. In an attempt to make these things cuter than they need to be though I think they made the bear faces look a little too piggish. A matter of fact (obscure references coming) their faces remind me a little of  Canadian cartoonist  Dave Sim’s character, Cerebus, which is an aardvark but doesn’t look  at all like an aardvark!  Now THIS guy looks like a proper aardvark!

Anyone remember him?  Sim’s aardvark looks more like a pig who looks more like these bears! Did you follow that!? Am I completely wrong? A little right? Check this out! Especially look at the eyes and the end of the snout

So, what more can I say? Did I leave anything out? These are good! They’re real good!

My final grade for Sweet Smiles is a solid B- They get the minus for the boring and unusually tall packaging. It's 9 inches top to bottom, I guess to make it look like you’re getting more than you really are. One inch of that bag is just crimped plastic on top for the store hangers! But hey, this is a minor peccadillo because they do this with everything these days from cereal to potato chips to socks and cameras to you name it!

I'd link you to the Sweet Smiles gummy candy web site but it seems like they are the only brand in the known universe without an Internet address! Weird! You can send 'em a fan letter though: Dolgencorp, LLC 100 Mission Ridge Goodlettsville, TN 37072. 

OK, I’ll be back next week or maybe sooner or maybe later with the next Gummy Bear review! Thanks for reading (I say to myself!)

GUMMY BLOG 2: Nice! Gummy Bears

Oh my gosh, I’m back and this week I’m reviewing “Nice!” Gummy Bears which are distributed by Walgreens Co.

The minimalist graphics on the package work well enough although the red, white, washed out green and faded yellow seem like they’d be more appropriate on a bag of cough drops or band aids. 

There is a really interesting and unintended subliminal warning here as well.  The picture shows a yellow Gummy Bear riding in a balloon! And what keeps a balloon like this afloat? Yep, hot air! And hot air is exactly what Walgreens is full of for claiming that these things are “Unbearably Awesome” (although I do give ‘em credit for a decent pun).

They aren’t awesome and, in fact, they don’t even taste that good. 

The bag is labeled “made with REAL FRUIT juice.” 

Personally I don’t care if my candy is healthy or not…I mean its candy for crying out loud! You are either relaxed enough to eat something just for the pure fun of it or you’re not but the Real Fruit juice (Apple Juice Concentrate) is a big “who cares” to me and it sure doesn’t  help in the  yummy department.

Quality Gummy Bears should have a smooth, dry, hard almost rubbery or plastic texture when you first put them in your mouth.  Nice! Gummys are soft and almost jelly-like.  That’s what they are, “Jelly Bears!”

It also seems as though there is too much flavoring in each bear to the point where they have become acidic little bombs—tiny, chemical tasting explosions that dare you not to wince and grab for a bottle of water.  I mean these things are potent!   The red taste like some mushy red chemical stuff.  The orange and clear bears taste like some mushy orange and clear chemical stuff.  The Yellow has a hint of lemon to it, if you keep it in your mouth long enough, that eventually rises to the surface through the chemical mushy stuff.  The green chemical mushy stuff  is actually the best out of the bunch and has pretty decent apple tartness to it! 

Do have something to drink though, as I indicated, because after 6 or 7 bears I started to get a nasty aftertaste in my mouth that was a bit like insecticide. With a little something to wet your whistle on hand though,  this is easily avoided.

Sounds great, huh?

Now here’s what “Nice!” got right! The actual bears themselves have the classic look of the original Gummy Bears with some nice attention to the bellies where fur has been indicated with a few wavy lines.

Other than that they look like lumpy bricks and that’s OK! That’s how these things are meant to be and there’s no need to mess with perfection. Sculpting can go too far.  I don’t like to feel like I’m eating little toys, you know what I mean? Anything can be overdone.

So where does that leave Walgreens “Nice!”  Gummy Bears?

They aren’t the worst but “nice” is too generous an appraisal. Maybe they could rename them “OK!” Gummy Bears? 

My final rating for these is a C+ only because the green ones weren’t so bad, I liked the pun on the package, and heck they were only 99¢ 

For some reason I’ll be back next week to report on yet another sampling of gummy delectables (and hopefully they’re much gooder!)

And you can find Nice! Gummies in you local Walgreens or on-line right  here.

GUMMY BLOG 1: Introduction

Who doesn’t love Gummy Bears? I mean, there might be someone out there just crazy enough not to appreciate them but I can assure you they are in the teeny tiny minority. Those little, gelatinous bites of confectionary bliss, those succulent morsels of bruin shaped manna bestowed upon us by the gods of candy, those tastily  transcendent  treats terrifically . . .

OK, OK, I know… you get the idea! To me they’re just the cat’s meow . . . and maybe the whole rest of that cat too! (whatever that means)

The famous Romantic poet James Russell Lowell even wrote in 1848,

“As the leaf upon the tree,

Fluttering, gleaming constantly,

Such a lightsome thing was she,

My gentle Bear or Gummy!”

Alright, I admit that might not be entirely accurate especially since Gummi Bears were invented by Hans Riegel in the 1920s. But it sounded good right? And that’s what this entire blog is about, “goodness”….Sweet goodness!!

But some Gummy Bears are gooder than others! Yes, that’s what I typed “gooder,” I can take liberties like that because it’s my blog, darn it!

So look, let’s get down to the gummy-nitty-bear-gritty of it,

For every brand of Gummy (Gummi, Gummie, whatever) Bears that I rate and review I will be examining the flavor, ingredients (peripherally), texture, sculpting (of the bears), and package design. If I can find anything else sort of interesting I may mention a brief word or two about the history of a particular Gummy as well. If I can’t find anything interesting I’ll probably fill the space waxing poetic about my favorite kazoo or discussing the weather or maybe complaining about a nagging pain in my left shoulder or how I once got into an argument with a tree! Who knows! It could be about anything!  I’m a little nutty like that!

So check back from time to time, OK? 

Next up will be my review of “Nice!” Gummy Bears from Walgreens. You won’t want to miss this!

Thanks for reading and I shall return!