JELLY BELLY BLUES

This is not a commercial for jelly beans; this is a blog about excess. Here’s the 49 flavors in question in alphabetical order (feel free to skip to the end): Baby Blue, Blueberry, Bubble Gum, Buttered Popcorn, Cafe Latte, Cantaloupe, Cappuccino, Caramel Apple, Caramel Corn, Chocolate Pudding, Cinnamon, Coconut, Cotton Candy, A&W Cream Soda, Crushed Pineapple, Dr. Pepper, French Vanilla, Grape Jelly, Green Apple, Island Punch, Juicy Pear, Kiwi, Lemon, Lemon Drop, Lemon Lime, Licorice, Mango, Margarita, Orange Juice, Orange Sherbet, Peach, Peanut Butter, Pina Colada, Pink Grapefruit, Plum, Raspberry, Red Apple, A&W Root Beer, Sizzling Cinnamon, Strawberry Cheesecake, Strawberry Daiquiri, Strawberry Jam, Tangerine, Toasted Marshmallow, Top Banana, Tutti-frutti, Watermelon, Wild Blackberry.

These are the flavors of the “gourmet” jelly beans produced by the Jelly Belly Candy Company.

Courtesy of a misguided Valentine’s Day present, I have tried them all individually and some of them mixed and matched. Don’t get me wrong, I love jelly beans and I think the Jelly Belly jelly beans are the best jelly beans in the jelly bean business. Most of the above flavors, however, engender an urgent need to gag. Remember the special candy in the Harry Potter books/movies that can surprise the taster with flavors like barf and hog warts? Jelly Belly seems to have come up with the American version of this same sort of thing. You think you like buttered popcorn; I mean the stuff you get at the movies or in those lovely Orville Redenbacher’s microwavable packages? Well, you can forget that because the jelly bean version is disgusting…it really is. Bubble gum flavor sucks. The root beer sucks, mango sucks…and so does a very high percentage of this list. So what’s up with that?

Because they are labeled “gourmet” and thus presumably aimed at the “adult” market, these guys and girls can foist off basically unpalatable candy at premium prices? Not only do they taste bad but some of them even look weird (presuming weird equals bad) with unidentifiable flecks of clashing colors. At least the visual shouldn’t offend, don’t you think?

Also, because of the huge variety of flavors the list of ingredients on the label is mind-boggling. And who knows what the inadvertent mixing of this stuff can do to your general health? Can’t be good.

Anyway, in the future I’ll stick to the basic Jelly Belly’s and forego the “surprise” flavors, so keep that in mind in case you are moved, next February, to favor me with the new “baked potato” or “tarpaper surprise” flavors. I’m not kiddin’.