Haribo – Croco

One of my favourite gummies by Haribo is there sour crocodiles in the Tangfastics mix. Specifically the blackcurrant one. But it seems they don’t sell those as their own candy, so the non-sour version is probably the closest I’ll get to for now.

Apart from the obvious lack of sour, the other thing to note is that these are bigger, or rather, longer than the ones you find in Tangfastics.There appears to be five different flavours colours here – red, orange, yellow, green and blue.

The pink one tastes like strawberry, although truthfully I think non-descript sweet fruit flavour is more accurate. They say that we eat with our eyes, and in this case I tend to agree because I associate the colour with strawberry, but it’s nondescript enough it could realistically be any berry adjacent fruit, or even apple, and I wouldn’t be 100% sure.

The red one tastes like raspberry and is noticeably more fragrant and floral than the strawberry. It also has a somewhat vanilla quality to it that reminds me of a cream soda. This one is easier to pin down since the floral notes are sort of a hallmark of distinct raspberry flavoured goods.

Yellow is lemon and this one has a stronger flavour, with a noticeable citrus, tart lemon which doesn’t have too much sour to it thanks to the sugar. It tracks for typical Haribo lemon flavour, and reminds me of those antique flavours in a good way.

Green seems to be apple – truthfully this one is very mild compared to expectation as apple candies are usually very strong in taste. On the topic of honesty, this could easily be strawberry. Haribo historically assigns strawberry to green in many of their classic line up like the bears. This is sweet and nondescript enough that I could be confusing it for the other.

Blue tastes like distinctly passion fruit-like, but I’m not sure if that’s actually what it’s going for. Passion fruit has a very distinct floral flavour to it that’s unmistakable, so I would be shocked if it wasn’t. Passion fruit tends to have a very…passionate and powerful, floral flavour that is quite hard to mistaken.

As you can tell, I’m having a bit of trouble figure out these flavours. A large part of that is that the flavours are quite muted, but also the foamy part just tastes like some sort of fruity amalgamation of a bunch of flavours, and is throwing me off. Apart from the lemon, many of these aren’t distinct enough for me to really get a pulse on what they were trying to get at.

Th texture is sort of a mix between really firm, signature jaw exerciser Haribo gummy, and soft, chewy foam. You end up with something that has an interesting, varying firmness depending on which end you bite into first. If you are getting this, it’s mostly for the texture and not so much for the flavour, since half of them could be combined into a single piece and you wouldn’t know the difference.

I like these critters, I really do. But I also like a balance between flavour and texture, and while I do enjoy some of these flavours, they do err on the sweeter side to the point where I feel like the focus should be on just the texture. While the texture is good, it’s not good enough to carry what I perceive as a lack of flavour. All this to say, I think I’ll just relegate myself to picking through a bag of Tangfastics.