Haribo – Happy Grapes

Haribo is pretty entrenched as a big brand as far as the Western world goes, but it doesn’t feel to be nearly as strong in East Asia, at least as far as I can tell. Having said that it certainly hasn’t stopped them from getting a foothold in Asia, and this flavour feels like an easy slot into those markets.

There’s three flavours here, concord, kyoho and muscat. Truthfully I’m surprised they threw in kyoho since it is indeed Japanese, but I guess it has enough of a reputation that it’s crossed the pond so to speak.

Muscat is kind of mild, and the flavour is straight forward in that it’s basically just your typical white grape flavour. It’s got a sweet, rounded flavour without any tartness to it, and you can imagine why it makes for good ice wine. It’s not cloyingly sweet like an actual ice wine, and just sort of a classic sweet grape flavour. It’s not unlike what you might expect from a Japanese muscat flavour, though it’s missing on the slight floral notes and is more straightforward sweet.

The darkest one is the concord flavour and it has a bit of a deeper grape flavour than the muscat, and also slightly less sweet. It tastes closer to the western style of grape candy where it tastes like a hard candy to people who haven’t had an actual concord grape. It reminds me of my childhood and that’s generally a positive.

The reddish one is the kyoho and this one is somewhat similar to the concord but has more of a slightly floral, slightly tart flavour to it. It isn’t too different from concord but distinguishing enough that you would assume it’s a different flavour. That or you got some mutant or byproduct piece.

The texture of all these is the iconic Haribo filling puller – it’s hard, its chewy and it’s what we love. Admittedly it’s slightly less firm but I will assume that’s because I got these fresh. It could also be because these are sourced from Asia that the formula has been adjusted to be less firm and tooth breaking. It still firm enough to keep me chewing and I don’t mind the slightly softer texture.

Overall I think the flavours are quite nice and the execution is well done. As someone who loves grape flavoured things, this is an easy winner for me. If however you don’t enjoy grape flavoured things, or grape juice, this is not going to be something you enjoy. It’s good but not “convert me” good.