Haribo – Orangina Pik

Do you ever see a product but not feel much incentive to try it, only to try a different product that was based on the original product that you felt no motivation to try? I certainly have. Orangina is one of those products. I would often see it at specialty stores and select restaurants, but I never felt much urge to grab a bottle. Part of it was price – where I am, they aren’t exactly cheap, and I don’t tend to purchase drinks or juices when I’m out and about anyways. The first time I had Orangina as a drink was actually after trying candies and gummies that were based on the flavour. Weird how life can come full circle huh?

Orangina is a delicious citrus drink that is a combination of orange, lemon mandarin and grapefruit to make for a very sweet and tasty citrus drink that has a sparkling sensation to it. It’s far more common in Europe, and my experience with it mostly comes from getting it from Italian specialty stores.

I haven’t had these in awhile, but these definitely look different from what I remember. Back in the day, they were much flatter, but wider. These look more rounded but also narrower, resembling the actual Orangina bottles more. To be fair, it was close to five years ago, so maybe they took in feedback from customers and adjusted things around?

The texture is not as soft as I remember. It’s definitely more in line with what you expect from the standard Haribo affair – tough, very firm chew. I tend to like that about Haribo, and I imagine most people who have a fierce loyalty to them also prefer firmer texture. That being said, these can tire your jaw out much quicker because of how much more effort it takes the jaw. I think these are a nice middle ground between their classic firm gummies and the super soft ones. These are more on the firm side but also not too soft, so you can still use it as jaw exercise – a jawxercise if you will. If typical Haribo is considered advanced level, these would be intermediate jawxercise.

Another change I noticed is the drop from three flavours down to two. There used to be grapefruit, orange and red orange flavours. Now it’s been trimmed down to just their standard orange flavour, and their red orange flavour. I guess they took the grapefruit flavour out of circulation. The classic orange flavour is equal parts citrus, sweet and zesty. While the main flavour is orange, it’s combined with other citrus fruits so that you can get notes of mandarin, grapefruit and perhaps a little bit of lemon too. The red orange flavour is similar except the orange flavour is more similar to a blood orange, where it has a darker, almost mature flavour, for lack of a better term. The taste like if you took an orange and mashed it into a grapefruit before consuming. While I do find it enjoyable, it feels like the classic orange flavour suits the gummy candy better.

Regardless of the changes they made, this isn’t a Skittles level change where they replaced lime with green apple in the standard mix. This is still a positive change and I like this Orangina mix as much as the old one, so I would highly recommend this, and would get these again myself.