Hi-Chew – Cola and Lemon
This flavour looked mysterious for some reason, so I figured I’d try it. Damn me and my curiosity! *shakes fist furiously*
Another bag with 18 pieces. Looks like it’s four of each with orange getting the extra two. Apparently this is a sort of, mystery bag. What that means is there are four flavours, but it’s not clear which wrapper is which until I start chewing. There’s supposed to be four flavours – two lemon and two colas.
Both of these two flavours come in two varieties, an “extreme” sour version, and a normal version. Based on the packaging on the front, it would seem there there’s the normal lemon piece, a cola piece with lemon, a cola piece with four lemons, and a lemon piece with 6 lemons. I’m going to assume the number of lemons denotes sourness. I’ve mentioned before I ain’t great with sour, so this will be interesting.
Let’s start in no particular order, with the orange. As I unwrap this, I realize they may not be as mysterious as I originally thought, as I could see the number 6 at the bottom underside of the wrapper, leading me to believe this is the extreme sour lemon flavour. Smell doesn’t betray it’s real nature, so I gotta go in deep. I’m hoping this is indeed t he most sour piece, because I’m not sure I could handle much more. At no point does this piece let up on the sourness and transition to sweetness. It’s like you took a lemon and shoved it into a taffy form. This thing has so much citric acid in it that my mouth is puckering a little as I chew, and I can feel my scalp sweat a little. This is pretty intense on the sourness, so they aren’t joking about it being extreme. If I enjoyed sourness, I would like these much more.
Let’s move on to the red wrapper. This one has a 4 on the bottom, so I can only surmise it’s the extreme sour cola. This is definitely the sour cola, as it also makes me pucker and my eyes twitch a bit. The cola flavour, while not sweet helps to cut a bit of the sourness, though I guess it’s also because this is just four lemons instead of six. Still very sour but tastier, and more bearable as a whole. Hopefully the other pieces will be sweeter, because my mouth is kinda tired from all the sour.
The yellow wrapper is probably lemon. Oh look at that, it’s lemon! It smells…the same. That is to say, sour. Thankfully, this piece is quite sweet. I can’t tell if it’s because if been through the real sour pieces, but this one is very lemony with almost no tart or zest. It’s just sweet. I wonder how things would be different if I had this as the first piece and then the sour ones. Either way, this is nice and pleasant lemon flavour, with almost no tartness or sour to ruin my experience. It kind of reminds me of those sweet lemon lozenges for sore throats.
This leaves us with just the pink wrapper, which should be the regular cola. This one is what you want in a good cola candy, it has a strong cola like flavour, with only a slight, almost unnoticeable tartness from the lemon flavour. This reminds me of the hard candy that came in the red and silver wrapper that was cola flavoured, except this is chewy. It really is hard to go wrong with that classic cola flavour. Especially when it comes in that signature Hi-Chew texture.
Not much new I can say about the texture, other than it being nice cross between taffy and chewing gum – taking the best of both worlds. Well ok, maybe not all of the best. If they could somehow make a Hi-Chew that lasted in the mouth for at least a minute, I would pay a hefty, hefty premium for that. But alas, a man can only dream. Until then though, this is the ideal texture I want in a chewy candy.
If I had to rank these:
- Cola
- Lemon
- Extreme Cola
- Extreme Lemon
Overall, I enjoyed the flavours, except the really sour ones. Kind of odd that my favourite to least favourite was in opposite order in which I tried them. Go figure. That’s cause I have enough sour in my life and I don’t need any more doses of it, but if you’re looking to get more citric acid in your life, these are good. I would still get it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m far more likely to pawn off the 6 lemon pieces than to eat them myself. No point wasting it.
