Hi-Chew – Soda Mix with Melon

Hi-Chew typically does what it does best, fruity flavours. They do have a little bit of fun with non-fruit flavours on occasion, but those are more of a novelty and aren’t what keep me coming back. They do some soda flavours quite well though, so I figured I would give this soda mix a fair shake. Pun intended.

This is off the back of the success of the first soda mix, which was ramune, cola and grape soda. This one is ramune, cola and melon soda. But that’s not the only change – while the original piece had tiny gummy bits inside, these have both the gummy pieces and small fizz candy pieces as well. It sounds interesting to say the least, though I’m not a big fan of those little fizzy tablet like candies. But well see how this goes.

This pouch has a total of 16 pieces – 6 melon soda, 6 cola and 4 ramune. Ramune is historically my least favourite, so I’m not broken up about this.

The ramune is basically the same as last time, with the addition of the little fizzy candy bits that give the piece a different texture. While the original was straight up taffy, this one is almost a little gritty, or granular from the fizzy candy bits. It’s interesting, but reminds me more of a gritty caramel than a Hi-Chew. The fizzing sensation is very weak, so not sure this paid off. The flavour is the typical slightly lemon, bubble gum like soda flavour. Not my favourite, but it’s very distinctly ramune which some people enjoy.

The cola one is decent as far as coke flavoured candies go. The weird thing here is the texture – unlike the ramune fizzy candy bits, this one is a bit firmer and more like those candy tablets. It’s hard to the chew and has the texture of those compressed sugar candies. It’s not the greatest compliment to the nice, smooth, bouncy chew of a Hi-Chew, so it’s slightly jarring and kind of gimmicky.

The melon flavour is more akin to the ramune, though this one reminds me more of the Umai-Chew flavours, with the candy bits on the inside giving it an added flavour and texture which is not bad. The melon flavour is more like an artificial melon soda rather than the fruit melon flavour – it’s a bit sweeter and less complex. There’s no earthiness and it’s just the rounded sweetness of melon along with a bit of the baseline soda flavour.

Maybe it’s my age, but I don’t enjoy the soda mix quite as much as I liked as a kid. The melon flavour is nice sure, but it doesn’t have the same staying power for me as the grape soda flavour. This mix is a nice novelty and maybe better for kids, but I don’t enjoy it quite enough to consider it a staple in the roster like the classic fruit flavours.