Hi-Chew – Strong Strawberry

Some products try to do a glow up and use it as marketing to try and sell you a more expensive product. In this particular case they are trying to make the case that this product has more real ingredients, hence commands a real premium. I like to try new things regardless of whether it’s just marketing or not, just to see if it’s worth the hype or it really is just a fad.

Similar to the Strong Grape flavour I tried previously, this one is supposed to be loaded with five times the strawberry juice. Again, it’s mostly marketing because five times a small number can still be small. That being said, I’m curious how things change when using more actual fruit juice rather than just flavouring. It’s not a secret that strawberry seems to be a fairly easy flavour for Hi-Chew to do well, so I’m interested to see how things change when they use more natural fruit juice.

Amping up the fruit juice in the candy doesn’t seem to have much effect on the texture. That isn’t to say there isn’t any change – the piece is slightly less bouncy but still does the chewy candy justice. It’s almost like they have less gelatin or have a slightly different formula. Again, not a big deal but it is ever so slightly less bouncy in the chew so it’s more like a Starburst than a chewing gum in texture. The piece also ends up a little more sticky and not quite as clean of a finish as the normal pieces.

The flavour is surprisingly not that different from the normal pieces. It hits all the right notes of floral, slightly tart, mostly sweet but overall fruity, berry flavour that I’ve come to know and love from Hi-Chew. What I will say is I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing, that having them increase the fruit juice content five times results in what is essentially the same flavour, but slightly stronger. This is definitely one of those cases where all the extra effort only translates to a marginal increase in quality or enhancement. The argument could be made that it was already close to perfection to begin with, so anything that brings us closer isn’t that noticeable. Either way, not entirely worth it in my opinion.

Overall I think it’s an interesting experiment, but I don’t know if the stronger flavour is a good trade off for the slightly worse texture. That and the price of these is quite hefty, so I don’t see myself getting this more than once.