Starburst – Original Jelly Beans
I’m excited to review these, not because I haven’t had these, but because I have had them but not since I was in middle school. Back when I was a kid and still addicted to sugary desserts that masquerade as breakfast cereal, I always got excited about the items that they included inside the box of cereal. Sometimes it determined whether I purchased it or not, and sometimes I would just want what was in the cereal and not the cereal itself. Oh to be young again. The reason I bring this up is because one of the “freebies” that came in a cereal box that I remember fondly was the Starburst Jelly Beans.
At the time Starburst was already an established brand of chewy candy without much competition. They decided they wanted to branch out into other candies and jelly beans was something they considered trying. The interesting thing about this was that they never formally sold jelly beans in any of the grocery stores I frequented, so I never saw them for sale. The only time I saw them was inside a French Toast Crunch cereal box. The first time I bought the cereal and the jelly beans were just a bonus. The second time however, I enjoyed the jelly beans so much I decided to get the cereal just to get another standard sized pouch of jelly beans. Since then I’ve only had these twice before in my lifetime, so this is kind of a big moment for me. Granted, they have been selling decently well in our Southern cousins since then, but I still have not seen it sold in standard stores in the Frigid North in my area of the woods.
Original in this case denotes the original mix. This becomes important only if you view it from the context that they have multiple flavour assortments like tropical varieties and the such. This variety includes cherry, orange, strawberry, lemon, green apple and grape. If I think about the original Starburst variety, it didn’t include green apple or grape. I guess for jelly beans they wanted to have more colour so they threw those in, since most mixes have some sort of grape or purple flavour.
These smell like a typical bag of Starburst candies. And jelly beans I guess. The flavours are not that different from what I remember, surprisingly. For the most part it’s fairly generic stuff but not in a bad way.
Green apple is well…green apple. It’s got that sweet apple taste with a slight hint of tartness. The flavour isn’t super strong or in your face so that’s a plus. It is a bit of the sweet side, but I don’t mind it in this format. The strawberry tastes a lot like a Starburst chew, not so much artificial strawberry. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve had a Starburst candy, but if you like the strawberry pieces, you’ll love this. The fact that they made FaveReds is a testament to it’s popularity. Cherry is basically like a Starburst piece as well, it’s artificial yes, but in my favourite way. It has a very strong cherry taste to it and there’s no question as to what the flavour is. Lemon is got a fairly straight forward tart and sweet flavour to it, nothing out of the ordinary from normal generic lemon flavour. A similar thing with the grape, it’s not bad but it’s basically the same flavour you get from hard candies and lollipops. Thinking about it now, all these flavours remind me of lollipops. Do Starburst lollipops exist? I feel like they would make good lollipop flavours.
In terms of texture, these are what you would expect from a standard jelly bean. While not as firm or grainy as Jelly Belly and cheap generic brands respectively, these tend to be stickier. They aren’t quite as sticky as say, jujubes, but they do have that characteristically stickiness that you tend to imagine with jelly beans. The candy shell has a nice break to it and doesn’t have a grainy finish like some of the cheaper jelly beans.
To be clear, these are by no means a fancy, gourmet or premium product, and shouldn’t be treated as one. I am very fond of these, but a lot of it has to do with nostalgia and the novelty of never really seeing these on local shelves. If these were more readily available, maybe I would end up ignoring them entirely and the magic would be gone, but I feel like I would definitely consider this as an option when I’m not feeling like ordering super expensive Jelly Belly’s and just want a nice simple bean shaped snack.
