The Best Candy?

“Make snack time all the more fun with little ribbons of delicious gummies! Bursting with flavor, Fettuccine Gummi® is an irresistible taste sensation with the perfect balance between sweet and sour.”

This is an understatement. Indeed Bourbon Foods's Fettuccine Gummi is superlative not only in its category, but there is an argument to be made that is the best candy money can buy.

Let's turn our attention first to the purple Italian grape variety (purple OG if you will). From start to finish, there is, simply, “none more grape.” (opens in a new tab) Tearing open a bag releases an aroma of such intensity that even once the strips inside are long gone, the unmistakeable air of grape lingers. On the tongue, the uber grape-iness is bolstered by a perfect balance of sweet and tart. It's like eating a cartoon version of grape. Then of course there's the eponymous "gummi" texture: pleasantly toothsome and bouncy with none of the tackiness that causes also-rans like Sour Patch Kids to get lodged in and pull at your molars. Textural contrast is provided by a generous coating of crunchy sour sugar. The small zip-top packages mean that Fettuccine Gummi are usually fresh, but the texture does not suffer too much even when stale (unlike certain other gummies 👀).

If all that weren't enough, for all my fellow grape lovers out there, they make a second grape variety, a lighter, green Muscat grape. This version offers a more floral nose with prominent top notes than its sultrier purple counterpart. My second favorite, however, is the cola flavor, which is the sourest of the bunch. While I wouldn't necessarily be able to clock the flavor as cola without a cue from the package, it is zesty with a hint of background earthiness from cinnamon. These make me hanker for more (good) cola flavored candy.

As for the remaining flavors, lemon is refreshingly tart with a complex citrus profile. And I've recently become a convert to ramune, which has a pleasant bubblegum note with no cloying sweetness. The only regular flavor I haven't tried is peach, as artificial peach flavor often carries a unpleasant chemical-y note that can verge on vomit-adjacent. If I had to entrust my tastebuds to any peach candy, though, it would be a Fettuccine Gummi.

Bourbon dabbles in limited edition Fettuccine flavors as well. I was recently gifted this limited run yangji ganlu variety. Apparenty this is a Cantonese mango, grapefruit and coconut dessert. Though the flavor doesn't rank amongst my top favorites, I love the creative use of strawberry seeds to add a different crunchy texture to the strips, perhaps to imitate the mouthfeel of sago in the original dessert. I was impressed that they managed to pack in all of the distinct flavor notes of yangji ganlu into a strip of gummy candy.

You can keep your Sour Patch Kids, Trolli sour worms, Haribo, Sour Punch, sour belts; Fettuccine Gummi is top among gummies. But what about other candies? Since Fettuccine is a grocery/convenience store purchase, a comparison with bougie chocolates, like my favorite, L.A. Burdick (opens in a new tab), is unfair. While I love a Reese's peanut butter cup, we all know the chocolate is blandly sweet and waxy and the peanut butter filling can be crumbly when stale (I say this with no animus). The occasional Starburst appeals, but the tart:sweet ratio could be adjusted. And the eponymous almonds are in short supply in Almond Joy. Thus, I contend that Fettuccine bests all of these competitors. It's probably the best candies on the market. Please try it today!

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