I expect that Jelly Bellys are widely considered the best brand, because of their wide variety of flavors and their availability in bins. But they’re not my favorite, for a few reasons. Most importantly, I think Jelly Bellys are individually too small and there is not enough inner ‘meat’ for the amount of outer ‘skin’. Also, when they are kept in unsealed bins they frequently get stale. Third, the sealed packages always include the discordant bizarro flavors such as buttered popcorn and toasted marshmallow.
I like Starburst jellybeans. They are robustly flavored and meatier than Jelly Bellys.
But my favorite brand currently is Brach’s-Smuckers. They are slightly more sour or tart on balance than Starburst which is nice. And they are very meaty. These are just great jellybeans.
Both Starburst and Brach’s-Smuckers have solved the age-old problem of green beeing the ugly stepsister. Instead of lime-bleh, they’ve gone with a delicious sweet-tart green apple.
You sir are correct. Smuckers are pretty much the best Jelly beans. I actually prefer the Jolly Rancher brand over the Starburst ones.
The week after Easter is like heaven and hell for me…so many cheap clearenced jellbeans… so many sugary calorie packed jelly beans… mmmmmmmm…
Jelly Belly beans are great, in moderation. As a kid I could only afford a small handful, so they were precious, but they lose their appeal in mass quantities. Also, quit tricking me with thoise damn jalapeno-flavoured ones!
I loved the Starburst kind until they changed the recipe – now it’s so much harder to eat the “skins” off and collect the soft, bean-shaped innards for later. What?
Green jelly beans are essential. If you’re confronted with a bowl of jellybeans of unknown origin, you can eat a green one. If it’s mint, then no harm done, but you’re forewarned that it’s a bowl of spice jelly beans, and you know not to eat any of the other yucky ones. If it’s lime, though, (or presumably sour apple, though I’ve never encountered any of those), you know the bowl is fruit, and they’re all safe, and can confidently chow down on the red artificial-cherry-flavoring.
I’m so tired of this trend for lime to get the shaft in candy. Lime-flavored candy is the best! It tastes a bit like limes and a bit like Pine-Sol. What more could you want in a candy?
The vomit ones are pretty horrific too.
I mean, the flavor was . . . realistic . . .
I’d buy bags and bags of the black pepper ones, though.
This year at Easter I found Sweet-Tart jelly beans. They were very yummy! Just about my new favorite, although I still yearn for the the pectin jelly beans that my grandmother used to buy for us when I was a kid. Those are getting very difficult to find now. I think Brach’s used to make them and the ones that were clearish-white with pink speckles were the ones I liked best.
Starburst jelly beans are the best of the readily available varieties. (Although lately they’ve become disconcertingly difficult to find, at least in my area – I can’t find them in either of the two grocery stores near me lately, and the one bag I did find at another store was stale!! They’re not going out of business, are they?) I like big jelly beans that have a soft-ish, crumbly shell that crumbles and separates easily from the inside – yum. Jelly Belly fails on this account – too tiny, and the shells are too hard. Plus, I hate those “40-flavor” bags where half of them are nasty flavor. The only Jelly Belly beans I buy these days are the bags of sours.
How about all of you black licorice lovers give me your mailing addresses, and I’ll pick out all those gross little tumor-candies from every pile of jelly beans I ever have and send them your way for the rest of my life. Good riddance!
Black licorice is the only candy flavor I can think of that I just can’t stand.
I love the many flavors of Jelly Bellys. The texture, not so much. Know what I’d like to see? Gummy Bellys! Little beans made out of the same stuff as gummi bears, with Jelly Belly flavors!
BTW, Jelly Bellys now has a line (licensed by Rowling, no doubt) of “Bertie Botts’ Ever Flavor Beans.” No lie – flavors include vomit, pepper, grass, dirt . . .
I’m another Jelly Belly fan, but only in the summer. During the summer, while working at camp, I crave and eat endless bags of Jelly Bellies. It’s gotten really bad this summer, now that I’m ACD and sitting at a desk more than I’m running around with wee-ones. I go through a bag a week. There are only two flavors, licorice and juicy pear, that I don’t like. If noone else is around that enjoys them, they go straight into the rubbish bin. For those of you who don’t like the randomness of flavors in a bag of Jelly Bellies, try their sour ones. There’s about ten different sour fruit flavors that are all lovely. Mmmm…jelly beans.
You gotta wonder about the R&D on these flavors–especially booger. I mean, we all know what vomit tastes like (blue cheese), and pepper, grass, etc, wouldn’t be that hard to figure out. But I cannot imagine (or maybe I just don’t want to) how they determine that they’ve got the booger flavor right. Revolting!
But I just love NORMAL Jelly Belly jelly beans! Tangerine and cherry are two of my faves.
