McCormick’s Speckled Jelly Beans

Today we have another Canadian import, McCormick’s Speckled Jelly beans. I have no background on these at all, they were just something newly available on the site where I ordered another of this year’s beans.

The packaging immediately displays the red flag of not listing its flavors, but how will they actually rate? Let’s find out.

Size and shape

Visually, these beans make a great first impression.

Average size is spot on with minimal variance. Shape is excellent, too. Most beans have a subtle dimple, and there are absolutely zero double beans or other malformations.

They also have a gorgeous pastel color palette with adequate speckling on each bean (though this doesn’t factor into the scoring).

5 out of 5 beans

Chewability

When you bite into them, things get a little complicated. These beans are quite chewy, in a way that I personally find satisfying (when only chomping on a single bean), but I recognize is probably a little much for most people. Some tooth sticking comes along for the ride with that, too.

3 out of 5 beans

Texture

The texture of the beans is very good, too. It begins with a super smooth outer shell, which crackles nicely when you bite into it, and the insides are smooth as silk. I will dock a point for the shell being too thin, though.

4 out of 5 beans

Taste and flavor

As mentioned above, I don’t have confirmation of what the actual intended flavors are in this set, but I’ve taken my best shot at identifying them in the sidebar there. The flavors are pretty subtle, on the whole, so I’m not certain about all of them.

The subtlety also makes it tough to identify any standout beans. They all reach a nice baseline of quality, but none really excite me. At least they have some nuance to the palate and aren’t just a bland sugar bomb (in contrast to our previous speckled contestant). As always, though, I’d like a bit more acidity, especially for the lemon and green apple flavors.

The only other stray observation in this category is that the grape flavor definitely gives a whiff of cough syrup.

6 out of 10 beans

The one-of-each test

Perhaps the ultimate test of a bag of jelly beans is how enjoyable it is to take one of each flavor and eat them all at the same time.¹

This is a tough one – literally. Handling six beans of this strength at once is a daunting task, but once you power through the initial high-effort phase, the flavors mingle pretty decently! What acidity is present in these beans makes itself more known when that many are breaking down together. The flavors don’t maintain much separation, though, which would be difficult given the aforementioned subtlety.

This works out better than I feared, if you take your time with it.

5 out of 10 beans

Conclusion

It’s been a few years since I’ve had Jolly Rancher Jelly Beans, but the physical attributes of these McCormick beans remind me so much them that I did a quick search to see if they might be manufactured by the same company. As best I can tell, the are not, but if you like the way that Jolly Rancher beans eat, you might want to seek these out! Otherwise, if you’re located in the U.S. like me, I can’t say it’s worth the expense to get them from Canada.

Our first three sets of the season have all been fairly average, and I’m excited to see how the final set will mix things up. Join us Sunday for the season finale!