Trolli: Sour Brite Jelly Beans, Second Edition

Welcome to 2022 and the Season 7 premiere for A Boy and His Beans! It continues to be a struggle to line up as many reviews as in the heyday, but let me tell you, we have a few bangers that are new on the scene and I’m quite excited to review them!

Let’s kick things off with a highly unusual – dare I say, unprecedented – case: Trolli Sour Brite Jelly Beans.

If you’re already saying to yourself, “Waaait just a minute…”, gold star for you! Yes, it’s true, I have already reviewed Trolli Sour Brite Jelly Beans. But wait! Something about the packaging made me do a double-take this year, and I discovered that they released a whole new version of these beans!

This “second edition”, as I’m calling it, is billed as having “2 Crawler flavors in 1 bean!” – a reference to Trolli’s well-known Sour Brite Crawlers gummy worms, which feature two flavors, one per half of each worm. And indeed, the flavors listed on the back of the new Sour Brite Jelly Beans bag are each a combination of two fruit flavors, whereas the previous iteration that I reviewed in 2018 had single-flavor beans.

Other that confirming that this was a totally different set of flavors, I have not looked back at that first review, in order to ensure an impartial, fresh review. How do these new beans stack up against the first edition, and against the rest of the field? Let’s dig in and unearth the answer!

Size and shape

While the average size of these is right down the middle, the standard deviation of size is far too wide, and there are a few downright extreme outliers, either very small or massive.

The shape is more accurately described as a “lumpy egg” than a “bean”. It is not very uniform, and there is no attempt made at a dimple. There are also a couple really weird, ginormous, and misshapen outliers.

2 out of 5 beans

Chewability

The chewability of these beans is good, if unremarkable, erring on the side of too easy to chew. I would have liked a bit more resistance overall, but the lack of much tooth-stick is a plus.

4 out of 5 beans

Texture

The shell gets a bit grainy as it breaks up, and the smoothness of the insides doesn’t sing, but the balance of shell to insides is good, and there are no major complaints to be found in this category.

3 out of 5 beans

Taste and flavor

This is quite a nice collection of beans that all clearly present each of their two constituent flavors, and they definitely call to mind the classic gummy worms they are named for.

Of the individual flavors, lemon is the weakest, lacking in appropriate acidity. The apple, which is intended to be a green apple, also suffers from this a bit; it definitely tastes like apple, but should be billed as a red apple.

Cherry reminds me of Luden’s Throat Drops, which is a good thing, in my book. Raspberry is very solid in both of its combinations.

Orange–Mango doesn’t excite me personally, but the flavors seem pretty spot-on. It’s a tropical punch in a bean.

Strawberry is probably the most true-to-life flavor, and Strawberry–Grape the best bean of the batch. It really pops on the tongue.

All in all, a very pleasing assortment!

7 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 set of flavors all work really nicely together, probably due in no small part to the years Trolli has spent honing these flavors. If they go together well when chomping on multiple gummy worms, it makes sense that they also go together well in jelly bean form.

The easy-chewing nature of these beans helps keep the mouthful manageable, but the flavors lose their distinctiveness pretty rapidly. Orange juice is the dominant flavor after the individual flavors coalesce.

6 out of 10 beans

Conclusion

It’s fascinating that Trolli decided to rerelease their Sour Brite Jelly Beans after several years, but I think it’s a good move. The two flavors in one bean synergize a lot better with their existing Sour Brite Crawlers brand.

We’ll be back next week with a special guest!