When fan and friend David sent an email suggesting we review Brach’s Turkey Dinner Candy Corn, I assumed he was kidding. Or rather, that he had the flavor profile wrong, and instead was thinking about the Brach’s Autumn Mix, which is essentially candy corn in different shapes. But a quick click uncovered that he was in fact talking about the new 2020 release of the iconic candy corn, flavored as a full Thanksgiving menu.

Clever, I thought. I wondered if the candy corn would be a real version of Willy Wonka’s special gum, which changes flavor as you chew.

I was excited to jump in. I’m one of the few people who actually like Candy Corn, and I’m always interested in a novelty.

So I sent an email to Brach’s asking for a few samples, and their PR firm said ‘no can do.’ Interesting. With 1000’s of people visiting our site each week, candy companies tend to send us their wares when we ask. I wondered… were they being cagey because the candy was going to be SO good, they didn’t need to give any away? Or was it so bad that they were hoping I might not get my hands on it.

You get 6 flavors:

• Green beans
• Roasted turkey
• Sweet potato pie
• Stuffing
• Ginger glazed carrot
• Cranberry sauce

First off, all the flavors are sweet, even the turkey and stuffing. It’s all still ostensibly “Candy.” So I knew we were dealing with some level of Jelly Belly Bertie Bott’s – the jelly beans with flavors like sausage, dirt and worm – straight from the pages of Harry Potter.

Green beans tasted earthy. Roasted turkey dare I say, tasted like a sweet turkey gravy; I didn’t like it, but was impressed with how much it seemed distilled from the real thing. The stuffing was gross, but again, the overtones of the real thing, in this case burnt bread, meant I had no doubt I was eating something mimicking my favorite part of a Thanksgiving meal. Cranberry sauce was the one flavor I could eat again; slightly less sweet than candy corn usually is, it had a strawberry-more-than-cranberry flavor, and it wasn’t bad. Ginger glazed carrot tasted too much like cooked carrots and I’m simply not fond of cooked carrots: pass.

Where was pumpkin pie? Turkey dinner without pumpkin pie – the actual dessert with a turkey dinner – was left out? Not sure I would have made that product decision.

What will you think of the Brach Turkey Dinner Candy Corn?

When I tried my first one, I didn’t know what to expect, nor what flavor I was eating. It took me off guard and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Passing these around to the family and friends including Jonny – and well…they all disliked. Like, took-a-hard-pass-on-them-after-first-bite dislike. And they too didn’t know what they were getting into right when they tried them. A few folks spit them out. When I told my wife to try the Cranberry on its own, she flat out said, ‘No.’ I had to call in a favor to get her to try another piece, and then? She agreed with me: cranberry sauce is good and she would eat more. Sadly, in my 12 oz. bag, I got like 5 cranberry sauce candy corn in total.

Yet, when I sat down to try each morsel and feeeeel the flavors, I semi-enjoyed them. So Brach’s Turkey Dinner Candy Corn gets two stars for novelty. It gets another star for working real flavors into each morsel. It loses a star since I couldn’t get anyone to eat more than one. Then it gains a star because cranberry is actually good, while loses it because the bag had barely a small handful out of hundreds.

Kudos to Brach’s for bringing the fun in a year that sure could use it. Still, when I can’t give your candy away, I can’t give it a good review.