Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Matty and I started Candygurus due to our love of candy, primarily, Haribo.  Haribo, quite simply, is our thing.  They have literally hundreds of varieties, and have somehow cornered the market on both properly flavored and textured gummies and sour gummies.  It’s not an easy task.

Because of this, when I make a World Market run and find a few new varieties of Haribo, it’s a big deal.  I buy many, many bags.  Exhibit A: Mega-Party Mix:

Encased in the bag are mini bag versions of Haribo’s two best selling varieties in the UK: “Starmix”, which is their non sour variety, and “Tangfastics”, their sour counterpart:

Check ’em.  Starmix:

Tangfastics:

Before I go on, how bout them photos?  Big shout out to my boy Mark @ Sugarpressure.  He helped out with the technique, and he also happens to have (cough!) the 2nd best candy review site on the web.  Be sure to check it out.

On paper, this was a miraculous find.  I love Starmix, and I freaking adore Tangfastics.  I’ve had more than one person bring me back a few bags from the UK.  Here’s the problem though- these do not have the same exact pieces as the actual Starmix or Tangfastics.  Instead of having 6-8 full size pieces from the original variety, they’ve made mini-sized pieces.  Ordinarily, I really wouldn’t bat an eye at this, but something about it just doesn’t work.

I think it’s that the pieces are just too damn small.  You don’t get that same excellent Haribo experience of a long, deep chew.  The flavors are still great yet…they’re a bit muddier and harder to decipher in this mini-mix environment.

There are a few positives though: the small bag size is great for portion control, if you’re a fiend like me.  And really-they’re still Haribo, so even though they might not be as good as their full sized counterparts, they still blow away 99% of any gummy you’d find in the US.  Ok, maybe 95%, but I’m sticking to that.  The takeaway is that…I’ll probably buy these again, despite them being slightly disappointing.   I wish they would just import the full sized bags, and I’m sure that will happen, but…we’ll have to wait.

In the meantime, buy these at Cost Plus World Market–I can’t find them online anywhere else outside of the UK.

Truly though-if you’ve never had the full sized bags, and thus have nothing to compare these to, you’ll probably dig the hell out of this mix.