In my continuing pledge to spread the gospel about the glory of hard candy, I would be seriously remiss if I didn’t include one of my faves, Fruit N’ Sour by the fine people at Jolly Rancher.

We love Jolly Ranchers, and you should too.  Everything great about Jolly R’s is amplified here : thesame outstanding flavors (Cherry, Watermelon, Apple, Blue Raspberry & Wild Strawberry), but the sour quotient has been turned up.  Big time.

You might be saying “Homey, aren’t the original flavors of apple, watermelon, etc., sour enough?”  To which I’d be like “Bro…yer right.  But you haven’t seen nothin’ yet”.  Then we’d “blow it up” and watch football.

Yes, original Jolly Ranchers are tart, even a bit sour, that’s what always has separated them from the crap for all these years.  They simply have more going on, but always strike a nice balance.  Never too sweet, never too tart.  JR Fruit N’ Sours though…they take the delicate balance, wrap it up in recycled wrapping paper, light it on fire and explode that shit via several M80’s.  These are SOUR.

How sour?  Let’s put it this way: while they don’t approach Warhead levels (my new reference for bad way-too-sour), they do make it hard to eat more than 3 in a sitting-which is good news, dudes.  That’s the whole thing with hard candies – have one here, one there.  But you’re not eating a bag in a sitting.  Not with hard candies.  Hard candies are like cockroaches- Come hell or high water, sunlight or dark, weeks or years, ..they’re still sitting there.  Ready to go, no worse for the wear than they were when they were made.

Look at those little logs of loveliness.  My old thing was to buy a few bags of these and mix them with a few bags of the normal Jolly Ranchers.  Problem was, I’d always reach for the sour ones, leaving only the OG originals left.  Now, I just buy a bag of these at a time.  Takes a few weeks, but I finish the bags without fail.

These do have one downside though, like all Jolly Rancher “twists”.  They’re vulnerable to extreme heat.  Meaning, if you leave them in hot room (I mean HOT, over 80 degrees) for extended periods of time, they turn poisonous.  I KID!  What they do is melt just a bit, making the unwrapping process not so pleasant.  But, this is the ONLY potential downside for these, and seeing as how Jack Frost has got his crap all up in our bizness, I don’t foresee this as being a problem for any of us for the coming months.

Don’t forget about hard candy, kids.  If the flavors are right, then hard candies become crucial – clutch cargo even, for road trips, the desk drawer at work, the candy jar.  And if Jolly Rancher knows anything, they know flavor.

Since none of our partner stores seem to carry these (cough cough…), I’m including a link to Amazon.  However, I can find these at my local Safeway, so I’m sure they won’t be too difficult to procure.