“These are pickled flavored?!” says my 11 year old as she looks around for a trash bin. “These are horrible. Who DOES that!”

This is the opposite of burying the lead. Here I’ve let you know early, dear reader, what you are getting into with Exploding Pickle Candy from Archie McPhee.

Honestly, not sure if I like novelty candy so much. Sometimes worth a giggle but most often, you try it, nod knowingly, spit it out, and that’s it. One and done. What’s the point? Can you really build a customer base from these things? Every new customer is likely also the last time you serve that person…

Yet, for all my complaining, I actually give the Exploding Pickle Candy a few stars and some props for going all in.

First and foremost, these are indeed exploding. Way more than the original Pop Rocks. When I took these out of the package, they were exploding in my hands, on the counter, flying all over the place. I liked it.

Putting them in my mouth was like eating soda bicarbonate (I assume). It just started popping everywhere – I was kinda scared to swallow them. Which I also liked.

They taste sweet at the onset but I could smell the Dill pickle flavor. As you suck on these, the flavor becomes more apparent and it’s definitely pickle. Not a good pickle, mind you, but a pickle nonetheless. And here’s where the novelty kicks in, because I didn’t need the pickle. It was fine, not as crappy as I figured, but the popping was so great, the pickle just took away from the fun. And as the young guruette at the onset of this review said, “Who DOES that?!”

Archie McPhee does, and they’re not apologizing for it.