There are 2 camps when it comes to change:

1. “Please do. I love change. Make it all differently. Keep it fresh.”

2. “Stop it. Why would you ever change something that is already amazing? What are you trying to do – push me away?”

I tend to fall into the “let’s mix things up” camp. I get tired of the same ol same ol. So when Haribo said to us*:  “Hey, we got new flavors for the Gold Bears. You HAVE to try them.” I was all like, “YEAH WE DO.”

(*Actually, Haribo has never said anything to us ever. Never sent us candy; never asked us to lie for them either though.)

The things that make Haribo Gold Bears the gold standard for gummy bears are still inherent in these new, unknown flavored bears. So that’s good. They didn’t lose the chew, the deepness of the flavors, the aroma that only Haribo has.

Not sure who initially said we eat with our eyes first, but I tend to agree. I’ve been duped into thinking candy would be good by its looks, and then turns it out to be crap. The colors of these Mystery Flavor bears aren’t ideal to me. The blue especially reminds me of the blue I see in the packages of  semi-generic gummies at my local gas station. Thus, going in, my eyes said these babies might be “eh.”

And there’s also this article from January 2018 by Ashlie Steven’s of “The Salt” on NPR. Ashlie says some researchers suggest our brains fill in the flavor for the color, so we see yellow and our brain tells us it’s lemon, even though the flavor may in fact be the same as the other candies of a different color in the same bag. I.E., all the rainbow candies in a package of Skittles (an example in the article) are actually all the same flavor, though the colors tell our brains differently. FYI – Jonny and I call BS on that. Skittles seem VERY distinct in flavor…

Anyhoo – I put this theory to the test on our Mystery Flavor bears. I closed my eyes, and tried to see if:

1. The flavors were distinct from each other;
2. If I could tell what the flavors were.

I took the 5 flavors, hid them behind my computer and put one on my mouth at time, without seeing the colors.

First one in: muted flavor, fruity, bit not berry. Kinda menthol-y too. Weird.
Second one in: Also muted to start, totally hard to figure out. Semi citrus.. MAYbe tangerine. Big maybe.
Third one in: more floral at first, definitely a blue raspberry type of flavor.
Fourth one in: this is a cherry something. Maybe black cherry.
Fifth one in: way clearer than any before. This is is citrus, but not lemon. Not orange. THIS must be tangerine.

OK that didn’t work really well so I tried again while seeing the colors go in:

Blue: Yep, blue razzberry. Does have a VERY slight menthol thing happening, which I like.
Pink red: Gotta be strawberry.
Light yellow: not sure. grapefruit I think.
Dark yellow: yeah that’s tangerine.
Dark red: Cherry coke.

Yeah, um, turns out I was wrong. On almost all of them. I won’t tell you what is what, go to Haribo’s site and see for yourself. But I will say one of the flavors was apricot and I couldn’t taste that all…

Still, I like these bad boys. They ARE Haribo after all.