Listen, I’m exotic. That’s what people tell me. Is it my painfully pale complexion, my disturbingly dry skin, or my lack of any ability to tan? Not sure, but I don’t make the rules.
Haribo does. Really, they do. Because it’s 2023, and Haribo has been widely available in America for WELL over a decade. Yet somehow, we simply cannot crack the code on their ability to create proper textures. Example #23, Haribo Spaghetti F!zz.
Now, most of us would look at these and say “sure, that’s a sour straw. Lots of companies make them”. But you’d be wrong. DEAD WRONG. These bear little to no resemblance to these:
And I’d list more examples, but there aren’t any. There’s not lots of companies, there’s ONE company that makes this variety of candy (and notably, I do like this company, as they make the OG, Red Vines!) but the product is inferior in every way. Not horrible, but the texture isn’t complex like Haribo’s. Additionally, they’re doing something with some ingredient that’s gotta be cheap and abundant, but it has a… “wheat” taste to me that’s off-putting. The chew on the Haribo Spaghetti lasts- like, you really get a handle on the flavors during the chewing process, because it takes a minute. Which takes me back to the beginning: Exotic.
That’s the flavor. “Exotic”. We see a big ass pineapple hogging the majority of the bag, so I thought these were just pineapple at first, but I was-yeah, you guessed it: dead wrong. We also see what looks like a mango and passion fruit next to it, so ima just gonna go out on a limb and say that in Germany, “exotic” must be what they call “tropical” out here. But semantics aside, this flavor is outstanding. Not too strong, and definitely rooted in pineapple; you do in fact taste the passion fruit and mango as the chew goes on.
Bravo, Haribo. Once again, you set the bar. Sure, we can’t really get them in the states (unless you buy your candy on eBay? Or want a strawberry flavor?), but what we can get is the standard “Sour ‘Sghetti” variety:
You’ll at least get (almost) the same texture and chew of these, but with the standard flavors. Full disclosure I bought some of these a few months back and wondered if the flavors might have been tweaked a bit- but that’s likely just due to different manufacturing plants. Sometimes there’s just a bit of difference in them.
But not in Germany, baby. That’s the place. And we all have my super friend Susie to thank for continuing to send over bushels of treats that FOR SOME REASON HARIBO WON’T EXPORT OVER HERE, TO A HARIBO SUPERSTORE LOCATED VERY NEAR MY HOME.
Ahem….so until then, let’s just take a moment to celebrate these.
What? There are multiple companies making sour straw products. Visiting a candy shop in NYC, I can name at least 3 that are easy to come by. Not sure what you’re talking about.