If you need me to tell you spicy candy is all the rage back home then you aren’t paying attention to the clues. For one, Jonny reviewed Starburst Sweet Heat just a few weeks back. And now let’s hit you over the head with it: Skittles is now ALSO delivering a Sweet Heat flavor. Are they made by the same company? Why yes, yes they are. So we either have a lazy marketing department, or a very clever one – branding the hell out of ‘Sweet Heat’. (And by the way, it’s the latter.)

Consisting of Lemon Spark, Fiery Watermelon, Flamin’ Orange, Sizzlin’ Strawberry and Blazin’ Mango, these Skittles do what Skittles is already good at – bringing strong flavors and top notch chew to a small candy bite. The Sweet Heats get spicy after about 5 seconds of chew. It starts easy, then gets stronger, almost like the cayenne pepper kicking in to a creole dish.

On first eat, I didn’t love these. Although I like strange sweets, and recently reviewed and loved spicy mango gummies, I wasn’t expecting such a punch in the tongue from the Skittles, and so when I ate 4 at a time, it got a tad too spicy. But that was only on first eat. Once my mouth was trained (just took a few minutes of eating), I was hooked.

I’ve read the bad reviews of Skittles Sweet Heat but I’m guessing these folks didn’t give the candy enough gestation time, or these people are simply too young. The young tastebuds don’t appreciate the spice as much as the old tastebuds do.

Still, if you are scared of heat, don’t like things that are original, and aren’t a fan of Skittles to begin with, pass on these. If, however, you like to try new candies and enjoy the spice in life, dive in to these Skittles Sweet Heats. If anything, they’re refreshing as hell.