BATTLE OF THE HALLOWEEN SOURS:
SOUR PATCH KIDS ZOMBIES vs. TRICKSTERS
I love theater boxes. Love 'em. I like their size. I like to hear the shooka-shooka noise of the candies in the box. I like their portability. I like their box art. I like keeping the boxes for various craft projects.
Love 'em.
And I'll buy 'em for all the Halloween candies I can find (LIKE THESE MIKE AND IKE SOUR SPOOKY TREATS).
So while scouting the Halloween candy wares this season, and spotting both the Sour Patch Kids Zombies & the Sour Patch Kids Tricksters in theater boxes, I grabbed 'em both and conceived of this great BATTLE OF THE HALLOWEEN SOURS.
Let's start with the Sour Patch Zombies because they've got seniority having been around since 2018-2019. The box is relatively the same as past years--- strong yellow background, with the black silhouette showing bats, a jack o' lantern, and a zombie hand coming out of the ground.
The purple and orange anthropomorphic images of the candies only show the purple guy as a Frankenstein-like flat top and one bolt in the neck.
The orange guy?
Nothin'.
Just going along for a walk with his zombie-monster friend "Purple."
The great irony here is that the Sour Patch Zombie candies are really just Halloween-colored regular Sour Patch Kids in a Halloween package. Ain't nothin' different about the actual candy design itself.
If there's anything different this year, it's that I believe the purple colored one is raspberry this year while prior years they were grape.
(As an aside: my internet research is inconclusive on this. It's possible in previous years that I presumed that the purple was grape by 'flavor/color standards-default' and it's always been raspberry. Let's assume I'm right and they started as purple/grape.)
I really like the raspberry! It's sufficiently tart, with plenty of sour-sugar on the outside of each piece. The quality control on Sour Patch Kids is superb: I've never bought a pack that wasn't fresh, tart, and chewy.
The distribution was pretty even too: a relatively equal number of orange & purple pieces.
The Tricksters packaging, interestingly, uses yellow's complimentary color, purple, for most of the box. I'm guessing this is to make sure someone doesn't confuse one box for the other.
And confusion is what the Tricksters are all about. The 'play feature' of these candies is that SOME of the candies taste like other flavors than their corresponding colors. Although fun when eating a box alone: it's still a win-win situation. While writing this I ate a yellow one and it was lemon. Eating a second yellow one revealed it was... um, 'not-lemon' --but one of the other fruit flavors.
And that's my point-- worst case scenario, you get another fruit flavor. If you've ever consumed Sour Patch Kids in a dark movie theater, you know that you have no idea what flavor you're going to get, but they're all delicious. So, Tricksters, as a game of solitaire--- it's fine. Meditative really. Forcing one to be in the present, identifying the flavor.
But in the grand scheme of candy consumption, it's not really a thing. Thankfully they're not like the Zombie Skittles from 2019 which had a random Skittle have the flavor of "rotten zombie." Not a good candy feature for a holiday that's all about eating candy. When you want to eat candy you don't want to have to spit it out in disgust.
The distribution in the Tricksters bag was odd. As you can see in the photo I had ONE blue Sour Patch Kid with all the rest being yellow, orange, and red. The flavor of the blue one? Actual raspberry. Win.
Ok, that's the overview.
And now for the great pucker off (that's gross, but I can't come up with anything better right now):
FLAVORS:
The Tricksters have more flavors and they're all good. Who cares what color they are?
The Zombies have Halloween-specific colors, but only two flavors.
Winner: Tricksters
BOX DESIGN:
They're essentially the same box design with a palette swap.
I'd say the Tricksters box is more Halloween-ey as it leans into the purple (a 'second tier' Halloween color).
Winner: Tricksters
PERSONAL PREFERENCE:
In a STUNNING upset: I think I still prefer the Zombie Sour Patch Kids over the Tricksters.
I like the two flavors of orange and raspberry (or even grape) over a whole buffet of fruit flavored Tricksters (if I wanted that, I can just buy a normal bag of Sour Patch Kids).
I like the Halloween colors of orange & purple and I like the "Zombie" motif (even if it's just a funky font on a box). The great irony here is that the Sour Patch Zombie candies are really just Halloween-colored regular Sour Patch Kids in a Halloween package. Ain't nothin' different about the actual candy design itself.
In the end, I guess I'm a traditionalist.
And, like zombie movies, I hope the Zombie Sour Patch Kids are around forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment