Want People to Stop Stealing Your Jelly Beans?

Jelly Belly Bean Boozled 4th Edition

Something like twenty years ago, back when Jelly Belly jellybeans were pretty much only available in specialty shops, my in-laws gave me a box of weird-flavored varieties. I think the release may have had something to do with the first Harry Potter book, but I may be wrong. About the only flavor I remember from that set was “snot.” Well, years later, I happened to find a “remaindered” bag of Bean Boozled 4th Edition beans, and decided to give them a try. I guess the notation on the bag that it “contains weird & wild flavors” should be considered a warning.

The 1.9-ounce bag contains ten flavor pairs – visually identical beans, one of which tastes good and the other is nasty – of which the first two are new pairs in Bean Boozled Number 4. By color, the pairs are (icky flavor first): White: spoiled milk, coconut Peach with red spots: dead fish, strawberry banana smoothie Gray-green: booger, juicy pear Peach: barf, peach Speckled: stinky socks, tutti-frutti Gold: rotten egg, buttered popcorn Brown: canned dog food, chocolate pudding Blue: toothpaste, berry blue Beige: moldy cheese, caramel corn Green: lawn clippings, lime

I won’t go into detail on the normal flavors, since we all know that Jelly Belly beans well deserve their “gourmet” label. On the other hand, the “icky” flavors are almost enough to put you off eating jelly beans for a couple of weeks. Having some real-life experience with a few of the flavors – rotten egg, moldy cheese, barf and spoiled milk (not to mention having eaten the human equivalent of canned dog food, Hormel hash); I can attest that the tastes of the corresponding beans are pretty much spot on. On the other hand, I have no idea whether the taste of booger, dead fish and stinky socks are accurate. I’d assume that the company chemists merely concentrated on replicating the smells of the objectionable varieties, since taste and smell are so closely related.

“Toothpaste” isn’t all that bad – it tastes pretty much like cheap spearmint gum – and “lawn clippings” doesn’t taste at all like grass to me; perhaps it’s mean to represent clippings after a treatment by TruGreen…

A couple of the flavors (sour milk and barf, I think) are so disgusting that they caused a bit of stomach discomfort; rather surprising in a taster who has what’s normally a cast-iron stomach. Eat the whole bean at your own peril! The “weird & wild” flavors look identical to the regular ones, even down to the color of the candy filling. That filling, however, doesn’t have the same flavor as the candy shell… thank heavens.

They’re great for kids, and my wife suggests they’d be a good way to stop people from filching candy from the bowl on your desk at work. Other than that, I think I’ll pass on buying any more. The bag was originally 60¢ at my local grocer’s…

copyright © 2017 scmrak