Tasty Fruits, Made Sour

I like sour treats. That should be pretty clear at this point considering I’ve used this website to fuel my addiction, doing over thirteen articles (and counting) on any sour tasty confections I can find. But my eyes are always open, and I’ll grab anything new if I haven’t reviewed it for the site before. And that leads us right into today’s selection: Final Boss Sour Fruit Snacks, dried fruit coated with sour flavor, and then sold to the masses. It’s not a combination of ideas I would have expected but the results are actually better than imagined.

I actually wasn’t looking for sour candy when I found these. I was at Wal-Mart doing a bit of a quick food grab for a barbeque (much as I hate Wal-Mart, they were right on the way to where I was going), and these fruit snacks were sitting on an endcap at the checkout aisle. The packages had bright and interesting pixel art, the bags said they were made with real fruit, and the flavors seemed intriguing. On a whim I grabbed all four bags that Wally World had available, and now we can go through them and discuss what is going on with these sour confections.

Level 1: Sour Strawberry Lemonade

Wal-Mart had four flavors each in one of four sour levels. I bought one of each, assuming we’d go on an increasing sour journey, and I figured level one would be the mildest. I did check the website later and I think that is supposed to be the intent as these flavors, and many others, come in a variety of intensity levels, so I’d guess that level one should be mild while level 4 should be epically sour (as per the bags). I’m not sure if that’s the case, but they are at least sour enough to please me.

The Sour Strawberry Lemonade snacks are dried strawberries, flavored with sugar and sour coating, and then tossed with just a bit of lemon flavor. It’s mostly just strawberries, and the dried fruit is the number one ingredient on the bag. I wouldn’t call these healthy, as they have 14 grams of added sugars (or 28% of your daily value in a single serving, and the bags are two servings each), but they are tasty. Sweet and tender dried strawberries with a puckering coating of sour is a-okay in my books.

Texture wise they’re pretty decent. Not too chewy, but definitely noticeably dried. Strawberries don’t have an outer skin like apricots or grapes, so these treats don’t have that thick layer you have to bite into. They’re pleasing to chew, which when paired with the nice flavor, makes for a very solid snack experience. The Sour Strawberry Lemonade snacks are a solid buy.

Level 2: Sour Strawberry Mango

Next up was another strawberry treat, this time pairing the dried berries with dried mango. To be clear, while the ingredients list dried mangos, I didn’t actually find any in my bag. I have to think they were dried and, somehow, turned into a coating for the strawberries or something. That or I just didn’t get any in my bag, which would be weird. All I could do was compare these to the other strawberry treat and they tasted pretty comparable.

Flavorwise they’re actually slightly less sour, despite the level two ranking on the bag. I’d blame that on the mangoes, which aren’t as naturally sour as lemons, so there’s a bit of a push and pull there on the flavor. It does lead me to think that you can’t really compare the levels across different fruits; you have to compare them on the same fruits from the same snacks. I’d bet a level four strawberry lemonade would likely be more sour than a level one version, but Strawberry Lemonade compared to Strawberry Mango is an apples-to-oranges comparison… which we can kind of do since soon enough we’ll get to the apples that I bought as well.

Still, in a head to head ranking I liked the flavor of the Strawberry Lemonade better. The strawberry mango is good, but I was here for tasty, sour treats and the ones with lemon delivered harder for me.

Level 3: Sour Watermelon Kiwis

Here’s where the sour comparison really breaks down. On the one hand I can tell there’s a more intense coating of sour flavor on these kiwi pieces. At the same time, though, the pieces of fruit are larger, and sweeter, nullifying a fair bit of that sour flavor. It’s still very tasty, but it makes the sour rankings feel pretty arbitrary. If I didn’t like sour as much, I’d probably stick to the level one snacks and never realize the other types, in different flavors, would probably be okay for my consumption.

The taste and texture on these are weird. They are marked as Watermelon Kiwi, but I really didn’t taste watermelon in the mix. It just lists watermelon flavor on the bag, so I would guess these pieces were soaked in watermelon juice before dehydration so as to add more natural sugar to the pieces. The flavor is solidly kiwi, with a bright spot of sweetness, but if I were here for more watermelon flavor I’d probably be disappointed.

The texture is where things really get weird. These are kind of mealy, in large part because of the way kiwis (which are pliable and pretty damp) transform when they dry out. The seeds become a major part of the texture, and the soft, pliable nature of the fruit is lost. I wouldn’t call these bad, just… odd. I feel like they’re more of an acquired taste, and you either come to really enjoy them or never want to touch the bag again. I’d maybe get these again at some point, but I don’t like them nearly as much as the Strawberry Lemonade snacks.

Level 4: Sour Green Apples

As far as dried fruit is concerned, these are the most traditional. I think most people have likely had some kind of dried apple before since apple chips have been around for ages in snack aisles. These aren’t really all that different. A little softer, a little less crisp, but still popping with dried apple flavor. Of all the pieces from this set that I got, these are probably the only ones that everyone in the buying audience could probably instantly understand and appreciate.

Flavorwise, they’re apples. They have that bright, Granny Smith apple flavor. And, at level four they are really quite sour. I don’t think unbearably so, but this was the first time, for all these snacks, where my tongue sat up and paid attention. They weren’t just tart, they were sour. But, it was a good kind of flavor that really paired well with the apples. It reminded me of biting into a very tart Granny Smith, and it was a flavor I really liked.

The big knock against this snack is that I don’t know that I really need this, in this form, when I could go and grab a crisp Granny Smith. Get one tart enough and you’ll get the same flavor. And it’s not as if a real apple is harder to transport than one of these snack packs. They’re cheaper, easier to deal with, and they don’t have 7 grams of added sugar. As a parent trying to get their kid to eat apples at all I can see the appeal of these snacks. But they’re functionally filling a niche that I’m not certain really needs to be filled.

Final Thoughts

Make no mistake, I did like all these flavors. The dried fruits paired with sour coating is a really winner in my book. If I were on a roadtrip and I saw these I might be tempted to get them to snack on in the car while driving. They’re certainly a fruitier alternative to other fruit snacks, with more dietary fiber (and less fat, especially saturated fat) than a serving of Gushers. That’s a win, certainly, but it does come with the caveat that, sugar wise, these are no healthier than a standard fruit snack. More nutrition from some sources, but maybe not as much as the snacks may lead parents to think.

Still, as a sour consumer I would pick these over, say, Super Sour Gushers, and that’s pretty high praise. These were tasty, and fruity, and I enjoyed eating them. Some flavors are better than others, but on the whole these were all exceptionally good. If you like sour snacks, and real fruit, these might be worth giving a try.