Your Tongue Will Thank You (or Not)

We're back with more sour treats. As I said in our last Sour Snack Roundup, I love sour candy. I love the taste, which I'm sure some would find weird because the taste is "pain". But it isn't, not if you're used to it. Sour is like spice, it can be painful, sure, but there's also a flavor to it and, when mixed with other flavors, it can really be good. Sure, you have to like that flavor, but when you do there's a whole world of options out there to snack on.

So let's get to another batch of goods that I grabbed from the store to review for you:

Sour Skittles

This is probably the easiest "gimmie" inclusion on the list because Sour Skittles (or, depending on the packaging, Skittles Sours, Tart-N-Tangy from 1989 to 1992, Crazy Sours, Sour Wild Berry, etc.) have been around in some form or variety since Skittles first started coming out in more than just the red bag original mix. The default flavors (in most of the world) are similar to the original mix: Grape, Strawberry, Lemon, Lime, and Orange. Occasionally Apple is included in place of Lime, although that was reverted back in 2021 and apparently won't be done again (but we'll see if that sticks).

These are, as you would expect, Skittles but they're coated in sour flavor. This actually gives them a rough, textured look and feel unlike the normal smooth coating of a Skittle. Yes, you can suck on them for a while and get down to the shell and beyond if you so choose. I have. It's fun. Then it makes my tongue grumpy so I don't so that as much. But these are really good. They have that classic Skittles flavor I'm sure everyone reading this site knows, the fake fruits in their distinctive tastes, with added citric powder on the outside for that distinctive sour flavor. It's Skittles but sour, just as it says on the package.

The thing I like about these is, despite my burned out sour sensors from eating way too many sour candies over the years, these do taste boldly sour. They aren't offensively so -- my wife, who only mildly tolerates sour flavor, can eat a few of these without completely turning inside out from the pucker factor -- but they have a sour taste that actually does taste sour. It's not like a candy that says "sour" but is then merely tart. Nope, there is sour here and it's good.

These are a very snackable candy, with that Skittles vibe all the way through. I find myself grabbing a snack bag of these on the regular, popping a few at a time over the course of a few days. It's my default choice if I want sour flavor and I don't want to take a chance on something else. Skittles nailed it with these suckers and I keep buying them because of that.

Warheads Sour! Popping Candy

You all remember Pop Rocks, right? The rock candy powder with little edible popping stones mixed in. There's the urban myth that if you eat Pop Rocks and drink a soda at the same time you'd die. That's a lie, of course, but it still spreads around even now (it was referenced in Urban Legend in 1998 for example). Pop Rocks are fun, but after a while you do get bored of them. It's candy that pops. Woo.

Warheads has apparently decided they want to be in on the popping candy phenomenon, apparently because making sour candy (and occasionally spicy candies as well) wasn't enough. "Popping candy, by jove! That's the ticket!" I presume someone said at the Impact factory (makers of Warheads) before their monocle popped off their face. And, I mean, I get it. What more can you do with sour flavor once you've put it into hardy candies, spray, and chewy bits. Popping candy makes a certain sense as now you get explosive sensations along with sour flavor.

The candy isn't bad. I bought the three flavor assortment which had little sachets of Blue Raspberry, Watermelon, and Green Apple powders. Each of those taste exactly how you expect a Warhead to taste. That cloying fake flavor just under the sour bite. Don't get me wrong, I like Warheads, but you know the flavor and exactly how fake it is. So you rip open the sachet, dump the powder in your mouth, and get hit by the fruit, the sour, and the popping.

As a Warheads connoisseur I did find that the candy itself wasn't very sour, more tart. It was a tangy tartness I liked, but anyone expecting a full sour assault won't find that here. The popping sensation was nice, especially once I figure out the right amount on crunching and letting it sit to really achieve maximum pop. They were good, fun to chew and suck on... but honestly, the lack of sour hit really was what stood out to me. While I had fun with the popping powder, I doubt I'll get these sachets again. I want something more aggressive from my sour candy.

Toxic Waste Hazardously Sour Candy

Speaking of Warheads, here's the off-brand version. Toxic Waste Hazardously Sour Candies look exactly like Warheads. Same kind of little wrapped packages, same lozenge-shaped candy in each wrapper. They have the same build as a Warhead, too: sour coating around a sweet hard candy, with a sour powder in the middle. If you had two of these, Toxic Waste and Warhead, out of their packages and on a counter, I doubt you'd be able to pick one apart from the other. They are functionally the same.

On one hand that does mean this candy has nailed what it was going for. You want a sour candy? Toxic Waste provides. These are potently sour, the kind of sour that will make people pucker up and maybe get a little bit of a tear in their eyes. I don't, because I'm a masochist who long burned out their taste sensors when it comes to sour coating, such that an "extreme" sour like this is just mildly painful now. But I do feel it with Toxic Waste's candies, and that counts for something all things considered.

The knock against them, though, is that they aren't really original. "It's a Warhead in all but brand name," is basically their whole sales pitch. I saw these years and years ago back in Indiana at a festival where they had these on offer, for free, to get people to try them. I found them once more at a Walmart near me when I was trolling for sours and saw the distinctive little plastic waste barrels. "Oh, right. These things," I said to myself. They're just as I remember, and what I remember is, "oh, it's a Warhead." So, I guess if you see these and they're cheaper than a package of Warheads, or if Warheads aren't available but these are, you can grab them. But that's the sales pitch and that's really it.

Although I will note that if you have a bunch of Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesOriginally dreamed up as a parody of Marvel's Daredevil comics (going so far as to basically reproduce to opening shots of that comic's hero gaining his powers), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles not only launched a sudden boom of anthropomorphic fighting animal comics but have, themselves, starred in multiple comics series, TV shows, and movies. figures around and you want to be able to decorate some kind of display of them, the cute little plastic waste barrels are great for that. Still not enough to get these on the regular, though.