Jelly Belly "Soda Pop Shoppe"

I've been a fan of the Jelly Belly Beans for quite a long time now. One thing I especially like about them is that they have really distinct flavours. During my longtime career as a professional candy tester (my personal everlasting pipe dream) I developed a slight avaration to wine gum that tastes nothing but sweet and somewhat gummy-like so that the only difference between the "flavours" seems to be the variation in the artificial colouring agents used in the production.

With Jelly Belly on the other hand, you get many different flavours which are mostly identifiable even without looking them up. The taste is fairly intensive and they come in a huge variety with already alone 50 flavours being in the official range. In Addition, there are also the special flavours from extra assortments like the ice cream parlor mix, smoothie blend, cocktail classics, 5-flavor-sours or others.

Unfortunately, not every single mix that exists in the States is also available in Germany which is why I placed an order online. Amongst other goodies, this order also included the Jelly Belly "Soda Pop Shoppe" which I'm going to present in this post.

The mix contains 6 different flavours which are all based on the taste of soft drinks by popular soda brands.

1. Orange Crush

This sort really does taste just like orange lemonade! It has a very intensive and slightly artificial orange aroma just as regular soda never tastes exactly like the actual fresh fruit. Of course, this jelly bean doesn't have any carbonic acid in it but nonetheless it kind of has this prickling freshness that is typical for a good soft drink.

2. Grape Crush

This is probably my least favourite flavour in this mix. I'm not sure whether I could have identified this undoubtedly as a grape flavour if I hadn't actually seen it on the packaging. It does taste nice and fruity but compared to other jelly beans it is just rather weak in taste.






3. 7 Up

My favourite soft drink transformed into a jelly bean, what's not to love ?!☺ Naturally, I was approaching this bean with fairly high expectations but I have to say that this sort can actually almost come up to its prototype. It has the same lively freshness deriving from the blend of lemons and limes. Of course, a jelly bean can never be as refreshing as a bottle of cold 7 Up but it probably comes as close as a sugar candy can possibly get (maybe I should try putting them into the fridge).

4. A&W Cream Soda

This sort wasn't too exciting for me as it is already part of the 50 official flavours and therefore nothing new for my taste buds. The flavour does remind me of actual cream soda as it has the typical light, creamy vanilla flavour. However, the flavour is not really distinctive so that I also wouldn't necessarily disagree if it was called custard, white chocolate, vanilla cupcake or something of that sort.

5. A&W Rootbeer

This bean definitely has a really strong and distinct flavour - it could be nothing but root beer. The flavour is so intense that it even leaves an aftertaste in your mouth and kind of makes your tongue feel a tiny bit numb. I simply can't describe what root beer tastes like ... you just have to taste it yourself!






6. Dr. Pepper

Although this is not a new flavour as well, it simply has always been one of my favourites. It succeeds at doing the unique Dr. Pepper flavour justice. It's sort of hard to describe what exactly I like about this bean just like you can't really describe what the actual Dr. Pepper itself tastes like. I'd say it is distantly related to coke whilst containing a wide variety of fruit and spicy flavourings.




By the way, I certainly didn't expect the distribution of the different flavours to be exactly even but having four times more 7 Up than A&W Cream Soda still seems a bit much (you can see that by the amount of beans in the pictures).

Although the flavours are not all natural but also artificial, I really like this mix. I'm not a huuuge opponent of artificial flavours like some other people are nowadays, anyway. In this case, I believe it makes the beans taste that intensive and supports the really distinct flavours. The original soft drinks which the beans are based upon are surely not all natural too.

What is your favourite Jelly Bean flavour? ☺