15 Popular Haribo Gummy Candies, Ranked Worst To Best

The brand name Haribo may not immediately ring any familiarity alarm bells, but you've probably sampled some of its product, even unknowingly. This German candy company began in 1920 when Hans Riegel began crafting the company's first products from his kitchen using simple kitchen tools. Like so many companies, especially in the infancy of business, this now giant gummy company was, at one time, a one-man show.

Today, you can find these squishy Goldbears and all of their friends in various languages, flavors, and shapes around the world, even breaching the popular Swedish candies market. You'll see them in your favorite grocery store, inside candy shops, toy shop check out lanes, and even in craft store checkouts. Being a lover of all things gummy candy, I was eager to sample the offerings of the Haribo company and set my sights on sampling a whole slew of the candy, ranking them according to texture and flavor. I utilized the online candy store Candy Funhouse to find an impressive selection of Haribo treats, complete with speedy shipping, so I could get sampling as soon as possible.

There's some candies you gain attachment to through deep-seated memories. For me, Sour Patch straws will always remind me of middle school dances. The sour spaghetti pieces from Haribo are quite similar to those gummies but with a few important exceptions. Rather than being long strands like the straws, the spaghetti from Haribo comes in much smaller pieces. There also isn't a notable hole running through each piece, like the sour patch straws have.

In addition to that missing hole, I found that these particular gummies have much more of a wax taste to them than other gummies I had tried. The flavor doesn't really taste like wax, and the fruity flavors in each piece are certainly present, but the texture just felt like I was chewing wax. I think so much of this had to do with the skinniness and stubbiness of the pieces. While you get a nice bite out of the other gummy candies, these require you to pop the whole piece and then chew on this tiny piece of spaghetti. In terms of the flavor and texture, these just didn't match up to what I was hoping for, especially given my affinity for Sour Patch straws. Your tongue will definitely be doing some teeth cleaning while eating these.

The outside of these gummy berry candies looks exactly like a raspberry or blackberry. They are striking to look at, and for that reason, immediately interesting. The bag advertises these as crunchy and chewy, and at first bite, I found this to be true, even if the crunch is not quite as crunchy as I hoped for. The crunchy bit is pretty mild compared to some other crunchy and chewy candy on the market offering a crunch similar to something that had been sitting out and thereby losing that texture. I also found that the coloring on these wore off on my skin quickly, leaving a bit of color behind.

In terms of flavor, I didn't find these to be particularly enjoyable. The very taste is a little bit ambiguous and not super tasty. Although the raspberry and blackberry pieces each offer different flavors, neither one is particularly similar to the fruit they claim to replicate, even if the resemblance is there. I can imagine using this particular treat for its striking appearance to a real berry, perhaps as part of a larger design feature on cupcakes, but it really doesn't hold up to being a snack. There are definitely fruitier, tastier options in the Haribo lineup.

These Happy Cola gummies, complete with only one flavor throughout the bag, have a taste like what you might expect someone would create if they were trying to guess at what a basic soda is like. It has flavor elements of Coca-Cola and Pepsi while also a little Dr. Pepper. Really, it's an off mix of popular brown cola varieties.

I found that one or two of these gummies is quite fine, but a whole serving of these would be far too much. They're overly sweet. Not to mention, without something to suggest fizz, they feel a little bit like flat, too sweet cola. The little pieces themselves resemble classic glass cola bottles with brown in the bottom half to suggest cola and a yellowish top part and neck to represent partially full bottles. These also have more of a scent than other flavors, though the flavor was much stronger.

Since I knew I wanted to try the Happy Cola gummies, I figured pitting these against the fizzy option would be an important comparison. While I found that the Happy Cola flavor reminded me of something like flat soda, the Fizzy Cola definitely had more life to it, owing to its light sour coating on the outside.

In general, the flavors on the two gummies were pretty similar, but the texture was actually quite different. The Fizzy Cola was more of a plump gummy that offered an enjoyable bite and wasn't quite as hard as the Happy Cola. Since the tart coating definitely makes this one better, I would easily choose it over the Happy Cola if you're looking to best emulate that fizzy brown liquid. Even still, those who don't necessarily prefer cola won't find these any more enjoyable than the other cola offering, even if it is a better bite.

When searching for Haribo candies to look at for this article, I tried to strike a balance between ones that I was quite familiar with and ones that were brand new. For me, Haribo frogs definitely fell into the category of a brand new offering. These little frogs are green on top with the same kind of milky white bottom that the clouds have. They are thicker like the clouds as well, but rather than coming in a bunch of different flavors in the package, they all come in one distinct flavor. I was more than a little surprised to find out that rather than a green flavor like watermelon, lime, or even strawberry, these are a peach flavor.

Though I was surprised to see peach as the chosen flavor, upon opening the package, I discovered that the peach designation is anything but mild with a very strong scent to match. That said, once you bite into these, the peach has less of a flavor impact. The flavor is actually less strong than the scent itself. These are also a little bit on the chewy side and don't have quite as enjoyable a gummy feel as, say, the clouds. It takes a little bit of work to bite down and chew on these.

Gummies are such an ionically childhood treat. Given this rapt audience, creating them in identifiable shapes that kids enjoy adds an extra special touch. When I saw that dino gummies were among the offerings, I knew I had to give these a try. What surprised me, however, is that dino flavors are a little bit less kid-friendly than I would have hoped.

In a bag, you'll have three flavor combinations. The yellow and red ones are banana and strawberry. For something a little bit more on the berry side, there is a blue and red one for strawberry and blackcurrant, and for something quite unexpected, the yellow and green ones are a combination of mandarin, mango, and melon. In the yellow and green ones especially, the melon comes through much stronger than I would have expected it to come through in a gummy candy. The blackcurrant and strawberry one is quite enjoyable as a berry flavor, but the banana in the strawberry and banana flavor is incredibly overwhelming any sense of strawberry you might get.

The company offers both sour and not sour Smurfs gummies. When munching on them, it's hard to determine whether each side of the Smurf has a different flavor to it as they are all two-toned. The white seems to represent the hat of the Smurf while some of them have a red or even yellow accents that represents blonde hair.

After a bit of munching, the flavors, if there are different flavors for the different parts, would certainly just mush in together, leaving it a somewhat ambiguously fruity feel. The coating on these is strong and enjoyable, especially if you like sour candies. It's a little odd that the white, yellow, and red parts are not more equally distributed as there are so many white pieces and only a few red or yellow ones. Having a more consistent two option dual tone seems to make a little bit more sense rather than throwing some seemingly random ones in there as well.

In addition to the sour-coated Smurfs, Haribo offers a variety with a similar flavor but without the sour coating. These Smurfs are also similar in color but with more of a waxy coating rather than granular. Without the grainy coating, it is much easier to see the actual detailing of the Smurfs, including their rather charming detailing.

For aesthetics, I prefer these over the sour ones because they have the benefit of actually looking like Smurfs rather than an oddly shaped candy with sound recording on it. In terms of flavor, however, I definitely preferred the sour options, especially because without that element, these do land a little bit on the simple side. They benefit greatly from the sour addition. I prefer these overall, though, because the Smurf detailing is just too fun to cover up, and these do a lonely job of displaying it, especially compared to the sour ones.

There was a time when unicorn food seemed absolutely inescapable. Once upon a time, with franchises like Starbucks offering such glittery and colorful treats as the Unicorn Frappuccino, these Lisa Frank-esque foods seem to be everywhere. Unicorn mania may have died down a little bit, but it's still certainly among us. These colorful gummies are certainly an indication of its continued resistance.

The unicorn gummies from Haribo come in such fun flavors as cotton candy, apple, tangerine, berry punch, blue raspberry, and banana. Lemon lovers will certainly need to proceed with caution on this one because the yellow certainly isn't going to be what they expect. Though the banana flavor doesn't exactly taste like true banana, it does taste like banana-flavored things I've tried in the past. While the flavors are a little bit odd for this particular shape, the bucking unicorn design of each one is quite charming. Not to mention, these are a little bit thicker than gummy bears making them quite enjoyable to chomp down on.

It doesn't get more classic gummy candy than gummy bears. Haribo calls its gummy bears Goldbears, but they're just gummy bears, though they come in some interesting fruit flavors. In your bag of classic Goldbears, you'll have pineapple, lemon, raspberry, orange, and strawberry. Instead of cherry for red, those will be raspberry, while the surprisingly white options are actually pineapple; the green is strawberry rather than green apple or even lime.

The gummies are easily popable and snack-worthy. Each of the flavors is quite robust, offering a punch of juiciness without the actual juice bust like you might get from other '90s snacks like Gushers. Of the flavors, lemon was my least favorite, though it tasted exactly as I would expect a lemon gummy to taste, so lemon lovers need not lament; no hidden banana flavor to find here. Of the options in this bag, green strawberry is definitely my favorite. These did leave a bit of aftertaste that wasn't entirely pleasant and rather a mash of different fruit flavors.

If Sour Patch Kids are more of a favorite candy for you than gummy bears, consider the sour Goldbears. Though the flavors in the sour package are the same as the regular Goldbears, the sour coating addition makes the flavor seem that much more tasty in some cases. The pineapple gummy, for example, has a really enhanced tart flavor you really don't get from the typical gummy bear.

That said, there are some flavors where the sour is not as enjoyable with. The strawberry for example — which is the green gummy — is less enjoyable as a sour than the regular, non-sour version. The tart coating distracts from the flavor of strawberry, making it oddly ambiguous and losing what makes a juicy strawberry flavor enjoyable. The citrusy lemon and orange flavors, ones I don't normally pick out of a bag, are much better sour than as a regular Goldbear.

In the gummy candy world, it's hard to find a flavor that wouldn't be pleasing to children, but as Haribo has proved, gummies are definitely not just for the kids in your life, and to that end, the ginger lemon is definitely a flavor for adults. I wasn't expecting the ginger to be as strong as it was and for lemon to take more of a backseat, but this is definitely a tasty treat for people who enjoy candied ginger or ginger beer.

Like the sour gummies, these do have that shower coating on them, and this definitely accentuates the lemon taste, even offering a little bit of an assist to the ginger. I found these to be tougher than expected and require a little bit more work to take a bite out of. Even still, if you enjoy ginger root, you'll definitely like these, even if the kids in your life might not.

An interesting spin on the classic gummy worm is the twin snakes gummies. These come with two snakes that are attached together. One side has a sour flavor while the other has a sweet flavor. It's something like a sweetheart but in gummy form. For the flavor combinations, you get cherry and orange, apple and lemon, and blueberry and blackcurrant.

The snakes are easy enough to tear apart though I found that the heads often struggled to come completely unattached from the opposite end I started pulling. Though the sweet part still had that sugary taste, I did definitely detect a little bit sour from that side as well. I really enjoyed the unique take on the gummy worm and found it to be a highly flavored gummy with a delicious addition of unique flavors like blackcurrant. My only wish for this one is that the body of each side of the worm was a little more plump.

As a kid, one of my favorite types of stores to scout out on family vacations was candy stores. I love the bulk candy kind where you would scoop the candy into a bag and then weigh it at the end. In these shops, I would always run for the cherry-flavored candies. These were the ones that absolutely had my heart, and perhaps the queen of such candies was none other than cherry gummy candies. To this day, I find it hard to resist grabbing a bag of Haribo Happy Cherries at checkout counters when I spot them. Most notably, my Joann Fabrics has them at the checkout lane, and I almost always leave with a bag to enjoy on the way home. So, when making my gummy trial selection, I knew I wanted to pit these cherries against the other flavors to see how they truly stand up.

The cherry gummy candy is created to look like two cherries connected by a stem. It's an absolutely charming presentation and one that is certainly hard not to love. However, the bite factor on these is much chewier than some other offerings. Even still, I definitely prefer the cherry flavor over most other offerings from Haribo. It's just perfectly classically cherry.

After trying several gummies, you come to expect certain similarities between the different types. They tend to be a little on the translucent side with a gummy toughness to them. However, the very clouds are quite a bit different than this expectation.

The back of the bag advertises them coming in blueberry, wild berry, and strawberry flavors in blue, purple, and red, respectively. On the tops of the clouds, you have the color and on the bottom of the clouds, you have this creamy white color signifying a cloud. The gummies are quite a bit thicker and squishier than other yummy offerings, and if you tend to prefer more traditional gummies, this probably won't be a preference. However, I found the extra thick nature of these gummies to be deeply satisfying. There's a great bite and squish factor, and the flavors are quite good, too. The white layer adds a little bit of extra creaminess to the flavor, making each type feel like a creamier version of its fruit counterpart.

Preparing for such a tasty ranking as this one was great fun. Utilizing the online candy stone Candy Funhouse, I looked for a mix of familiar and unique.

Tasting each one over a series of days, I ranked them according to flavor and texture. In general, ones with a squishier texture ranked high, and in terms of flavor, I looked for ones that were enjoyable to taste and without too much sweetness.