One of my issues with candy is when they aren’t as advertised. “Real fruit flavor” doesn’t mean it necessarily tastes like any particular type of fruit, and “Natural Flavors” doesn’t mean organic. Similarly, when candy makers call their sweets “sour” they are often just ‘tangy.’ So when a package shows up at my door (or actually, Jonny’s door) with candy calling itself sour and made with real fruit juice, well then we gots ourselves a special kind of scrutiny.

And then of course we have the jelly bean. Which until the Jelly Belly, all tasted like poop. When Jelly Bellys showed up, they proved that candy can actually have a real flavor that tastes like what it’s called. Which is great, unless you are trying to compete with them. Generally, the Gurus have found that Jelly Belly does the beans the best and everyone else should let them keep the crown.

So here we are with Gimbal’s Sour Gourmet Jelly Beans. 12 flavors, which all begin with “sour,” and include the regulars like grape, lemon, cherry, strawberry and apple. But Gimbal’s also gives you sour blueberry, watermelon, tangerine, mango, lime and everyone’s new fave flave: pomegranate.

Starting with the flavors? Overall quite good (!), with some truer than others. The apple wasn’t uber-Fuji, and the strawberry didn’t even really taste like the faux version, but the pomegranate was yums, the mango had its natural overtones, and the lime tasted like a limesicle without the coldness. I could have used more of the fake grape taste that I so love, while the lemon was spot on. The blueberry was in fact “juicy” tasting and the tangerine was uniquely citrus-y.

Now, per the sour…well, I’d call these more ‘super tangy’ and not straight up sour, but that could be because I’m old and my tastebuds are shot to shit. They were still good and I kept eating them to keep checking on the flavors. Eating 3 apples at a time was dreamy and poppin’ sour grapefruits was yumsworthy too.

Really my only true critique was that I wished they had a tougher chew to them, but they were as most jelly beans were WRT to texture.

My rec? Get these if you find them, and eat 2 or 3 at a time.