I’ve been eating cola bottle gummies for a very long time. They were the first gummy candy I had as a kid, even before the bears. I was drawn to them because when I was less than 12 years old I wasn’t allowed to have soft drinks very often. Also, in my home town, the only place you could get cola bottles were in the strange tea room shoppe. Not in the 5 and Dime. Not in the super market. The 2-tone foreignness and the hour glass shape of the cola bottle gummy was super seductive.

As I’ve grown older, and my obsession with candy has become downright ridiculous, one thing I’ve come to understand is that the general cola bottles are pretty consistent – only occasionally changing in chewiness or aroma florality (yes I made that word up). When candy makers decided to shake things up by adding sour sugar on the gummy bottles, reliability went out the door. Now we have fizzy cola bottles, and sometimes you think they’ll be sour and actually they are just sweeter. Even the best gummy manufacturer in the world can be undependable. The sour fizzy Haribo cola bottles are good in the US, but buy them in Europe and you get a wholly much tastier experience. Ever had those blue cola bottles in the bins? No idea who makes them, I’m not even sure they are cola. Maybe blueberry soda? (Whatever they are they taste like crap.)

Enter Candy Tech with their “Sour Gummi Soda Pop Gummi Candies in bottle shapes.” (Hey guys – quick suggestion: shorten the name.)

I found these at the newly revamped Powell’s candy store in Novato California and assumed they’d be run-o-the-mill, general tasting gummies. I was incorrect. They were in fact very tasty – the orange soda flavor tasted like Fanta. The Cherry Cola like Cherry Cola. The lemon lime had some 7-Up undertones for sure, and the plain ol’ cola was tried and true. More importantly, the sour was actually sour, and the firmness of the gummy made these ultra chewy, which for me is the difference between a 3-star rating and a
4-star one. The bottles aren’t too big, so the package was packed and generally inexpensive – $1.89 for a nice heaping helping.

I assumed these would be fair to middling, but if you like the sour hard gummy, and you’re partial to cola, then Candy Tech comes through.