To Starbursts: Just make different variations of cherry please

Well it's about time I got around to this. At the same time that I picked up a bag of Skittles Fizzl'd Fruits at 7-11, which they no longer carry by the way, there was also a new kind of Starburst. This new variety of Starbursts was called "Summer Fun Fruits" and when I saw that I immediately thought of Tropical Starubursts or the Baja variety. I held out for a few weeks before actually buying them, because besides the Original and Sour variety, they tend to disappoint. Luckily they were still in store when I searched for them.



The packaging makes me think of a cool rush of water. It certainly looks like it would be refreshing on a warm Summer's day. However, if you notice on the packaging it features two fruit flavors that I hate when it comes to candy: watermelon and banana. I don't know why gum makers can get watermelon right, but candy makers tend to get watermelon so very wrong. It also seems like no one can make a good banana flavor. Here are the different flavors:


From left to right we have Cherry Splash, Strawberry Watermelon, Lemon Limeade, and Kiwi Banana. How did the flavors rank you ask?

1. Cherry Splash: It's no surprise that I liked this flavor best, as most of the time cherry is my favorite flavor when it comes to fruit candy. Cherry Splash, however, doesn't taste that much like cherry and it would have been more suitable to call it Tropical Splash or something like that. The flavor is like Hawaiian Punch, so even though it doesn't really taste like cherry, it still tastes very good.

2. Strawberry Watermelon: I was very surprised when eating this one because the watermelon flavor was actually very good. It reminded me of watermelon flavored Bubblicious or some other watermelon flavored gum. It was nice to see that Starburst got the flavor right. A few seconds after the watermelon flavor passed, the strawberry flavor kicked in and it became a pretty standard, albeit solid, strawberry flavored Starburst.

3. Kiwi Banana: Another surprise, I really thought that I would hate this flavor, but it wasn't bad at all. I tasted very little kiwi, but the banana flavor was dead on. It didn't taste like artificial banana like you would find in Laffy Taffy or something, but instead it was the closest thing I've tasted to banana in candy form. Again, there was no kiwi taste, but that doesn't matter because the banana was good enough that I didn't mind.

4. Lemon Limeade: I'm not sure where they went wrong here. I suppose they improved on two flavors that I thought would be bad, but they also seemed to screw up a sure thing. I love lime flavored candies, with lime being my second favorite flavor of Original Mike & Ike and my favorite flavored Skittle. This one smelled like ginger. I am not kidding when I say that the flavor didn't resemble lime or lemon and that it had a strong herbal smell. Definitely at the bottom of the pile.

So I can't say that I would purchase a stick of Summer Fun Fruits Starbursts over a stick of Original or Sour Starbursts, but I can say that it's not bad. These are flavors I'm sure that they've put out before and they just decided to repackage and re-arrange them to make it seem like it was brand new. Although not a bad candy, Summer Fun Fruits Starbursts certainly are skippable.