I don’t get cravings for candy very often, but when I do, they tend to fall into two categories: chocolate, or sour (there is a third, Twizzlers, but we’ll just keep it simple). Chocolate I tend to gnaw on once in a while because, thanks to having a wife and child, there always seems to be some in the house. However, there are no better snacks for watching a movie than sour candy. Preferably a kind with sugar fully coating the exterior.

I was at Dollar Tree looking over the usual suspects (and looking for Blow Pops and/or Ring Pops and/or Bit o’ Honeys for my sugar-obsessed wife) when a new option caught my eye: Sweeto Fruit Flavored Sour Straws. They’re fairly long “straws” of varying colors that are filled with a white “sweet filling”. I’ve seen another brand of these at DT before (under the name Sour Dudes), so I’m wondering if this is replacing those, or if this is just a knockoff of a knockoff. At any rate, I was in the mood for something sweet and these looked like they would fit the bill, so I bought them!

With my mouth watering, I eagerly dug in. Here are my opinions of each individual flavor:

Orange: Nice orange taste, with hints of creamsicle that peek out. I don’t like creamsicles at all, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t turn me off. I actually like this flavor quite a bit. It’s obviously a fakey orange flavor, but good for a candy, and it definitely fits the “sour” title.

Red: I don’t know where the hell this one goes wrong, but it does. It’s strawberry, which one would think would be one of the hardest candy flavors to mess up. It starts off sweet and sour, but then veers off into an indescribable territory that I was not expecting…it almost tastes the way rubber smells. A surefire bomb here.

Yellow: Whoa, here we have quite a surprise! I expected this to be a lemon, or maybe even a pineapple, but it’s neither of those things. Instead, it’s banana! Sour banana is a flavor that I don’t think I’ve ever heard of or imagined, but somehow they manage to pull it off. Of course it’s an extremely artificial banana flavor, but it somehow mixes with the sugary sourness surprisingly well. 

Blue: I’m not even sure what this flavor is supposed to be…maybe a blue raspberry? Yep, I’m thinking it’s a blue raspberry. The flavor isn’t as pronounced as other similar candies, so it’s more a sour glob of sweetness, but I didn’t mind it. Not my favorite, but the addition of the sour is enough to keep your tastebuds interested. 

Green: I had to consult my wife on this one, and, like the blue, it’s another flavor that should have been pretty obvious: apple. The fact I had to ask means it’s not a typical sour apple taste, although it is more noticeable in the aftertaste. It’s not great on its own, but thankfully the tanginess is there to help offset the weaker aspects. 

Well there you have it! Out of the five included flavors, two are very good, two are okay, and only one is an abject failure. That might not sound like a good outcome, but it’s actually better than I thought it would be. 

Now, since these were purchased at Dollar Tree, we already know the price…but does it represent good value? I mean, just because something is cheap, doesn’t mean it’s worth the price, or that you even get a decent amount for your hard-earned money. Well, each pack contains 16 sour straws, which comes out to around $.06 per straw. That’s some solid value in my book, especially considering the straws are of good length (I’d say somewhere around six inches…okay, let the low-brow jokes commence). There’s really quite a bit of candy here for the price.

There is another downside, though one that should be expected of any sugar coated candy: The sugar gets all over the place. After carelessly eating a few, it looked like I had a severe case of dandruff, as it stuck all over my clothes and the couch around me. Oops! My wife wasn’t too happy about that.

Another bonus: its small profile would make it a very easy candy to sneak into a movie theater, with the added plus that you can just brush all the sugar off onto the floor and let those minimum wage workers clean it up!

Overall: 6/10. Out of five flavors, two are very good, two are okay, and one is an abject failure. However, all of them have a good blast of sour that came close to making me pucker, without actually crossing that line. The “sweet filling” in the middle might seem a little odd, but it doesn’t seem to add much besides maintaining a soft texture throughout. Fans of sour candy should find quite a bit to like here, especially in the way of value: each 16-count pack is available at Dollar Tree for, well, a dollar. That comes out to just six cents per straw, which is pretty solid, in my book.