The Jelly Belly company is primarily known for making colorful, Reagan-sanctioned pellets in 50+ “life-like” flavors such as “juicy pear,” “crushed pineapple” and “toasted marshmallow.”
In recent years, though, the company has branched out. They capitalized on the Harry Potter phenomenon by producing a real-life version of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans: Sardine, vomit and ear wax are a few of the gross tastes you can find in each box.
And now the company has another unusual product, Bean Boozled, seemingly tailor-made for playground bullies or perhaps those into S&M. There are 20 kinds of BB beans: 10 in delicious flavors like coconut, cafe latte and peach and 10 in gross flavors such as baby wipes (hopefully unused), pencil shavings and skunk spray.
The catch is that each tasty treat looks exactly the same as a nugget of nastiness. For example, both the toothpaste and berry flavors come an an icy, electric blue color, while tutti-frutti and vomit are pink with colorful dots. There’s absolutely no way to tell the difference.
Fun party game or stupid marketing ploy? You decide.
One more note: One of the “unpleasant” flavors is moldy cheese. Pardon? I love me some moldy cheese. I’d take a big hunk of Bayley Hazen Blue over a box of jelly beans any day.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2008.
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