Easter will be here in a few weeks, and shelves everywhere are bursting with Eastroturf grass, cheaply Nantucket-Lightship-priced woven baskets (thanks Donald), and an eye-watering amount of brightly colored candies.

So I thought I’d talk about that most venerated of Easter confectionary traditions, the noble jelly bean…which has the distinction as the only “bean” that I will eat.

Obviously there’s been a boom in bean makers and flavors over the years, and as I stood marveling at the cornucopia of corn syrup, I arrived at a very grave decision.

“Okay. Yeah. I’m getting them all.“

Caveat: Not “all” of them. As I said, we’re in Biff Tannen Donald Trump’s America now, which dictates the need to maintain levels of personal funding for glamorous things like rice, shovels, and bullets. Also my wife gave the an upward glance that conveyed an, “oh God, he’s doing a thing again” which may have had something to do with cutting short the sugar bean parade that was ending in our shopping cart.

That said, I bought a wide selection. So let’s get into it…

SKITTLES

Pretty standard candy, Skittles. Invented in 1974. Honestly an O.G. Skittle isn’t that far off from a jelly bean, so this one should be a layup for them.

Flavors:
Grape – Exceptionally dry. Not entirely unlike chewing purple sand.
Strawberry – Uncannily PeptoBismol-flavored. Would be helpful later after my 100th bean.
Lime – Like a doe vomit nugget, after it ate too much mint.
Lemon – It’s uncanny how much this was like eating a concentrated pellet of Pledge furniture duster spray.
Orange – This was the best one of the bunch, and it was …fine.
COMBO! – The lime green flavor was totally overpowering here, which turned the whole business into something like mint julep and Elmer’s glue.

Coloration
The “S” that’s printed on Every. Single. Bean. seems a bit obsessive and like a waste of money, but otherwise the colors were just fine. Pretty standard jellybean fare.

Shape
Seems like Skittles scientists couldn’t decide whether they wanted these things to be disc-shaped, like your prototypical Skittle, or actually bean-shaped. So they just said “hell with it…” and let their freak bean flag fly. Zero uniformity.

Overall Grade
Disappointed in these, given that I do quite like Skittles.

SOUR PATCH KIDS – WATERMELON

In my fervor to load candy into our basket before anyone told me to stop, I was unaware that these were only watermelon flavored. If I’d known, I probably would’ve picked something else.

Flavors:
Watermelon & Watermelon – Individually, these weren’t terrible…pending you like sour candy. Both colors were identical in flavor and were fine. As long as you ate them one at a time.
COMBO! – This is where things went all wrong. A mouthful of these was akin to taking a large bite out of a saltwatermelon. I actually had to spit this one out.

Coloration
Despite the picture, the green and pink together were pretty evident of watermelony-ness.

Shape
Again, didn’t even try for a bean shape. Just made little round balls of tartness that, when conglomerated, turn into a MS-13 gang of sour hate.

Overall Grade
If you undertake the monotonous activity of eating them one at a time, these are fine. Just don’t invite more than one to the fiesta.

TROLLI

I have no idea what “sour brite” means. The only “brite” I’m aware of is “Rainbow Brite,” and these things tasted like eating her kidney stones.

Flavors:
Grape/Apple – Amazingly, this somehow tasted like nothing at all. Like tepid ice gel.
Strawberry/Grape – This tasted like eating/swallowing Big League Chew
Lemon/Cherry– I couldn’t tell the difference between this and Lemon/Raspberry, which didn’t matter because they both tasted like licking an armpit.
Lemon/Raspberry– See “armpit” above.
Raspberry/Strawberry – Honestly couldn’t tell you what flavor this tasted like. It seemed like they were just throwing elements of the periodic table together to see which stuck and weren’t poisonous.
COMBO! – Like gnawing on a bile duct. Just awful.

Coloration
Trolli gets full marks for their colors here. They look like robin eggs which is very spring-like. The unfortunate bit is that the color combos are random, so it’s difficult to tell exactly which flavor you’re eating.

Shape
They made a solid effort at maintaining optimal beaniness. If only they’d made them taste good too.

Overall Grade
Godawful. If you see these at a store you could save a child’s Easter by dumping them into the nearest toilet.

STARBURST

My favorite jellybeans of all time are actually the Starburst Sour ones. Unfortunately those have inexplicably disappeared. This is something I find unsettling if I dwell on it too long, given how many of them I ate over their limited market lifetime.

Flavors:
Cherry – Solid facsimile of a Starburst cherry, which is empirically the best flavor of them all.
Lemon – I found these to be strangely tough. Like trying to chew day old gum.
Grape – Again, a pretty good grape flavor considering there’s no such thing as a grape Starburst.
Strawberry – This one’s a bit weak. Much like the original candy.
Lime – This would be why there are no lime Starburst in the world. Avoid.
Orange – Best of the bunch. Fantastic little bean. I’d eat a whole bag of these things if they made just orange ones.
COMBO! – Individually these are good, but a whole handful at a time is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Flavors bounce around really well and the consistency is soft, making them easy to chew.

Coloration
Not to be outdone by Skittles, they apparently felt the need to print “Starburst” on every individual bean. Otherwise this is what jelly beans look like. All good.

Shape
Being perfectly oval is bean-adjacent, so I’ll let it slide.

Overall Grade
These were not quite as good as the sour ones from days of yore, which is why they’re not rated 5-out-of-5, but they’re still quite good.

NERDS

I did not notice the “Big Chewy” descriptor on these when I purchased them. All I saw was the grape Nerd wearing bunny ears and decided they were comin’ home with me.

Flavors:
Grape – Tastes exactly like Triaminic cough syrup from the 1980’s.
Lemon – Like chewing a softer version of the center of a Lemonhead…which is the worst part of that candy.
Strawberry – Closest to an original “Nerd” flavor, but very quickly gives way to a mash of chemical yuck.
Orange – Again, this was the best flavor. What is it about the orange ones that these companies seem to consistently get right?
COMBO! – The candy coating on these makes eating multiples way too sweet, not to mention a dental hazard. Individually they’re not bad, but together they taste like licking a urinal cake.

Coloration
The colors? Fine. But dat bumpiness…

Shape
Them lovely candy lumps are weird, man. The texture is like sandpaper when you pick them up (which actually helps when attempting to eat them in singular doses), and Jen said it reminded her of those horrible marine mammal barnacle videos that were so disturbing they caused her to exit social media as a whole.

Overall Grade
The taste wasn’t bad, but we all struggled to get over the weird texture.

SWEETARTS

SweeTarts are the GOAT of candies as far as I’m concerned. I will eat entire sleeves of them in one sitting until the insides of my mouth are flecked with citric acid chunks. At which point Ill probably gargle some water and start all over again. This is why we do not keep them in the house.
As such, I was concerned that I would start eating this bag and would not stop until my head melted off from all the acid in them.

Flavors:
Cherry – This was a blast of flavory…stuff. I don’t know if it was cherry per se, but whatever it was it’s powerful stuff.
Orange – Hmm. Just okay. Despite orange being the best of all the other beans, this one was pretty mediocre.
Fruit Punch – I have never understood why SweeTarts chose blue for their “fruit punch” flavor back in 2011. This was fine, though.
Lemon – I thought this was mediocre, perhaps bordering on bad. Jen absolutely hated it, though, claiming it tasted “like toilet bowl cleaner.” This was enough for her to quit eating the SweeTart ones completely.
Green Apple – Surprisingly dull for a flavor that’s known for its tartness.
Grape – Best grape flavor out of everything we tested. The sour was enough to give it just the right kick.
COMBO! – Not great. It’s just tarty chaos. Like eating a Lik-M-Aid (now called a “FunDip”) with a salt lick instead of a Lik-a-Stix. Then again, I don’t eat multiple SweeTarts at once, so this makes sense.

Coloration
A bit matte, but definitely hit the right Easter notes with their colors. Pretty good here.

Shape
Look! Bean-shaped beans! Why is that so hard?

Overall Grade
These were pretty good, but the salt assault that happens when you eat them by the handful docked them a point.

Overall I think the winner was…

WINNER

The combination of good flavors, standard bean shape, and the tandem flavor profiles makes it the best jellybeans we tested.

Daphne, however, let her feelings be known on the entire jellybean experiment.

See you next week.

j.s.