#ThrowbackThursdays: Fruit Roll Ups, Fruit by the Foot and Gushers

Up until I was about sixteen years old I didn't like chocolate.  Gasp you say?  Right?  What pubescent teenager turning into a woman/anybody with a pulse doesn't like chocolate?  Believe me, there are those of us out there.  I guess I was sort of badgered into liking chocolate in high school (everyone was doing it man) and now I'm addicted (I'm sure it has some chemical your body gets addicted to or something so you are bffs for life).  Or something.  

But anyways, BEFORE that time I was (and still am) in love with gummies.  And by gummies I mean my parents wouldn't just go out and buy me CANDY, it had to be prepackaged and labeled as something all little children carry in their lunch boxes as a balanced meal (but still basically candy... corn syrup if you will).

EXHIBIT A

 

OH delicious.  How could anything that color be made with real fruit?  Did they just toss a banana in a giant batch that comes out with 500 Fruit Roll Ups and say "made with real fruit"?  My favorite kind was the pizza one where they had shapes of pizza toppings you could punch out and put on a circle.  Such a flavor confusion!

EXHIBIT B

 

Also.

 

How cute are they?  Fruit by the foot was fun because it came in this compact little roll that you could undo (like said picture) to be a tongue of a snake, dragon, crocodile, or basically any animal/reptile.  One could also reroll it into shapes or compress it all on your tongue to make an awesome (mess) compacted ball of flavor(!).  I liked the tie dye ones (far right side of the front of the box) because they turned my lips and tongue blue.  Who wouldn't like that?  

EXHIBIT C

So these guys are gem-shaped pebbles that explode "juice" goo when you bite into them.  How much better could that get?  This especially goes for when the Gushers people got wise and changed the color of the goo on the inside from shell so you could bite off the tip and squeeze out the goo to see what color it was.  Also, how about when all three of these fruit snacks got wise to "mystery" flavors?  How long did it take to figure that out?  It actually tasted like a mix up of all of the other ones and I'm sure the flavor people were like oooooooh keep those suckers guessin but we actually didn't do any work.  Or something like that.

(.... and yes these said flavor people dress up as devils and rub their hands together when they make up these mystery flavors.)