N Candy AA II: Sidebar
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on October 25, 2010 – 3:50 PM101 Comments
While we wait for the Round of 64 voting to finish, I thought I’d see which breed of fake fruit you find the most disgusting. Everyone has a different fake-fruit nemesis, often derived from a Keckler’s-sister-esque run-in with a particular candy as a child (or a Night of the Living DeKuyper incident as a sophomore); mine is fake cherry, which I hiz-ZATE, but I bet faux-nana wins. Well, “wins.”
What’s your most blerf-inducing fake-fruit “taste”? And what do you think everyone else will pick? Whether it’s in candy, gum, Snapple, cough drops, or soda, now’s your chance to indict a “froot.”
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Tags: barfing food N Candy AA unmourned odors of childhood
Edited to merge lemon/lime and add grapefruit to orange. Hope that doesn’t affect anyone’s votes unduly.
I had a really bad run-in with a lemon-flavored cake when I was a kid and thus I have to give my vote for that. I get the fake-banana hate, but banana Runts? Awesome. The taste has nothing whatsoever to do with bananas (or anything else identifiable, for that matter) but whatever it is, it’s awesome. So… on that basis alone, I had to pass up fake banana in “favor” of the fake lemon.
Fake WATERmelon specifically is the worst “flavor” ever invented. It tastes nothing like watermelon and only tastes wrong. I suspect it’s probably made by mixing fake cherry + fake banana together *shudder*
Uch, fake banana. I have nausea-inducing memories of senior year organic chemistry in high school where we cooked that crap up in class, and I haven’t touched it since.
It’s tough. Fake banana in general is horrible, but my loathing of the chemical green apple taste/smell in Jolly Ranchers (and dish soap, and air fresheners) is more intense, I think.
“Night of the Living DeKuyper”…. hehe! Brilliant!
Incidentally, my first run in with the nastiness that is fake banana was a banana Runt. It took me years to even try *any* Runts again after that. Fake grape is a close second.
I had to go with fake apple, but more specifically mine is fake green apple. Whether it’s a Jolly Rancher or a Blow Pop or a martini, real green apples do not taste like suck quite that much.
@Jenn is absolutely right. Fake watermelon is obscene.
Ohhhh, so hard to choose between cherry and grape! They’re both sooooo awful! In the end, I had to give it to grape. Just thinking about those summer popsicles at the neighborhood pool… *shudder*
Oh, fake orange flavor. How do I hate thee? I blame my dislike of all artificially flavored orange things on Triaminic cold medicine and St. Joseph’s baby aspirin.
Judging from the unofficial poll I have conducted by being the person who refills the candy dish full of Jolly Ranchers in my office, people do not like fake grape and really like fake apple.
Raspberry obviously wins because it’s almost always BLUE in its fake candy forms. Whyyyy? To distinguish it from other standard “red” flavors like cherry I assume. But it’s just so gross. Blue raspberry, barf!
Um, definitely gotta give it to fake banana. It is the flavor of barf.
Do not understand the hate for fake cherry, grape and orange though. Luden’s Wild Cherry cough drops? Awesome. Orange-flavored baby aspirin? I used to fake headaches to get it when I was a wee child. And Alexander the Grape is by far the best Otter Pop flavor ever.
I despise fake raspberry mostly for the color. Raspberries are not blue!
Oh, banana. I can only just stand you as a fruit; as a candy you are almost as bad as bubblegum. Barf.
Watermelon and banana are both pretty bad… but for me Peach is the worst. I have no idea why, but the smell and flavor of fake peach reminds me of cat pee (I have never actually tasted cat pee).
Sour Apple due to a ‘Pucker’ incident (shudder)
Fake watermelon reminds me of that horrible “cherry” flavor that they would put in the flouride goo at the dentist’s office. It’s not that it tastes bad, it’s just that it is so shockingly artificial.
I’m with Jenn. Fake watermelon is the grossest thing imaginable. I’d rather eat a thousand banana Runts than one watermelon Jolly Rancher.
I actually really like fake cherry and grape, possibly more than their natural counterparts.
I’m squarely on the side of grape, based purely on the fact that my mother fed us these horrendous prescription fluoride vitamins, which came in a mix of orange, red, and hateful grape. It’s led to a lifetime of avoiding purple food. (Also reasonably good teeth, but the indignity of being forced to eat the painfully bad purple ones haunts me to this day.)
I voted for banana, and want to proclaim that I have a bizarre love for artificial grape flavoring.
So, I voted for banana, because BLECCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHH, but the fact that I couldn’t vote for banana, sour apple, AND watermelon was practically KILLING ME, so much so that I had to comment rather than let my hatred remain unexpressed.
I love fake banana. As a kid I used to sneak in to the fridge and try to open the “banana medicine”, which I felt was like a treat for being sick – liquid penicillin. Love.
@Ellen: Omg, orange Triaminic! Just the memory of that makes me gag. And the yellow…shudder.
As I recall from previous discussions, though, Sars thought that the orange Triaminic was yummy. Poor, deluded child.
Ohh, so difficult to choose between fake banana and fake (water)melon. I feel nauseated just thinking about it.
Mmmm, orange Triaminic. Red was acceptable, BARELY, but the yellow, eh meh geh nehhhhhh.
I voted for banana, but I’m with Ellen on the fake orange. That was a close second due to a traumatic childhood incident where the taste of orange Triaminic cold medicine was so disgusting that I threw it up immediately after my parents gave it to me.
Big ginormous boo to lemon/lime flavored skittles, bleh, reminds me of the smell of floor cleaner. But as for banana, I’m lucky to have a twin sister who hates both real AND fake banana, so I get all her banana flavored Runts, yum :)
Yeah, orange Triaminic was the shiznit. As opposed to orange chewable aspirin, which the very thought of them is bringing on a severe childhood illness RIGHT NOW.
I have a weird affection for fake watermelon. I know that it tastes nothing like watermelon whatsoever, which should turn me off, but doesn’t. The smell of watermelon gum brings me right back to middle school. …Which should also make me hate it, but somehow doesn’t.
You should do a follow-up poll of the most reviled fake flavors whose real equivalents people actually enjoy (looking for the largest spread on one’s enjoyment-revulsion scale). The results might be interesting—I voted for banana here but I also hate real bananas with a blinding passion.
Ugh… fake peach. Just the smell of those gummy peach rings gives me a headache and a profound case of the barfles. I get the fake banana hate, but I kinda like it and those banana runts are A MAZ ING.
Fun Fact: that fake banana flavor is isoamyl acetate. Those fancy aromatic esters make up most of your artificial fruit flavorings. Better living through chemistry, y’all!
Orange Triaminic was delicious. I am glad someone else remembers the yellow. My sister and I still talk about how gross that crap was, that and Juicy Juice.
I voted for cherry, because it is gross. I don’t particularly care for real cherries, but fake cherry doesn’t even rise to that dubiously high level. The only passable fake-cherry candy is the cherry Starburst.
I’m mercifully unfamiliar with fake banana. I remember banana Runts, but like Rachel said, whatever flavor they were, it was definitely not banana.
@melina: I had those vitamins too! The red and orange were bearable but I used to try and sneak the grape ones into the trash without my parents noticing.
Real banana makes me gag unless it’s in a nut bread form, so I’m giving it to fake banana.
I love fake cherry more than is probably healthy. I would not be able to stomach cough drops without it.
I hate anything from the peach/nectarine and melon families, so I almost picked fake peach, but… fake banana wins out, in the end, because I like real banana and the candy version is so, so wrong.
(I actually hate most fruit, due to either texture or flavor issues. Bananas are one of the few things I can eat without trying to pretend part of my mouth is somewhere else.)
I think of this problem in terms of colors than actual attempts at flavors. For example: I generally despise fake red, fake purple, and fake blue (representing the cherries, berries, and grapes). I generally like fake green, fake orange, and fake yellow (representing the citrus family).
That said: count me in for watermelon Jolly Rancher love. I have no explanation for it.
For some reason, in my group of friends, the top-this tales of baroque childhood blerfs always ALWAYS involve grape, real and imagined. I’m neutral on fake grape and enjoy the real thing; it’s just funny how, at a certain point in these stories, I’m like, “And here comes the part where she drank an entire two-liter bottle of grape Crush,” and I’m always right.
I think I might like fake banana better than real bananas.
But fake grape must die. Grape juice, grape soda, grape Jolly Ranchers? Blech, blech, and blech.
Ugh. Fake watermelon and fake banana can both go eat bees, as far as I’m concerned.
The only artificial flavors I universally don’t like are banana and raspberry. I can tolerate real bananas if necessary, and love real raspberries.
Artificial grape flavor obviously tastes nothing like grapes, but I like it in a lot of cases. Grape soda and grape Bubblicious gum are the flavors of childhood.
I had no idea some people object to artificial cherry or lemon, although I can see why lemon and lime might remind some of floor cleaner! I love them.
My favorite Jolly Ranchers are watermelon and sour apple. Feel free to send me your unwanted JRs.
OT for a sec: Danica at candyrecapper.com is, well, recapping the N Candy AA. And “thanks” to one of her recent entries, I learned that there used to be yogurt Pez, blerf!: http://www.candyrecapper.com/n-candy-aa/
I had to go with “other,” just because kiwi in any form is NASTY. Ugh. Even though I barfed up grape soda, once, I have forgiven it. Kiwi can never be forgiven, ever, for its weird hairy seediness.
I love fake watermelon, even though it doesn’t remotely taste like watermelon.
Fake banana is the flavor of shame and lost hope.
Fake grape = dimetapp
ANYTHING fake grape gives me the heaves. Just *thinking* about a grape Jolly Rancher makes my mouth twist up and my throat close.
Also, LOVE banana runts, HATE IRL bananas.
Is there such a thing as pear-flavored candy? I’m trying to think of any, and I can’t.
Hate the green apple flavors, especially Jolly Rancher. Blech. For a long time, I thought maraschino cherries were the only type of cherries, so I’d have nothing to do with cherry-flavored anything. Then I discovered cherry-flavor taffy (not sure if it was Laffy Taffy–it was a school thing). Yum. I also like grape and lemon/lime. I don’t hate watermelon, but given a choice I usually select something else. If they’re the only ones left in the Jolly Rancher bag I’ll eat them, whereas green apple I throw away.
The one that is a real blerf is fake tropical flavors. I had strep as a child and the Augmentin was pineapple/tropical flavor, which I cannot stand to this day. At the same time I had a cherry icee-thing that started to taste like that medicine after awhile. But I don’t mind other cherry flavors, just the icee-things.
Clearly everyone here has forgotten the pure wretch that is the peach rings. You know the ones I mean? They’re like a donut of styrofoam with a fake peach flavor injected into it? On the basis of that horrible monster of a candy alone, peach should win this thing.
But banana popsicles are delicious! I thought everyone loved them! No?
@Tracy, oh muh guh, Hawaiian punch flavors. I spent a few years getting regular CAT scans, prep for which involved drinking a full quart of radiodense solution that was always mixed with (no doubt off-brand) HP Kool-Aid. I hated Hawaiian punch to begin with; it does not improve when mixed with metallo-chemical ichor from the depths of Bayer. Now even the sight of that gharstly red stuff brings back memories of trying to chug warm pseudo-tropical death fluid without having it touch a tastebud. BLEARGH.