I feel like this is a vestige of retro candy in Thailand. I only say Thailand because that’s where I bought these jellies, but it could be that they’re classic candies from other parts of the world too. It’s not that they don’t make jelly candies anymore, the thing about modern jelly candies is they have a few more perks and added features to make them a little more interesting. These are very simple, with no fruit suspended in them, and with a design that seems like it’s trying to make it easy to take out of the container, as opposed to looking cool. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that these are fine candies, they just look like they’ve been around for a while.

From a functionality standpoint, they’re pretty good. The jelly seems to slide out of the package fairly easily. The little plastic lid is a little challenging to peel, and I welcome anyone who might have a trick to opening these to share it with me. However, once you open it up if you’re careful not to splash the top layer of liquid around too much, it’s a fairly easy snack to eat.

Flavour wise I would put these in an interesting place. I find that some of the fruit flavours seem somewhat genuine. I would say that the pineapple seems the closest to the real thing, with the orange being somewhat in between a fake flavour and a real orange flavour. The grape, apple and strawberry are a little bit fake, but kind of subtle. It’s as if they mixed some other juices to tamper down the fake fruit flavours. Without putting any judgment, I would guess that the pineapple is the most realistic because these are made in a place where pineapple is a common fruit. The other fruit flavours can fake it a little more because there’s less expectation.

This brings me to something I would have loved to have seen, more South East Asian flavours. Why there isn’t a mango, or a lychee flavoured jelly I don’t really understand. In many candies for their classic flavours they go for flavours that are local, these instead went for flavours that are much more foreign, or that were foreign when they came out. It’s not that I didn’t like the attempt, I just feel like it might have been fun to have a little more local flavour in them.