Air Heads Sour

In the spirit of revenge bedtime procrastination, I engaged in a little revenge candy procuration at CVS today after being charged an insane amount for a prescription. I never liked Air Heads, but they recently (read: in the last 20 years sometime) added a little "peanut and tree nut free" logo on their stuff just like Tootsie, and as blogfans will know, a nut free declaration is enough to woo me. (It also says gluten free, but that's not my circus etc). Anyway, I do like sour candy, so these are pretty decent despite the (a) disgusting airhead texture (melty chew with weird gritty gristle spots) and (b) devastating health profile (ingredients partitioned entirely into artificial colors/flavors, and sugar). On the plus side, these seem smaller than they used to be, which is a positive because one Air Head is a lot, especially when sour. The sourness does make them more interesting. And I appreciate that I'm not dying or afraid I am. I also like the name in an ironic reclamatory way, because despite being academically successful once upon a time (not so much now; hehe lol), I got called an airhead a lot. So the silly little balloon mascot is like my twinsie! : )

Sour Blue Blast: The color is blue, the flavor is blue. Tastes like blue air head, but sour. I dunno what else to say. Makes my teeth want to curl up and die, but my brain want to continue living. Such is life with a sugarbomb. Because it's so hot out, the texture was extra chewy-droopy, but it didn't melt into a gross caramel or goo, so that's a plus. Very floppy. Still gritty, which upsets me. Would eat again of course. 6/10

Sour Lemon Berry Squeeze: What a name. Here the color is yellow, but the flavor is colorless. I guess there's vague lemon in there, but it's mostly just sugar. Not even really that sour. What are we doing here? I think it's worse than Blue. 6/10

Sour Watermelon Punch: The color is teal blue (not green)! The flavor is watermelon, but sour. I guess a tiny bit of punch (aka purple skittle flavor). This is the most complex of the three -- the most nuanced, and therefore the best. I think it's also the least overwhelmingly sweet. Also the least gritty, although that's likely just a fluke. 7/10

Overall
Cost: 5/10 [3$?ish]
Taste: 6/10  

Airheads Xtremes Bites - Rainbow Berry

Airheads are great about nut allergies, but they don't taste very good, so I had low hopes for this thing. But these bites are way better than airheads proper! I liked them a lot, they weren't super sour but had a nice firm bite, texture-wise, and were tasty on the whole, even though you can taste the cornstarch(?) in 'em, or whatever makes them firm. I like it.

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 8/10

Airheads

Airheads! What a classic and unique candy. These are nut-free, even with the little X-thru-a-peanut symbol on the packaging, so I'm predisposed to like them. Plus you get 5 individually wrapped bars here, so you can save them for however many servings you like, which is nice (I'd recommend 5). The flavors are fairly distinct, I think cherry is my favorite and blue (just blue) is my least favorite, as it's the sweetest with the least nuance. (I'm not sure what the White Mystery flavor is supposed to be - it tasted kind of like a mix of all of them, like a dumdum, and a cursory Google reveals that to be the case! Mine mostly was cherry flavored, which I like.) But there's not a ton of nuance to be found in all, they are mostly just firm rectangles of sugar with a weird gritty (hehe, gritty) texture. Very sweet and almost like gum that slowly dissolves and then you're like "did I eat gum?". So...yeah! Not the greatest candy in the world, but at least it's safe. :D?

Grape flavor: I'm kinda surprised this wasn't included in the 5-bar pack, it seems like grape is usually a base edition flavor! I also usually don't like the grape flavored candy (see: jolly rancher, popsicles, skittles), but I enjoyed this one.  It wasn't overly sweet like some of the other flavors, but still had a nice strong grape flavor, like a sweet candied juice. I enjoyed it. 7/10

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 5/10