Joyride Sweets Candies Ranked From Worst To Best

Steven Luna/Mashed

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It's a real pickle for plant-based eaters to find candy that doesn't violate their code of dietary ethics. So when a brand like Joyride Sweets comes along with a promise of animal-free ingredients and a suite of flavors that rival favorite treats from the big brands, vegans perk up their taste buds and take notice. I'm among those candy crushers on a quest for a cleaner way to soothe my cravings for the sugary stuff, and finding out Joyride Sweets is a primary provider of more mindful morsels made my sweet tooth tingle.

Ranking these treats from worst to best was one of the most challenging tasks I've undertaken during my time at Mashed. There's not a bad bag in the bunch; no matter what kind you grab, you'll find first-rate candy waiting inside. The collection is similar to the offerings found at the best candy stores in every state, but made with more thoughtful ingredients. Everything is gummy, gooey, or chewy without containing a drop of animal-derived gelatin, unlike the common formulation for gummy bears. The sugar content has been greatly reduced and the colorings are all plant-based, eschewing the less-desirable synthetic dyes that make your favorite goodies eye-googlingly garish. The best I could do was align the bags I could find at my nearby Target and Fry's Food stores in the order of best to awesome. Don't judge me too harshly; any card-carrying candy fan would encounter the same difficulty.

Steven Luna/Mashed

This was the one I was looking forward to the most, hoping for a bright, sunshiny sour strip that would get me salivating before, during, and after the taste test. I can't say it's a bad flavor, because it's really not. It just isn't as convincing as the other candies I tried. The lemon is somewhere in there under the pink flavor, which is maybe strawberry. It ends up being nice and tart just the same. But the combined pink lemonade essence feels out of reach, despite a valiant effort to get there.

Don't mistake this observation for a complaint; Sour Pink Lemonade Strips are still plenty fantastic, just a little less puckery than I'd hoped. I'd still favor these chewy noodle-like confections over more popular sour candies, largely due to the subtlety with which the flavors are distributed. After taste-testing Sour Patch Kids with throat-clenching lemonade flavor, it's nice to have an option that treats my taste buds with a little more respect. I'd gladly spend the $5.00 for a bag of these as a movie theater snack rather than going for something cheaper that I wouldn't feel quite as good about consuming.

Steven Luna/Mashed

It's fantastic to find a bag of sour watermelon slices that pull back on the watermelon falseness. These wedges are nice and mellow, not trying too hard to emulate the Jolly Rancher-style watermelon flavor that becomes a fruit-flavored candy nightmare for so many candy eaters who can tell the difference between real and highly artificial. The texture is more like a Sour Patch Kid, the carnauba wax al dente-ness that keeps the stickiness on your teeth to a minimum. And whatever sugary-sour substitute is being used to make the crunchy coating is a hit in my book. It's a measured balance of flavors that's pleasant and candy-like without being overly ambitious.

The one drawback I found in this bag was that several wedges were missing some of the layered colors. Instead of having the green and pink palette of the others, I found several smaller yellow wedges, which says that maybe the assembly line doesn't dependably drop full-fledged wedges in every batch. Aside from that unexpected strangeness, these lesser wedges were every bit as tasty as their fully-hued fellow pieces. Unless you examine every piece before you eat it, you may not even notice the difference.

Steven Luna/Mashed

I've never tasted a sour candy that came as close to fresh fruit leather as this tricky little package. Supremely soft and chewy without sticking to my teeth and brimming with candy flavor that keeps to the more natural side of the spectrum, it's hard to believe this is a low-sugar treat. And unlike wondering whether candy-aisle options like Sour Straws or Skittles are vegan, this bag tells you outright that it is. 

A serving is considered three strips, a bit of a party trick considering how tightly packed together the strips are. A little careful finger work releases them from one another so you can slurp them like spaghetti or roll them up and chomp into them all at once. I kept my sampling to a single strip, which was plenty to deliver the sweet-tart deliciousness and super-soft texture.

One of the best aspects of Blue Raspberry Candy Strips is that they don't lean too far into the vivid coloring of other blue raspberry treats. You can certainly see the hue is in the substance, but rather than looking like Windex, it looks more like a color real fruit would be. This may not be as dazzling to the younger candy fan as the traditional bright blue razzmatazz, but for a more seasoned candy aficionado, it feels kind of sophisticated, like these strips are candy for grown-ups. Even if that's unintentional, I'll take it.

Steven Luna/Mashed

Sour Smacks is the Joyride Sweets version of Sour Patch Kids, and it's a dead-on impression of the original, save for the puffy shape and slightly softer texture. Maybe those concessions are made to avoid infringing on the secret magic of the original, but it does nothing to diminish the enjoyment factor here. These bites are small enough for a quick nibble but deliver huge tart flavor in six flavors: fun drink (orange), lemonade, fruit punch, watermelon, blue raspberry, and lime, all of which replicate flavors from the other Joyride Sweets candies. But having them all in a single package feels like a tangy fruit salad that lets you control your snacking with more diminutive pieces while being able to select your favorite flavors.

I enjoyed these non-kid Kids enough to believe I was eating the real version, but felt better about having the reduced sugar content on my side. Smaller packs of these sugary tykes would make great vegan Halloween candies, if Joyride Sweets decides to join the holiday treat movement. I'd be in for filling my Halloween giveaway bowl with them, though I can't promise I wouldn't clean it out before the trick-or-treaters show up.

Steven Luna/Mashed

Gummy worms are in my top five favorite candies, so I was over the moon to find that Joyride Sweets has its own better-made version. These gooey wigglers are dual colored just like their gelatin based counterparts and contain a sugary crust that makes it feel as if you were indulging in a childhood classic. The flavors here are equally sweet and sour, which is perfectly fine once you realize that they aren't going to fully replicate the lip-twisting sour gummy worms you already know and drool at the thought of. Instead, they do their own subtle impersonation that sidesteps all of the artificial mishegoss other candy makers include in their recipes. What you get is a cleaner read on a sour worm, which sounds odd but makes total sense once you're mid-chew.

Just like the usual confectionery template, each worm contains a pair of perky flavors: lemonade and orange, strawberry and blue raspberry, and lime and cherry. These combinations are deliciously familiar, though the use of natural colorants reduces the neon pulse of the worms down to a dim glow. That's perfect for anyone who doesn't judge their candy by its hue. I'm elated that I can enjoy plant-based gummy candies again without breaking my no-animal-eating standards with the gelatin-filled versions.

Steven Luna/Mashed

I've tried a fair amount of alternative candy while searching for a vegan line that doesn't taste like it's missing anything or has strange ingredients that fall short of the original flavors. I've never tasted anything as close to a perfect plant-based candy substitute then Joyride Sweets Cherry Berry Ropes. It's an obvious limitation of filled Twizzlers Filled Twists, but it's a far superior creation. I've only sampled those sweets once or twice to get a sense of what they were all about, but shied away due to the red dye used. So it's essentially a sugar-coated miracle that Joyride has come up with an iteration that ramps up the good stuff while eliminating the questionable stuff.

The cherry essence is so much stronger than what you find in similar rope candy, And the cream filling is every bit as smooth and palatable as the usual mix of powdered sugar and palm oil. The texture was super soft, almost more like taffy than licorice, which enhanced experience but made it a bit difficult to pull a piece free. This isn't a complaint, merely an observation. I don't know what sort of sorcery the folks at this company are using to make this confectionery magic, but it's a pinnacle product for anyone in search of a more mindful sweet treat. The fact that they stick together make it difficult to eat just one. For a true sugar head, that's hardly a problem.

Steven Luna/Mashed

Joyride Sweets was a new discovery for me when I started this ranking, so I was stoked to dig into the collection and find out what it was all about. I sought out the entire line of candies on the website and discovered a very limited distribution in stores near me, restricted only to Target and Fry's Food (a Kroger company). Between the two, I was able to find six different packages, though there are other selections like Gummy Crunchers and Fun Drink Strips that were sold out when I shopped.

I taste-tested each package individually, leaving an hour or so in between to let my palate get past the tangy sweetness that I thought might overlap among products. I tried to limit myself to a single bite, but the strips called for an entire piece to be eaten, while the Sour Smacks and Sour Worms demanded a few pieces in order to get the whole spectrum of flavors. Then I did my best to isolate the ones I liked most, but really, I liked them all very much, even more so knowing that they are plant based and free of unpleasant additives. I imagine there's an eager audience of candy fans just like me that will be happy to find out Joyrides Sweets don't sacrifice flavor or enjoyment just to be a cleaner treat.