I am a sucker for a good rope candy. Whether we’re talking about Nerds Ropes, SweeTARTS Ropes, or just a bunch of Starburst lined up end to end and then melted together with a blow dryer, I’m a fan. So, when we heard that hard candy giant Jolly Rancher came out with some new soft-and-chewy ropes, we just had to give them a try. They come in two different packs (with four different flavors): one with green apple and watermelon ropes, and one with blue raspberry and cherry ropes, and can I just say, these look a lot like SweeTARTS ropes. In fact, I feel fairly certain this is Hershey’s attempt to compete with SweeTARTS for your rope-candy cashola. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s try the dang things!
- Jolly Rancher Ropes Blue Raspberry + Cherry
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Pros: These ropes—and this goes for all the flavors—have an awesome texture. They are soft, not too chewy, and are filled with a sour, fruity paste that melts away in your mouth. They don’t stick to your teeth all that much. The cherry rope is super interesting. It isn’t at all cherry cough drop-adjacent, and it actually (strangely) tastes like real dried cherries—tart as well as sweet. It is one of the better tasting cherry-flavored candies I’ve had. The flavor kind of reminded me of black cherry soda. Likewise, the blue raspberry rope is delicious, although it tastes more like a blue raspberry ICEE than other blue raspberry candies I’ve tried. It’s so flavorful and sour, but I’m a bit biased—I love blue-flavored things.
Cons: Upon opening this pack of Jolly Rancher Ropes, the combo of the two flavors smelled a bit like Softsoap (the kind with the fish on the label). They don’t taste like Softsoap, though, so this is sort of a non-issue. One other thing to note is that if you go back and forth between the blue raspberry and the cherry ropes, the cherry one tastes a bit like Play-Doh weirdly (don’t ask me how I know this, I don’t want to talk about it). The blue raspberry flavor could have been ever fruitier. But at the end of the day, these candies are pretty good.
- Jolly Rancher Ropes Green Apple + Watermelon
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Pros: As I previously mentioned, the texture of these is luxurious and soft with a sour paste in the middle. The green apple is a standard green apple Jolly Rancher flavor (with a hint of watermelon due to their proximity to the watermelon ropes). This flavor is sweet but has some sourness to balance it out. The watermelon rope tastes exactly like a watermelon Jolly Rancher. It does have a bit of a plasticky artificial watermelon flavor but so do watermelon Jolly Ranchers, so if you like those you will like these. The pack smells very strongly of watermelon Jolly Ranchers.
Cons: If you go back and forth between these two flavors you will only taste watermelon—it is pretty overpowering. I had to take a green apple rope out of the pack and let it sit for a bit and then try it again to really get the green apple flavor. Also note that if you do not like watermelon Jolly Ranchers you will NOT like the watermelon Jolly Rancher ropes. Maybe that should go without saying, but I figured I’d say it anyways.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!