Life Savers Candy Canes

Day Three: Life Savers Candy Canes

Another highly anticipated candy cane is Life Savers. They are already a hard candy, so the transition to a cane form should not be a stretch. A second reason? Pineapple Life Savers are in my Top 10 favorite candies. If you take a closer look, two pineapple Life Saver candy canes sit in this rainbow of fruit flavors, by far the widest selection of any of the canes in this tasting.

That range of colors gives these canes a quality appearance and each flavor is a different color. Individually each color is nothing special but when taken as a whole, it is nice to have five different patterns to choose to eat. There is even a pink (cherry) and a darker red (raspberry) and the greens (lime) stand out to completely fit the season's color theme.

Getting right to tasting them (because I can't stop myself any longer) there are a few substantial comments to make concerning their rankings. First, you have to take each flavor into consideration. Second, they shouldn't just be a candy cane shaped hard candy, they need to be a candy cane version of a Life Saver. So, are they? And the answer is surprisingly yes. Take the raspberry and cherry for example. They taste exactly like their hard candy counterparts, but have slow crunch of a candy cane compared to the pop of a hard candy. The pineapple has the pineapple flavor, but isn't a perfect replica of the hard candy while the other two flavors taste slightly plain, just like their Life Saver versions. All have the right texture.

From left to right: Cherry, Lime, Orange, Pineapple, Raspberry
Rating: HO-HO

These are tasty, flat out, but the cherry is a stand out. For this reason I'm starting to wonder about this whole tasting. At the very beginning, a coworker and I were discussing what the flavor of traditional fruity candy canes is and the answer was cherry. With these Life Savers cherry candy canes being the closest to that flavor of the canes tested so far, it is making me think that nothing new, none of the new candy flavored candy canes, are going to compare to the original. I won't give up, but I might stock up on some cheap cherry canes before they are off the shelves.

These however, get a HO-HO rating. Something fun to try for the season and enough variation to make each cane an interesting experience!