The category of extreme candy is the fastest-growing segment of the candy market in the United States. Worms, body parts and candy shaped liked toilet plungers are most popular, especially in super sour flavors. This year, in keeping with the move to more savory flavors like spaghetti and pork, Jelly Belly has created two new flavors, bacon and rotten egg. Harry Potter turbocharged the gross-out category with classic jelly bean flavors such as earwax, booger, dirt and soap.
That children love extreme flavors and images in their candy is nothing new. Every era has had its standouts.
"We could have done crickets, but we chose the larvettes," said Stevan Faso, whose company also produces a Gross-Out Gummy Pig-Out Platter featuring subtle smoky bacon flavors.
This is not the company's first venture into the gross-out category. It jumped in last year with a line of lollipops featuring disembodied rotting ears and fingers.
Is there any limit to how much gross candy American children can tolerate? Will the nation ever turn back to a more innocent time, when saltwater taffy and lemon drops seemed decadent?
"Sometimes you have a lot of 'gross' in the marketplace and sometimes there is not so much 'gross,' " said Henrik Anderson, whose company produces a candy-pooping dog. "But we believe that gross as a concept will not go away."
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