7 Best And 7 Worst Jelly Belly Flavors

While a lot of confectionery companies around the globe make jelly beans, you haven't eaten a jelly bean at its best unless you've tried Jelly Belly jelly beans. Not only are there a lot of legendary Jelly Belly flavors, the way they make their jelly beans is a step above their competition. Whereas other makers of jelly beans take a shortcut by only flavoring and coloring the shells, Jelly Belly flavors and colors the shells and centers of every jelly bean. Your mouth will be able to taste the difference right away if you've only eaten substandard jelly beans.

While other jelly beans are usually much cheaper than the goodies made by Jelly Belly, there's simply no comparison — and taste buds around the world are in agreement. Despite their elevated price tag, Jelly Belly beans are popular around the world. To fill that demand, Jelly Belly has a production capacity of more than one million jelly beans every hour, or nearly 1,700 beans per second. Worldwide, 15 billion of their jelly beans are eaten per year. For Easter alone, Jelly Belly sells five billion beans.

Although a majority of Jelly Belly's 50 official flavors are scrumptious, there are some flavors that should be avoided. Here's a look at the very best and the very worst of what Jelly Belly has to offer.

Not only has Very Cherry been Jelly Belly's most popular flavor with customers since 2003, it's also their most popular product of all-time. One bean is all it will take for you to understand why. Very Cherry tastes very much like a real cherry — except, somehow, even better. The flavorfulness is consistently strong with each bite and the sweetness level is perfect. This is a jelly bean that you can start eating at breakfast and keep eating all the way to dinner and do so with a big grin on your face.

You won't be surprised to learn that these Very Cherry beans are created with real cherry juice. Usually, when cherry flavoring is added to a food, it ends up tasting like cough medicine. That's not the case with these jelly beans.

Adding to the majesty of the Very Cherry flavor is their coloring. They are the brightest possible shade of red, which makes them stand out from all the other red jelly beans Jelly Belly has available.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a jelly bean has to be sweet to taste great. Try Jelly Belly's Green Apple flavor and that theory will be blown out of the water. Green Apple expertly balances a tartness that catches your attention and a sweetness that will keep you coming back for another handful. Even if you don't generally enjoy tart food, give these jelly beans a try and you'll see for yourself that the tartness simply amplifies all the other flavors.

However, be warned that Jelly Belly also makes flavors called Sour Apple and Jewel Sour Apple. While these may look like Green Apple and have a similar name, they are not the same. Sour Apple and Jewel Sour Apple have more tartness and less sweetness. While still enjoyable, Green Apple is simply a better option due to its perfected balancing act.

On their all-time list, Jelly Belly reports that Green Apple ranks in their top five in terms of popularity. That's not surprising in the least.

If you just can't pick your favorite fruit-flavored Jelly Belly bean, go with Tutti-Fruitti. These jelly beans taste like a mix of all the yummiest fruit flavors. It's like a delectable fruit smoothie in the shape of a little bean. While there is definitely some sweetness at play, the authentic fruit flavor manages to stand out and steal the show.

To ratchet up the fun, the Tutti-Fruitti beans have a joyfully whimsical look. Each jelly bean in this party gets speckled with a random amount of blue, yellow, red, and green. It's like the 1980s all over again.

One mistake people make when ordering these jelly beans is expecting the Tutti-Fruitti to have a strong fruit juice flavor. That's simply not the case. It has a lighter taste with a wider array of fruit flavors that anyone — from young children to grandparents young at heart — can enjoy while inspecting the multicolored paint-like speckles on each jelly bean.

The Juicy Pear flavored jelly beans look just like miniature pears — and that's just the start of the good news. The taste, which is enhanced by concentrated pear juice, legitimately tastes like the juiciest part of a pear without any sign of that annoying (and mostly tasteless) pear skin that tends to get stuck in your teeth. These jelly beans truly cut out the unneeded middleman and deliver amazing pear flavor directly to your taste buds.

The texture of the Juicy Pear beans are the cream of the crop. These jelly beans are amazingly soft and will melt in your mouth. It's so easy to go through an entire bowl of these goodies that you should be sure to pace yourself, especially if you're on a diet. Then again, the pear juice in these jelly beans should make it healthier than other jelly beans that are made strictly of junk, right? Even a nutritionist would have to agree with that logic, so feel free to keep on chowing down.

The thought of a jelly bean with a Chili Mango flavor might have you scratching your head or wrinkling up your nose — but you have to trust us on this one. Though Jelly Belly's Mango flavored jelly bean is a very good bean in its own right, their Chili Mango flavor takes everything to the next level.

If you've ever traveled in Mexico or another Latin American country, you might have seen "mango con chile" at a street stand. This spicy-sweet treat is chopped mango with a squeeze of lime juice that is dusted with chili powder and salt. The result is a unique blend of flavors that will cause a satisfying fiesta to break out in your mouth. Jelly Belly takes all that street vendor goodness and puts it into a jelly bean by using real cayenne pepper, paprika, and mango juice. Though it might seem a little unusual, don't sleep on this flavor or you will definitely regret it.

Among Jelly Belly's 50 official flavors, you'll find three lemon varieties — Lemon Lime, Sunkist Lemon, and Lemon Drop. All of these lemon beans are yummy, but Lemon Drop is a step above the rest. This isn't an artificial, sickly sweet lemon taste. Rather, it's an authentic lemon flavor with just the right amount of sweetness paired with a bit of sourness. These jelly beans aren't going to make you pucker like extremely sour Lemonheads, but they do have some bite.

Truth be told, you have to be a fan of lemons to like Lemon Drop jelly beans. But if you are, you'll find yourself buying them by the 10-pound bag and finding ways to incorporate them into your favorite recipes.

Warning: If you find Jelly Belly Lemon Drop soda in your neck of the woods, don't be tempted to buy a six-pack. To say the delicious jelly bean flavor doesn't crossover well to this beverage would be a gross understatement. One reviewer thinks it tastes like Lemon Pledge. We concur.

Watermelon is a classic summertime treat. It's juicy, sweet, and oh so refreshing. And though it's impossible to put all that refreshment into a tiny jelly bean, Jelly Belly nearly pulls it off. In fact, it's as good or better than any watermelon candy on the market.

You might be surprised to find that, like the real fruit, Jelly Belly Watermelon jelly beans are green on the outside and red on the inside. (Fortunately, all the jelly beans are seedless, so no caution is required.) These jelly beans are infused with authentic watermelon juice, so they are extremely tasty and flavorful.

If you're a melon fan, these beans should definitely be the ones that you should ask the Easter bunny to put in your basket this year. Jelly Belly also sells a watermelon flavored sparkling water that is the perfect poolside sipper, whether you drink it on its own or mix it with your favorite liquor.

Do you remember those black licorice Twizzlers that you hated to find in your bag after a night of trick-or-treating? Licorice flavored jelly beans by Jelly Belly taste like they took those Twizzlers, put them in jelly bean form, and then made them even less palatable. The licorice flavor is so strong that you will be reaching for a glass of water to wash down the mistake.

This Licorice flavor is also why you should never eat from a mixed bag of Jelly Belly beans in the dark. If you eat a series of sweet, pleasurable, fruity jelly beans and then you follow it up with a Licorice bean, the unfortunate surprise will cause you to shudder.

There was always that one strange kid in the neighborhood who loved getting licorice candy on Halloween more than anything else. When licorice fanatics grow up, they apparently still adore licorice, as evidenced by the fact that Licorice is one of Jelly Belly's best-sellers. One such lover of Licorice Jelly Belly beans was none other than Ronald Reagan, the United States' 40th president. He couldn't get enough of Jelly Belly jelly beans and licorice was his favorite flavor.

The Buttered Popcorn flavor of Jelly Belly beans tastes like if you went to a random movie theater, found an empty tub of popcorn left on the floor, sprinkled some sugar in the tub, and then licked off the excess butter at the bottom. Even Jelly Belly admits that about 50 percent of people think their Buttered Popcorn beans are gross.

While it's true that this flavor tastes a whole lot like buttery popcorn, the fact that it's missing the pleasing texture the popcorn provides causes it to lose its luster quickly. At first, you may be awed by the novelty of these jelly beans. Eventually, though, you will want to switch to the real thing. Actual buttered popcorn is something that you can eat unendingly. After about a handful of these copycat jelly beans, you'll be ready for another flavor.

Astonishingly, Buttered Popcorn was actually the most popular Jelly Belly flavor between 1998 and 2002. Eventually, enthusiasm waned and order was restored in the universe. Skip this flavor and your life will be better for it.

Unless you order your coffee stale and with about ten tablespoons of sugar, you will not enjoy the Jelly Belly Cappuccino flavor. When you pop this jelly bean in your mouth, all you will taste is an overwhelming sweetness. After you chew it up and begin swallowing it, you will eventually receive a slight aftertaste of coffee. The problem is that even that coffee taste is of a cup of coffee that was sitting around all day on your kitchen counter.

Typically, if you struggle through a bad cup of coffee, you at least get rewarded with a caffeine boost. While these Cappuccino Jelly Belly beans do have caffeine, it's a trace amount. Each bean has only 0.075 milligrams of caffeine, while a large cappuccino has about 120 milligrams. That means you'd need to eat 1,600 of these Cappuccino jelly beans in order to get the equivalent jolt of caffeine as one large cappuccino. It's safe to say eating that many jelly beans in one sitting would be a poor idea with undesirable results. Stick with traditional coffee.

While Jelly Belly and their staff of food scientists are responsible for some amazing flavors that oftentimes taste like exact replicas, their Cotton Candy flavor was a swing and a miss. There is nothing about this jelly bean that tastes like cotton candy. Sure, it's really, really sweet and is basically pure sugar — but that's where the comparisons end. If you pop one of these beans in your mouth, you will be disappointed that all you will taste is an overwhelming amount of sweetness and none of the goodness that makes real cotton candy an airy and pleasant snack.

Strangely, Jelly Belly's Bubble Gum flavored jelly beans actually taste more like cotton candy. They are also pink just like the Cotton Candy flavor (albeit a slightly lighter shade of pink), which adds to the confusion. If you're desperate for jelly beans that taste like cotton candy, go ahead and purchase the Bubble Gum flavor and skip the Cotton Candy flavor. Neither you nor your taste buds will ever know the difference.

Of all the flavors Jelly Belly has to offer, Chocolate Pudding is the biggest tease. When you first taste it, you will be excited. It truly tastes exactly like chocolate pudding for the first few seconds it's in your mouth. Tragically, it all falls apart before reaching the finish line. The aftertaste is much too neutral and it loses all the amazing chocolatiness by the time it's going down your throat.

Not only does the chocolate taste dissipate, you soon realize that the texture that makes chocolate pudding fun to eat is nowhere to be found in your mouth. Instead of rich, creamy goodness, you'll be left with gooey, tasteless mush.

To Jelly Belly's credit, they do use real chocolate in these beans in the form of cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and chocolate liquor. That true chocolate taste will tease you but will ultimately leave you yearning for some Jell-O chocolate pudding.

With their Caramel Corn flavor, Jelly Belly is attempting to replicate the commercial success of their Buttered Popcorn flavor — but the results are underwhelming. Instead of adding a new flavor option to the mix, Caramel Corn tastes like a knockoff. If you've tasted Buttered Popcorn, this flavor tastes the same except it has even more sweetness. And, unfortunately, the sweetness doesn't have a caramel flavor at all. Calling it Sweeter Buttered Popcorn would have been more honest.

Visually, it's also difficult to figure out whether a bean is Caramel Corn or Buttered Popcorn. The Caramel Corn variety is slightly darker but both flavors are multicolored and rely on colors ranging from off-white to orange.

Even if you enjoy Jelly Belly's Buttered Popcorn flavor, don't make the mistake of thinking Caramel Corn will be an upgrade. The sweetness is too overpowering and makes this flavor tedious to eat after a while. After munching on a bunch of these jelly beans, a sense of regret is guaranteed to set in.

The Top Banana flavor sounds like it'd be yummy. It's made from genuine banana puree and the jelly beans look exactly like small pieces of bananas. These Jelly Belly beans are bound to be another hit, right? Wrong. Two things make Top Banana an epic fail.

First of all, these jelly beans taste like brown, overripe bananas and nothing like a delicious banana that has just finished changing from green to yellow. While overripe bananas are perfect for making banana bread, they aren't perfect for making jelly beans. It doesn't take long for this flavor to become nauseating.

Secondly, the Top Banana flavored beans tend to be harder and tougher to chew than other flavors. Considering that the freshness and chewiness of Jelly Belly beans is a big part of what makes it the best brand of jelly beans on the planet, this is a significant flaw.

Of all of Jelly Belly's fruity flavors, Top Banana is by far the worst.