11 SmartSweets Candies, Ranked

Most confectioners lay the sugar on mighty thick, both on the inside and out of candies. However, Candy lover Tara Bosch wanted to reduce the sugar put into candy and subsequently taken in by the body while somehow keeping her sweet tooth intact. Her solution was SmartSweets, a candy business with a mission to try and change both the industry and the health of eaters.

After recipe testing with gummy bears in her own kitchen, Bosch launched SmartSweets in Canada in 2016. Today, the brand has 11 different varieties of candies to choose from, that range from gummies to licorice, suckers and even caramels. These neat treats have up to 92% less sugar in a 50-gram bag than their sugar-laden counterparts, making them perfect for children and those who are kids at heart.

The fine folks at SmartSweets sent us samples of all its intelligent candies to indulge in and perhaps not feel too guilty about polishing off the bag. Are these sweets even better than the real thing? Here is our definitive ranking of how they stacked up.

The SmartSweets Gummy Worms packaging excites the eye with its vibrant alternating colors of orange, pink, and green squirming about. Tear open the bag, and the ideal vibrancy the mind tells the eyes to expect quickly dims when these dull-looking worms emerge and stick their not-so-pretty heads out. However, if you hold them up near any light, especially sunlight, then the translucency of the gummy starts to shine.

These Gummy Worms, with a starfish-shaped head, are more fun to hold than they are to smell. With the scent of an odd fruit, punch dipped in honey, the idea of a taste test doesn't seem so inviting. After several bites, hoping the next will fare better than the previous, there's no escaping the medicine taste it gives off. It's hard to understand why these flavored worms mostly fail, while similar candies like Gummy Bears succeed, but it absolutely misses the mark.

With a cooling color, the teal bag plays as a saturated background canvas to the image of two SweetSmarts' Peach Rings, which have been around since 2019. What the picture doesn't show is the faux-sugary substance, which was hard to identify even after perusing the ingredients list, that each of these rings are caked in. Once a finger makes contact with the rings the white flakes start to fall all over the place, making a mess, piece by piece.

The rings come in orange and yellow colors and have one of the more rigid and tougher chews out of all the SmartSweets. The yellow rings are more pungent, and the better pick over the orange ones, but both have an odd artificial taste that reminded us of a spray air freshener. Maybe if these rings ditched the faux sugar this would have worked out better for all parties involved. Alas, that's not the case, and these rings can simply be tossed.

Donning a baseball cap with its bill positioned off to the side, eyes shut, and a mouth gaping wide open, the thin-bodied SmartSweets' Sour Blast Buddies are a nostalgic rendition of familiar candies. But are these modern and healthier versions of Sour Patch Kids? One can tell right off the bat when a hand reaches into the lemonade yellow bag to discover a lack of the expected coating, which is required for such a candy, that something isn't quite right.

Don't get us wrong, these tasty little candies that taste great, which come in berry, blue raspberry, lime, lemon, and orange, are perhaps even better gummy bears than SmartSweets' own Gummy Bears. And yet, a lack of an actual sour blast keeps these candies from scratching the itch that they are aspiring to. Obviously, the goal with this line of candy is to reduce sugar, and a 50-gram bag here only has 3 grams total, but if you're trying to emulate a candy that's renowned for being drenched in a tartaric acid coating, at least try to keep up with that appearance. 

Coca-Cola isn't usually the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions gummies, but they have their place and fans who love them. SmartSweets Cola Gummies smartly come in a Coke red package, helping eaters to imagine they're eating the real thing. These candies come dual colored as brown and gold, achieved in part by using apple extract. The little bottles are neatly designed, complete with a fluted body, rounded middle, and bottleneck topped off with a grooved bottle cap.

It smells more like cinnamon than cola, and that's probably due to the fact that it contains chicory root fibers. Still, there is a hint of the bubbly stuff present upon further investigation. The taste, which our testers noted, ranged from lemon cough drops to laundry detergent. We leaned more towards it being like a Lemon Coke, which we have no issue eating up. These are solid gummies that could make a non-believer somewhat of a fan.

If you poured SmartSweets' Sweet Fish out of its blue bag and into a bowl and handed them to a friend or loved one to try, they could easily be hoodwinked into believing it was the real Swedish Fish. These ruby red fish have all the right contours and shapes, with a scaly top and concave, inward-leaning underbelly to be a convincing replica.

The smell of Sweet Fish isn't very comely unless the smell of cherry NyQuil is considered a heavenly scent to your nostrils. While the candies are supposed to be berry flavored, it does have a syrupy medicine-like taste that can also remind people of a thick coat of cherry ChapStick lip balm stuck to their lips. Still, with a gratifying chewing experience with each fish caught in one's mouth, the Sweet Fish is certainly one bag of SmartSweets that might still attract niche fan club.

SmartSweets' Fruity Gummy Bears don't span the entire spectrum of the fruit rainbow, but the red, orange, and yellow treats hibernating within a hot pink pouch could make one fall for them. The little candies, which were one of the company's original treats, are more opaque than a Haribo Gummy Bear and also have more pointed, edgier feet, paws and ears that make them more tactile than the industry standard.

Toughy but squishy on the outside, the chew cuts through easier than expected, with a more Jell-O jiggle-like texture, which is no surprise considering gelatin is one of the candy's ingredients. The sweetness comes through thanks to elements like citric acid, coconut oil and mono-fruit extract, and a single bag only sets one back 4 grams of sugar. Candy for kids isn't ever ideal, but the fruity gummy gears, which are akin to typical fruit snacks, are a great option to make a child happy and a parent not as guilty.

To be perfectly honest, if there was one SmartSweets we were looking forward most to trying, it was the Red Twists. Licorice is a fantastic candy and is usually so artificial and candle waxy in unnatural nature, to begin with, that we thought a pseudo take on them wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

SmartSweets' Red Twists nail the look and feel of red licorice with a Post-it note adhesive-like slippery exterior that has smooth ridged swirls sweeping from top to bottom. With a smell that ranges from fruity plastic to a hint of chocolate, the actual taste of these soft and chewy twists was neither thrilling nor offensive, and that's just fine by us. 

These Red Twists work because it is more of a texture candy than a flavorful one. These candies are perfectly sized to be consumed in two bites, which allows enough time to consume the entire bag in one sitting, making this a surefire SmartSweets hit.

Thanks to the fine folks at SmartSweets, we now realize that watermelon is an underrated candy flavor that the world has been sleeping on. Watermelon is one of the two fabulous flavors of the company's likable Lollipops and owns the spotlight in the special Sourmelon Bites.

While the pretty pink packaging displays the candy as a giant sugar-covered fruit slice candy, giving us bad flashbacks to Peach Rings, we were relieved to see little adorable, pink and yellow half-moon watermelon slices staring back at us. Lightly dusted in a white residue, these sleek Sourmelons are as inviting to look at as they are to eat. It smells like Big League Chew gum and tastes a little bit like Jolly Ranchers, which is quite a profile for any candy to be. Since SmartSweets nailed making an accessible watermelon candy, we're now wondering what a watermelon candy could be like in the hands of a confectioner that's all about pouring on the sugar, not reducing it.

Tearing open the pale purple packaging, Tootsie Roll-sized candies are twisted in a waxy harvest gold wrapper. Just taking a look at them packaged up, these Sweet Smart Caramels show much promise well before being unwrapped. 

These caramels, with a single gram of sugar in a whole 45-gram bag, have a glossy sheen to them and a sticky surface resembling the real deal. As teeth close down on the amber candy that smells like Bit-O-Honey candy, it has the gooey-gluey consistency one would expect out of caramel, even getting little bits stuck to the teeth.

Unlike most of the other Sweet Smart candies, these Caramels are actually sweet, and to achieve this feat, coconut cream, palm oil, sunflower lecithin, and stevia leaf extract are incorporated. The result tastes somewhere between a Girl Scout Samoa Cookie and a coconut macaroon, which isn't caramel-like, but that doesn't mean these can't be enjoyed, or even loved.

By name, Jolly Gems has an air of mystery to it, as it's not a common moniker SmartSweets co-opted to put its own spin on a known candy. So what are Jolly Gems? The purplish-blue packaging doesn't offer many more hints beyond labeling that they are hard candy, are perhaps round, and come in the naturally flavored flavors of green apple, peach, and pink lemonade.

Each of the three Jolly Gems flavors is twistedly wrapped in clear and crinkly cellophane and looks like the kind of random unbranded candies one would find next to a toothpick dispenser at a restaurant. Regardless of how generic it appears, these delicious candies shine on mightily. 

The Green Apple is subtle and a tad sour, the yellow-orange Peach more peachy keen than SmartSweets' own Peach Rings could ever be, and the Pink Lemonade is just an all-out winner. When a tongue starts to tackle each one of these gems, it truly makes one feel jolly.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better than the Jolly Gems, the SmartSweet Lollipops proved to be the ultimate candy out of its entire catalog. It's not that the flavors were out of this world and something above and beyond what the Jolly Gems offered, but it's essentially the same candy but on a stick, which allows for more avenues for total enjoyment.

With a lollipop, you can take a break from it, giving the mouth pause, and if you hold onto the plastic wrap packaging, you can even reinsert the lollipop for a more extended break and save it for later.

The Sweet Smart Lollipops only come in two flavors, Blue Raspberry and Watermelon, and while we wish there were even more to choose from in the bag, we're happy to make due with these. The neon pink Watermelon Lollipop does have a slight watermelon scent, and taste-wise is a tad sour combination of watermelon and lime. The Blue Raspberry one is delectable and a work of art to admire.