These Walmart Great Value Fruit Snacks Taste Like Jolly Ranchers (But We Still Think You Should Skip Them)

While Jolly Rancher candies are famously a dentist's nightmare, they've been in production for at least six decades and proven their iconic legacy via a never-ending flow of new Jolly Rancher-inspired products. So it's not necessarily an insult to say that something reminds you of a Jolly Rancher. Unfortunately, in the case of Walmart's Great Value Tangy Fruit Smiles, the comparison isn't positive — it indicates a lack of genuine fruitiness and a surplus of sugar. In fact, these cloyingly sweet fruit snacks are one of many Great Value products we recommend you avoid buying altogether.

The Tangy Fruit Smiles fruit snacks come in four flavors: tropical punch, blue raspberry, sour apple, and watermelon. For comparison, Jolly Rancher's original flavors include blue raspberry, green apple, cherry, grape, and watermelon. Each disc is smiley face-shaped, and you can pick up a pack of forty pouches for less than $8. However, while each pouch comes with 60% of your daily value of vitamin C, it also comes with 11 grams of added sugars — which is why we deemed them to be more appropriately categorized as candy rather than fruit snacks. They are made with both natural and artificial flavoring; but, to their detriment, the overall effect was a synthetic taste that was just way too sweet. The texture was problematic, too, as they seemed to be softer and squishier than what you'd expect from a fruit snack. 

A gummy variety of Jolly Ranchers actually already exists, which begs to be compared with the Tangy Fruit Smiles. The candies, which come in the standard Jolly Rancher flavors (sadly, this still doesn't include lemon), are shaped like fruits with funny faces. However, a serving size of the Jolly Rancher gummies comes with even more added sugar and lacks the benefit of vitamin C. But, to be fair, the Jolly Rancher gummies are marketed as candy, not fruit snacks. Sadly, consumers seem largely dissatisfied with the current iteration of Jolly Rancher gummies — they underwent a recipe change a few years ago, and several people on Reddit have called the "new" version waxy, bland, and downright awful. Both the Jolly Rancher gummies and the Tangy Fruit Smiles are struggling in the texture department, although possibly in opposite ways. Chowhound deemed the Tangy Fruit Smiles to be unpleasantly soft and squishy, while reviewers find the Jolly Rancher gummies to be too chewy and sticky.

In addition to the Great Value brand fruit snacks, Walmart carries two of the biggest names in fruit snacks — Welch's and Mott's — as well as Betty Crocker and Black Forest, many of which are made with real fruit juice. But of course, for the healthiest option, you can try making your own with little more than just fruit, juice, and gelatin.