By all accounts, candy usually implies a sweet treat that anyone loves to eat. Candy comes in all shapes, sizes, textures, and flavors. Whether you love a rich chocolate bar, honey-coated nut bars, gummy bears, or suckers, there’s a candy out there for you, and it may even arrive at your door in a subscription box. After all, everyone’s taste buds are unique.
Additionally, culinary traditions play a big role in candy preferences. What may be delicious for one country is grotesque in another. Candy varies from place to place, but lately, candy companies have come up with some strange creations for adventurous and curious eaters.
Below, you’ll find a list of the weirdest candies you can find on the market today. You’ll see that even weird candies run the gamut of definitions, whether it be texture or flavor.
18 Weirdest Candies
Get ready to be weirded out by the intriguing list of the weirdest candies you can find today.
1. Sour Pickle Balls
Sour Pickles are a wonderful delicacy that you’ve probably delighted in at your local movie theater or county fair. However, their super salty and sour flavor profile couldn’t be further from candy. Nevertheless, pickles have become a popular muse for other snacks and drinks.
These sour pickle balls offer you the taste of a sour pickle in gummy form. Pucker up!
2. Scorpion Insect Suckers
If you really want to scare the kids during Halloween, hand them a Scorpion sucker! These fruit-flavored suckers use candy to make a sweet, fruity mold around a real dead scorpion.
Scorpions are a frightening creepy-crawler known for their venomous tails, and while they may be harmless to eat once they’re dead, they’re still a scary sight to behold!
3. Lil Nitro World’s Hottest Gummy Bear
If you’re a daredevil, Lil Nitro World’s Hottest Gummy Bear is a weird candy variety will give you an adrenaline rush before singing your tongue and esophagus.
It’s doubtful you would want a second of this gummy, packed with chili extract that rates up to 9 million Scoville units. It even comes with a disclaimer so the company won’t be liable for whatever injuries you may endure from eating this fiery gummy candy.
4. Hot Dog Candy Cane
You may love hot dogs for their savory flavor and delectable juicy pop. However, converting them into a candy cane surely falls short of the mark. These candy canes look exactly like the regular red and white peppermint candy canes you get at Christmas.
That’s what makes them great gag gifts to give to a pesky sibling!
5. Caesar Salad Flavored Candy Canes
While we’re on the subject of savory foods-turned-candy, we might as well give you a multicourse meal to enjoy! You could accompany hot dogs with a nice caesar salad.
These green-striped candy canes will surprise you with their accuracy. You’ll get the watery lettuce, followed by the creamy dressing with a hint of anchovy.
6. Maple Bacon Salt Water Taffy
Salt Water Taffy was novel and weird at the time of its creation, apparently earning its name after getting accidentally doused with salt water. The name stuck, but saltwater has stayed out of the recipe.
These Maple Bacon Salt Water taffy candies bring salt back into the mix thanks to the saltiest savory pork product of all. A gooey, chewy candy may be a weird texture for bacon, but the flavor profile could very well compensate.
7. Japanese Squid Candy
Japanese culinary traditions are famous for seafood, fermented foods, and umami flavors. They love their sea creatures so much that they’ve decided to make a dessert out of them with Japanese Squid Candy.
This weird candy takes the idea of gummy worms a little too literally! These gummy candies aren’t just in the shape of squid, but they actually taste like squid.
8. Wasabi KitKat
Just as Coca-Cola and Lays have created a wealth of flavored drinks and chips to suit the culinary tastes of the many countries that sell their products, so too does KitKat! A case in point is this ghoulishly green KitKat with a strong horseradish kick.
Spicy and sweet isn’t an unheard-of flavor duo, so you could be pleasantly surprised by a creamy sweet chocolate that leaves in the heat.9. Sour Flush Candy Toilets
While the actual edible part of this candy is par for the course, the weird part about this candy is the mechanism by which you eat it. These candy toilets come with plungers that you use to scoop the sugary, sour candy powder out of the toilet bowl.
10. Box of Boogers Gummy Candy
Despite the gross appearance of these crusty green gummies, if you dare to put them into your mouth you’ll find that boogers never tasted so good! The silly flavors of each green gummy booger blend mucous terminology with standard fruit flavors. A personal favorite was Snottermelon.
11. Jelly Belly Harry Potter Series
Jelly bellies are known for their hyper-real flavors and half the fun of eating them is to guess which flavor you bite into one bean at a time. Jelly Belly and Harry Potter teamed up to create the ultimate weird and wild guessing game.
These jelly beans intersperse normal flavors like banana and cherry with outrageous and disgusting flavors like vomit, ear wax, and rotten egg.
12. Durian Candy
Durian is an Asian fruit that’s popular all around Asia despite its pungent odor of dirty feet. If you can get past the smell, the fruit itself is sweet and tropical. These squishy yellow durian gummies are a hit around Southeast Asia, but it might be hard for foreigners to overlook the smell.
13. Chocolate Covered Insects
Insects are a key source of protein and a popular snack sold on the streets everywhere from Mexico to Cambodia.
You’ll find chocolate-covered ants, crickets, and even spiders as novel delicacies. The insects add a crunchy texture to the creamy chocolate if you can wrap your head around eating them in the first place.
14. Vegemite Chocolate
If you’re not from Australia, chances are you won’t be able to stomach vegemite, an uber-salty, bitter spread made from residual brewer’s yeast.
This spread becomes the filling in one of Dairy Milk chocolate company’s country-specific chocolate bar flavors. A weirder candy is hard to find.
15. Chlorophyll PEZ
PEZ candies have been a fun part of a standard childhood since they debuted in the 1960s. Most of us remember collecting dispensers modeled off our favorite Disney or comic book characters.
The rectangular pellets that shot into our mouths were of little significance. However, these Chlorophyll PEZ aren’t just an afterthought, but a rude awakening!
16. Brach’s Turkey Dinner Candy Corn
Candy Corn is one of the more hated candies, but these Turkey Dinner candy corns capitalize on their controversial reputation. As the name implies, Brach’s Turkey Dinner Candy Corns give you a veritable Thanksgiving Day spread with each bite-sized candy corn.
Instead of sickeningly sweet, you’ll get Turkey, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole!
17. Chamoy and Chili Gummy Candy
In Mexico, fruit vendors always sprinkle freshly cut fruit with chili powder and salt, followed by a squeeze of lime. Many Mexican fruit candies take a similar approach. This Chamoy and Chili Gummy candy starts with a fruit-flavored gummy, coating it with tart and sweet Chamoy with a final dusting of chili powder. Sounds weird, but tastes delicious!
18. Ketchup Candy
Ketchup is arguably the most beloved condiment in the US, a delightful blend of sweet and tangy tomato that we smother on burgers and drizzle over fries. If you can’t get enough of it, these weird candies have turned them into hard candies.
They look deceivingly like those melt-in-your-mouth peppermint candies, but you’ll know the instant you pop one in your mouth that they’re not!
Final Thoughts
Are you craving an afternoon snack that’s out of the ordinary? Whether your looking for a spicy gummy bear or a Harry Potter inspired jelly bean, there’s a weird candy out there for you. This list of 18 weirdest candies is sure to have something that piques your interest and your taste buds!
