Sweet Heat Skittles and Starbursts

Is spicy the hot new trend in candy? The Wrigley Company is set to introduce “Sweet Heat” Skittles and Starbursts this December. The new flavors, which sparked attention at the 2017 Sweets and Snacks Expo held in Chicago in late May, will come in black packaging emblazoned with flames — because, you know, hot.

Sweet Heat Skittles will feature flavors including Fiery Watermelon, Blazin’ Mango, Flamin’ Orange, Sizzlin’ Strawberry and Lemon Spark, People reports. Packs of Sweet Heat Starbursts, meanwhile, will include Fiery Watermelon, Strawberry Mango, Flamin’ Orange and Pipin’ Pineapple.

Instagrammer JunkFoodMom reports that the Sweet Heat Skittles are “awesome,” noting that the “heat slowly builds up.” (Alas, she was unable to try and report back on the Sweet Heat Starbursts.)

A reporter for the A.V. Club relayed that the spicy Skittles started out tasting very much like standard-issue Skittles, but then “roughly eight seconds into chewing, a dull but noticeable chili-like burn develops on your tongue.”

So, kind of a slow burn, but it could definitely catch on and spread. In fact, spicy could be the new sour, Food Business News suggests.

“Confectioners and snack manufacturers … are increasingly turning to sweet to balance out hot, spicy or tangy flavors,” Susan Whiteside, vice president of public relations and marketing communications for the National Confectioners Association, told the industry publication. “We’ve certainly seen some of that in the candy industry before … but this is taking those flavors to the next level and really experimenting with different hat sources as well as different sweet sources.”

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