Gummy candy

These are mine! Also honorable mentions are air heads,starburst, and candy corn, cause I don’t know what those qualify as 🥲

After much debate over which gummy deserves to be called the best of all time, my friends and I decided to settle the score once and for all by eating our way through a 50-item gummy bracket. ChatGPT seeded our entries based on its general impressions of each gummy's worldwide popularity and the top 15 seeds earned a first-round bye. 3+ hours and dangerous amounts of sugar later, we emerged bloated, somewhat disgusted/impressed with our eating abilities, and most importantly, with a definitive power ranking of the best gummies of all time.

The Entrants

The Podium!

First place: Bourbon Italian Lemon Fettuccine

Second place: Haribo Twin Snakes

Third place: Haribo Grapefruit

Honorable Mentions

Kanro Puré Premium Peach - by far our favorite peach gummy of the bunch.

Chamoy Gushers (with a heartbreak loss to Lemon Fettucine in the quarterfinals)

Worst Gummies

eFrutti Gummy Cupcakes

Planet Gummies

Gem Gems (** accidentally entered into the bracket instead of Gin Gins)

The Bracket

Link to the full bracket here.

Takeaways

1. Step aside, Haribo. When it comes to plain gummy bears/worms, Albanese is elite. Special shoutout to the exotic fruit gummy bears, my personal favorite of the bunch.

2. We ate so many gummies that after the first round, we became biased against the super-sweet gummies and clearly started preferring the more sour and spicy gummies of the bunch.

3. We originally scoffed at the idea of using a cutting board/not eating full gummies in each matchup, but we all gave in after the first round. Also critical: palate cleansers (popcorn, pretzels, tortilla chips, cheese), lots of water, the hot dog competitive eater dance.

4. The viral foamy candies are SO, so bad. Never again. (Taylor Swift, I love you, but... Squashies? Really?!)

So... did we get it right? Any grave injustices? Anyone else brave enough to challenge our rankings with their own bracket?