Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside! Nope, not armadillos – They’re Haribo Berries!

You get 10 imaginary bonus points if you know what I’m referencing in my introductory sentence. If you get it, I’m sure you’ll be British and over a certain age… So let’s move on! Quickly…

First things first: This is a German product, bought in Germany, marketed for Germany. And yet… the German word for ‘Berries’ is Beeren. There’s a surprising amount of English words slotted into German advertising and I’m not quite sure of why. It actually hadn’t even registered that these sweets (which arn’t available in England!) use the English word! If anyone knows the answer to the riddle, please drop me a line in the comments – I’d love to know!

Described as a ‘jelly with nonpareille’ on the packet, there’s no argument from me! That is exactly what you’re getting with the contents of this bag. As with other Haribo nonpareille products, the nonpareille are tiny little gritty sugary balls that add quite a crunch to your munching experience.

After a bit of a Google Translation mangle, the extended online description works out as something like this…

HARIBO Berries are universally popular raspberries with a soft jelly core and a colorful sugar bead coating | Haribo Shop

Whilst the biggest flavour I get is ‘sugar’ thanks to that nonpareille coating, there’s a nice generic sort of ‘berry’ flavour hiding underneath sugar mountain. I know these are coloured like Blackberries and Raspberries but I’m not certain Haribo has gone for a flavour difference between the two. The back of the packet doesn’t help much in figuring it out, as listed are Blackcurrant, Elderberry, Grape and Aronia. What’s that? I wondered. Wikipedia tells me it’s called a chokeberry… Moving on…

It’s a shame the nonpareille add so little to the sweets because underneath their textured coating is a rather nice jelly. It’s clear, soft, squishy, a little sticky and it’s where the flavour’s hiding. If you’ve got nothing better to do ignore that pile of ironing in the corner and pull off all the hard little balls, the inside really is quite nice.

Unfortunately they’re just not suited to my tastes, which is a bit of a shame. On the plus side though, I’ve just made some more room in my ‘Snack Review’ cupboard, so there’s always a silver lining! Have you tried these before? If so, what did you think?