Earlier Candynalysis:
Three Musketeers
Lollipop Paint Shop
Cherry Cola Candee Slurpee
My most recent novelty candy purchase was a pack of Now & Laters. The distinctive green packaging initially caught my eye on the convenience store rack, but once I saw it was called "Green Tingleberry", I knew this was a candy worthy of further analysis.
Was this name chosen as a prank? "Tingleberry" and "dingleberry" are nearly the same word. Move your tongue less than a millimeter and you've gone from discussing a children's snack to talking about tiny dried turds.
It sounds less like a brand of candy and more like the aftermath of a rough night of partying. "After I did my seventh shot of Jager, I went out and got pizza at 3 AM. I woke with a stomachache, a pounding headache and green tingleberries. A whole pack of them."
ConAgra Foods often uses its cutting-edge flavor technology to create Now & Later hybrids like "Blue Radberry". Radberries are very similar to raspberries, except they wear oversized clothing and prefer snowboarding to skiing. "Tingleberry" is a blend of berry and tropical fruit flavors, though I couldn't specify which berries or tropical fruits were present. In the color language of candy, green generally represents lime, sometimes apple, and occasionally indicates kiwi or melon, so my guess here is kiwi. Green is the only color of tingleberry available, so it is unclear whether tingleberries of another color might taste better.
Regardless of flavor, all Now & Laters have the same weaknesses: they're hard to chew, they get stuck in your teeth, and they're similar enough to Starbursts that you're reminded of how much more enjoyable it would be to eat a Starburst instead. I have read that Now & Laters are supposed to loosen to a taffy-like consistency after being sufficiently dissolved by saliva, but I do not believe that this actually occurs most of the time.
Perhaps this sticky quality of Now & Laters inspired the Tingleberries name. No matter how thoroughly you chew or how clean your mouth is, getting rid of the tingleberries is going to take some picking and scraping.
If you notice that your life includes a lot of Green Tingleberry, or a lot of green dingleberries, the lesson is the same: You need to start eating better now, not later. Green Tingleberry Now & Laters are an official "Product of Mexico", as if they didn't have enough problems already down there.
When would I prefer to try this candy again? Not now. Later. Much later.
