7 Best And 7 Worst Jelly Belly Flavors

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While a lot of confectionery companies around the globe make jelly beans, you haven't eaten a jelly bean at its best unless you've tried Jelly Belly jelly beans. Not only are there a lot of legendary Jelly Belly flavors, the way they make their jelly beans is a step above their competition. Whereas other makers of jelly beans take a shortcut by only flavoring and coloring the shells, Jelly Belly flavors and colors the shells and centers of every jelly bean. Your mouth will be able to taste the difference right away if you've only eaten substandard jelly beans.

While other jelly beans are usually much cheaper than the goodies made by Jelly Belly, there's simply no comparison — and taste buds around the world are in agreement. Despite their elevated price tag, Jelly Belly beans are popular around the world. To fill that demand, Jelly Belly has a production capacity of more than one million jelly beans every hour, or nearly 1,700 beans per second. Worldwide, 15 billion of their jelly beans are eaten per year. For Easter alone, Jelly Belly sells five billion beans.

Although a majority of Jelly Belly's 50 official flavors are scrumptious, there are some flavors that should be avoided. Here's a look at the very best and the very worst of what Jelly Belly has to offer.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a jelly bean has to be sweet to taste great. Try Jelly Belly's Green Apple flavor and that theory will be blown out of the water. Green Apple expertly balances a tartness that catches your attention and a sweetness that will keep you coming back for another handful. Even if you don't generally enjoy tart food, give these jelly beans a try and you'll see for yourself that the tartness simply amplifies all the other flavors.

However, be warned that Jelly Belly also makes flavors called Sour Apple and Jewel Sour Apple. While these may look like Green Apple and have a similar name, they are not the same. Sour Apple and Jewel Sour Apple have more tartness and less sweetness. While still enjoyable, Green Apple is simply a better option due to its perfected balancing act.

On their all-time list, Jelly Belly reports that Green Apple ranks in their top five in terms of popularity. That's not surprising in the least.

The Juicy Pear flavored jelly beans look just like miniature pears — and that's just the start of the good news. The taste, which is enhanced by concentrated pear juice, legitimately tastes like the juiciest part of a pear without any sign of that annoying (and mostly tasteless) pear skin that tends to get stuck in your teeth. These jelly beans truly cut out the unneeded middleman and deliver amazing pear flavor directly to your taste buds.

The texture of the Juicy Pear beans are the cream of the crop. These jelly beans are amazingly soft and will melt in your mouth. It's so easy to go through an entire bowl of these goodies that you should be sure to pace yourself, especially if you're on a diet. Then again, the pear juice in these jelly beans should make it healthier than other jelly beans that are made strictly of junk, right? Even a nutritionist would have to agree with that logic, so feel free to keep on chowing down.

Among Jelly Belly's 50 official flavors, you'll find three lemon varieties — Lemon Lime, Sunkist Lemon, and Lemon Drop. All of these lemon beans are yummy, but Lemon Drop is a step above the rest. This isn't an artificial, sickly sweet lemon taste. Rather, it's an authentic lemon flavor with just the right amount of sweetness paired with a bit of sourness. These jelly beans aren't going to make you pucker like extremely sour Lemonheads, but they do have some bite.

Truth be told, you have to be a fan of lemons to like Lemon Drop jelly beans. But if you are, you'll find yourself buying them by the 10-pound bag and finding ways to incorporate them into your favorite recipes.

Warning: If you find Jelly Belly Lemon Drop soda in your neck of the woods, don't be tempted to buy a six-pack. To say the delicious jelly bean flavor doesn't crossover well to this beverage would be a gross understatement. One reviewer thinks it tastes like Lemon Pledge. We concur.

Do you remember those black licorice Twizzlers that you hated to find in your bag after a night of trick-or-treating? Licorice flavored jelly beans by Jelly Belly taste like they took those Twizzlers, put them in jelly bean form, and then made them even less palatable. The licorice flavor is so strong that you will be reaching for a glass of water to wash down the mistake.

This Licorice flavor is also why you should never eat from a mixed bag of Jelly Belly beans in the dark. If you eat a series of sweet, pleasurable, fruity jelly beans and then you follow it up with a Licorice bean, the unfortunate surprise will cause you to shudder.

There was always that one strange kid in the neighborhood who loved getting licorice candy on Halloween more than anything else. When licorice fanatics grow up, they apparently still adore licorice, as evidenced by the fact that Licorice is one of Jelly Belly's best-sellers. One such lover of Licorice Jelly Belly beans was none other than Ronald Reagan, the United States' 40th president. He couldn't get enough of Jelly Belly jelly beans and licorice was his favorite flavor.

Unless you order your coffee stale and with about ten tablespoons of sugar, you will not enjoy the Jelly Belly Cappuccino flavor. When you pop this jelly bean in your mouth, all you will taste is an overwhelming sweetness. After you chew it up and begin swallowing it, you will eventually receive a slight aftertaste of coffee. The problem is that even that coffee taste is of a cup of coffee that was sitting around all day on your kitchen counter.

Typically, if you struggle through a bad cup of coffee, you at least get rewarded with a caffeine boost. While these Cappuccino Jelly Belly beans do have caffeine, it's a trace amount. Each bean has only 0.075 milligrams of caffeine, while a large cappuccino has about 120 milligrams. That means you'd need to eat 1,600 of these Cappuccino jelly beans in order to get the equivalent jolt of caffeine as one large cappuccino. It's safe to say eating that many jelly beans in one sitting would be a poor idea with undesirable results. Stick with traditional coffee.

Of all the flavors Jelly Belly has to offer, Chocolate Pudding is the biggest tease. When you first taste it, you will be excited. It truly tastes exactly like chocolate pudding for the first few seconds it's in your mouth. Tragically, it all falls apart before reaching the finish line. The aftertaste is much too neutral and it loses all the amazing chocolatiness by the time it's going down your throat.

Not only does the chocolate taste dissipate, you soon realize that the texture that makes chocolate pudding fun to eat is nowhere to be found in your mouth. Instead of rich, creamy goodness, you'll be left with gooey, tasteless mush.

To Jelly Belly's credit, they do use real chocolate in these beans in the form of cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and chocolate liquor. That true chocolate taste will tease you but will ultimately leave you yearning for some Jell-O chocolate pudding.

The Top Banana flavor sounds like it'd be yummy. It's made from genuine banana puree and the jelly beans look exactly like small pieces of bananas. These Jelly Belly beans are bound to be another hit, right? Wrong. Two things make Top Banana an epic fail.

First of all, these jelly beans taste like brown, overripe bananas and nothing like a delicious banana that has just finished changing from green to yellow. While overripe bananas are perfect for making banana bread, they aren't perfect for making jelly beans. It doesn't take long for this flavor to become nauseating.

Secondly, the Top Banana flavored beans tend to be harder and tougher to chew than other flavors. Considering that the freshness and chewiness of Jelly Belly beans is a big part of what makes it the best brand of jelly beans on the planet, this is a significant flaw.

Of all of Jelly Belly's fruity flavors, Top Banana is by far the worst.