Review: Progresso's Soup Drops Hard Candy Are An Unusual, Unsettling Experience

If it seems like everyone has the sniffles, well, they probably do. It's officially sick season, which means it's also soup season. To help soothe what ails you, Progresso is offering three of its most popular flavors in a style that may only speak to the most hardcore soup lovers. For a limited time, you can skip the slurping and suck on your soup instead with Progresso Soup Drops.

These lozenge-style drops come in three flavors: chicken noodle, tomato basil, and beef pot roast. Not only do the Soup Drops promise to deliver the taste of your favorite soups in hard candy form, but Progresso also claims that the drops warm the mouth, bringing every mouthful closer to the sensation of a bowl of Progresso soup. Taste is one thing, but bringing the temperature of soup to a poppable drop is quite the claim.

To see if Progresso delivers on these lofty expectations, I performed a taste test. Read on to find out if Progresso's Soup Drops are a deliciously clever innovation or a gimmick that's best left on the shelf.

Unfortunately, you're not going to find Soup Drops in your local grocery store. Instead, Progresso is offering this unique product in a series of limited online releases. Starting today, you can snag a can on the Progresso Soup Drops website. For $2.97 — roughly the price of a can of soup — you'll get a Progresso Soup Drops variety can with individually wrapped Soup Drops in all three flavors, plus a can of Progresso's chicken noodle soup. Orders from Walmart+ members come with free shipping, while everyone else can snag free shipping if the total order is over $35. Additional releases are scheduled for January 22 and 29 at 9 a.m. EST as long as supplies last.

As far as the nutritional info on Soup Drops goes, well, there's not much to say. Each drop contains 5 calories and 55 milligrams of sodium, and that's everything of note. Clearly, this isn't a full meal, so definitely don't try to treat it as such.

I'm not sure how to feel about Progresso's Soup Drops. On the one hand, they don't taste great, because they're essentially soup-flavored candy. On the other hand, they do a pretty good job of distilling the flavor of tasty soup into a hard candy, so I suppose they're a success? Clearly, I'm still uncertain, so let's work through each flavor.

I tried the chicken noodle flavor first since that's the flavor that also comes as an actual soup. I had a few mouthfuls of the chicken noodle soup – rich, salty, and chunky — and then tried the drop, which was immediately confusing. My taste buds initially picked up a caramel flavor. Whether that was a true flavor or a result of my brain expecting one thing and getting another — think a sip of orange juice when you're expecting milk — is a question I can't answer.

Eventually, that sweeter caramel taste gave way to a brothy, chicken flavor I would imagine is akin to chugging a can of chicken broth. Add in a tingly sensation that I believe was supposed to be the warming element, and I made it through half a drop before moving on to the next flavor. Needless to say, I don't think it's a substitute for chicken soup when you're sick.

Texture is a key part of the food experience. Taking a big bite of a cheeseburger and feeling the melted cheese contrasted with the crunch of a pickle is nearly as important as the taste. Likewise, overcooking a steak makes the chewy texture an instant focal point. Soup — and especially soup inspired by pot roast – is the same, with hearty chunks of tender meat and vegetables offering variety against a backdrop of rich, thick broth.

Somehow, the beef pot roast variety of Soup Drops lacks the typical texture of a pot roast soup, but simultaneously still manages to ruin the final product with too much texture. From a taste perspective, this one is more like the actual product than the chicken noodle version. The issue is that it's rough. There are tiny bits of soup shrapnel in here that I found grating on my tongue. If you cooked a beef bouillon cube, added shredded beef jerky, and turned it into a lozenge, I would imagine the final result to be something similar to the beef pot roast Soup Drop.

Before I tasted anything, I had an inkling that tomato basil soup would either be the very worst or the very best of the Soup Drops, and I was right. It turns out that meat might be the issue when formulating a flavor and texture combination that works in the form of hard candy. Where chicken noodle and beef pot roast are teeming with a variety of different flavors thanks to their various ingredients, tomato basil is far less complex, and that simplicity translates well.

The combined flavors of tomato and basil explode from these Soup Drops. The natural sweetness, especially compared to the straight savory notes of the other two, makes this flavor tasty enough to take the crown. But make no mistake, I'm not popping a tomato basil Soup Drop just for fun anytime soon. That bizarre warming effect is still present, leaving my mouth feeling tingly and a tad numb for several minutes after I tossed the drop, but it's more muted than in the first two flavors. In short, tomato basil is the best flavor because it's not terrible.

Progresso took a swing, and I respect that. No one is going to honestly look at a Soup Drop and think it's a one-to-one replacement for a bowl of soup, but it's a fun gimmicky product that will surely be used in a successful prank or two. If Progresso wants to lean into Soup Drops for a third consecutive year, I have two suggestions: use one of the best Progresso flavors, broccoli cheese, and release the Soup Drops in November. A can of Soup Drops would make for an excellent white elephant gift around the holidays.

Progresso sent me a Soup Drop box, containing the drops and a can of chicken noodle soup. I ran to the store and snagged a can of tomato basil and beef pot roast on my own. I photographed everything and then tried a few bites of the soup before cleansing my palate with some water and moving on to try the corresponding drop. My evaluations were made based on taste and, unfortunately, texture.