The Despicable Me films are a firm family favorite in the Grocery Gems household, and I'd thoroughly recommend them for anyone to watch. They're delightfully feel good movies, which focuses on the life of an evil mastermind Gru (basically the classic "bad guy"), but does so with lots of humor and warmth. My kids were immediately drawn to the Minion characters, the "henchmen" of the lead criminal mastermind, who provide all the inevitable slapstick gags. They're now so popular that they are featuring in their own movie next year, and have recently joined the confectionery market in the form of these Haribo Minions.
The sweets themselves look quite cute, I like the way the figures are each half yellow and half blue, for the Minions' dungarees. The regular Minions are made up of a mix of full jellies and half foam backed jellies. If you've watched Despicable Me 2 then you'll know that the purple sweets represent Evil Minions - these are Minions who've been infected with the PX-41 serum and end up even more deranged and silly than their regular counterparts. It's a nice touch that these are included in the pack too.
The flavor is described on the packet as "fruit flavoured" which is never a good sign, and I couldn't get much joy from the ingredients list (or from google) as to what the flavor of these is supposed to be. I taste tested them on my family and we all agreed that the Evil Minions had a blackcurrant taste (even though that's not listed on the ingredients), but it's only there as a very subtle fruity flavor. The Minions themselves are harder to pin down in terms of taste, they merely have a generic fruity flavour, with notes of apple, citrus and a sweet blueberry. I suppose many kids will still enjoy these sweets regardless, they're generic sweetness makes gives them a wide appeal. But for me, they were quite disappointing, especially since I know that Haribo can come up with some amazing flavours. I wish they had picked a specific flavor and used that rather than this indistinct fruitiness.
Grocery Gems Verdict: Haribo Minions
RATING: 6 out of 10.
Buy them again?: Doubt it.
Purchased: Poundland
Price: £1.00.
