I Tried Walgreens’ Viral Peelable Gummy Candy
The mango-shaped gummies with a chewy "skin" are all over TikTok.
Sabrina Choudhary
TikTok’s latest food fixation isn’t a restaurant with a mile-long waitlist, a home cooking hack or even a soda upgrade. This time, the trend comes from an unlikely source: Walgreens. The retailer’s Gummy Mango Peelable Candy has been making the rounds on the platform, and as a result, it’s been flying off shelves.
The appeal (pun intended) of the candy is that it’s enveloped in a “skin” you can pull off of the gooey center before eating. While Walgreens employees are mystified by the product’s overnight popularity, it checks all of TikTok’s boxes: It’s affordable (under $2), novel, interactive and cute. Plus, fans say the gummies have a true fruit flavor, which is unexpected for a candy.
I was able to snag a bag of the mango gummies and Walgreens’ lesser known Gummy Burst Pineapple Center Filled Candy to try for myself. Here’s what I thought.
The Peelable Mango Candies
Picking one up, the gummy immediately reminded me of mochi. It has a similar dry, soft texture on the outside.
Peeling them was harder and messier than I expected or would have liked. I’d hoped that the filling would be self-contained and easy to separate from the outer layer. I was picturing an experience like peeling a mandarin or a banana. In reality, the filling is sticky, and the peel would stretch too thin and break off in places or get stuck to the center. Instead of pulling the layers apart, you essentially have to flip the whole thing inside out. It’s not intuitive.
Sabrina Choudhary
The gummies did, however, deliver on taste. The filling really does taste like fresh mango. The manufacturers were somehow able to capture not just the sweetness of the flesh but that specific je ne sais quoi of the pit. Looking at the ingredient list, I would guess the mango jam they used is what elicits the real fruit flavor.
The peel itself is very chewy and doesn’t have as strong of a taste. I also tried biting into the gummies without peeling them, which saves you the mess of unraveling it, but that’s not nearly as fun and you can’t taste the filling as clearly.
Frankly, these candies aren’t significantly less messy or difficult than eating a real mango, and since the taste is unnervingly similar, at that point you should just eat a real mango. I couldn’t imagine eating these candies on the go.
Sabrina Choudhary
The Filled Pineapple Candies
First off, these are adorable. I love that they’re translucent so you can see the filling inside, and their pineapple shape is precious.
My biggest critique is that there isn’t enough filling. Like the mango candies, the filling held all the flavor. Advertising them as filled also made that sound like the most noteworthy aspect, but there wasn’t enough of it to truly set them apart from other gummies. They don’t burst like popping boba; they don’t ooze like Gushers. The filling is pleasant, and I wish there were more of it.
The outside is extremely chewy, almost like gum. These aren’t melt-in-your-mouth soft like some other gummy candies, which I personally would’ve preferred.
The aftertaste is what kept me coming back for more. That’s where I picked up on the fresh, tangy pineapple flavor — the ingredient list includes pineapple juice, which I imagine is in the filling. Overall, the pineapple candies tasted more artificial than the mango ones, probably due to the thick outer layer.
Final Thoughts
For less than $2 a pop, I understand the hype of these candies. They’re playful, they’re quirky and they taste much more like real fruit than a lot of options out there. I wished the mango candy was easier to peel so the experience was smoother, but the flavor was impressive. I also wish the pineapple gummies had more filling, which would make them more flavorful and set them apart from other candies.
Would I snack on these candies if a bag was sitting in front of me? Sure. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy them, especially not when stores are struggling to keep up with demand, and I’d still rather bite into a real mango or pineapple any day.
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