Ranking 14 Fruit Snack Brands from Worst to Best

There’s no shortage of snacks to choose from at the grocery store. As someone who has spent a little too much time in the snack aisle over the years, I can say that most of the options lean savory — except for fruit snacks, of course. 

And no, I’m not talking about gummy bears or candy. I’m talking about those individually-packaged, delectable fruity morsels that are found with the other kids’ lunchbox staples. I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of fruit snacks as a whole; I’d much rather opt for something salty. However, I couldn’t help but notice that the fruit snack selection has expanded so much in recent years to include everything from nostalgic Gushers to newfangled tropical and organic varieties. I wanted to see which ones were actually worth buying. 

I put several brands to the test and ranked them from worst to best, based on factors like taste and texture. While they are and will always be hyper-processed sweet “candies,” I wanted to find a brand that offered a flavor and texture that could appeal to snackers of all ages. 

Did I want to do this taste test just to see if the candies I remember from my childhood are as good as they were back then? Next question, please. 

These Gusher’s candies are definitely the most sickeningly sweet option on this list, and they have the most acquired texture. I didn’t get the squirt of fruit flavor that I was expecting when I bit into one. The outside had a sticky coating and tasted like Fruit by the Foot, while the center gave an unpleasant ooze that made me squirm. 

I think that you really have to be a sugar fiend to appreciate these candies (which is what they are; they’re not fruit snacks) in all of their glory, seeing as I found them too sweet to eat more than one or two. I also only have a vague idea about what flavors they are supposed to have — perhaps blue raspberry, orange, and green apple? The red candies depicted on the box weren’t in the bag I opened, but I couldn’t stomach opening another pack or eating any more for the sake of quality control. 

Betty Crocker’s fruit-flavored snacks come in a variety of themes, including Star Wars, Minecraft, and Moana. I just so happened to choose the Scooby-Doo! ones because I wanted a little blast from the past. I felt like all I needed was a bag of Scooby Snacks (cinnamon-spiced graham cracker cookies) and I would have been all set to solve a mystery. 

Childhood memories aside, these snacks leave something to be desired in both the flavor and texture departments. Each bag contains a pretty good ratio of fruit snack flavors. Although all the flavors are detectable and different — I could pick up on some blue raspberry, strawberry, orange, and what might be lime from the bag I selected — they still all taste super, super artificial and plasticky. They also turn to mush in your mouth; there is no chewiness at all to them. The final nail in the coffin for this brand was the fact that although it tried to print the character’s faces on the candies, it’s really hard to tell the difference between Fred and Scooby. Ruh Roh! 

What is Arizona — yes, the canned tea company — doing making fruit snacks? I don’t entirely know, but I do know that it should probably stick to beverages … because these mixed fruit snacks are definitely not it. There are supposed to be five flavors in the bags: fruit punch, mucho mango, watermelon, grapeade, and orangeade. 

I couldn’t really pick out any of the flavors in these gummies, aside from a very light mango flavor that is, in all honesty, barely detectable. Not only did I have trouble tasting each flavor, but I couldn’t tell that there was anything remotely grape-adjacent in my bag, suggesting that Arizona has an issue with consistency across its bags.

I think that it’s cute that the gummies are all shaped like Arizona cans and the logo, but the flavor of each one is almost musty — kind of like its beverages taste. So, I guess its lackluster flavors are on-brand for Arizona, but it spells bad news for fruit snack lovers. The gummies didn’t taste as plasticky as the Scooby-Doo! snacks, but this still isn’t a box I would recommend buying.

If Jolly Ranchers and fruit snacks had a baby, it would be these Great Value fruit smiles. The green candies have that very cloying, artificial sour apple flavor that only Jolly Ranchers could execute, while the watermelon and blue raspberry ones embody all of the flavors of the iconic pink and blue candies, too. They’re far more flavorful than the lower-ranked snacks. 

Despite this candy connection, I can’t say that these Great Value fruit smiles were otherwise promising. The label suggested they would be “tangy,” but the candy underdelivered on this promise. All I could taste was a firehose of synthetic sweeteners; there was very little bright flavor to bring them back down to Earth. The candies also had the texture of the gumdrops I remember my grandma having on her coffee table. They’re soft and squishy, and don’t have the ultra-satisfying gummy pull or toothsomeness that I wanted. 

Annie’s is a well-known natural foods brand, and it caters to an array of customers — including kids. I picked up its trademarked Bunny Fruit sampler, which contains both summer strawberry and berry patch gummies. The gummies are supposed to be shaped like the bunny on the logo, but in all honesty, they came out looking … phallic. I also didn’t expect that they would be translucent, nor sticky, but here we are. 

Since they were translucent, I expected that their texture would be akin to a gummy bear. Wrong again. I could bite into them remarkably easily. I would describe them as being very Jell-O like — all the way down to how they splatter on your molars when you bite down.

The flavors were nothing special. The berry patch gummies all tasted vaguely like berries, while the strawberry patch candies tasted like strawberry gummies — with some tasting slightly more artificial than the rest. Sure, you could probably guess that these were made with real fruit juice, especially compared to some of the more clearly artificially-flavored selections on this list (ahem, Gushers). But Annie’s gummies are still wicked expensive, and they don’t have any qualities that warrant a higher price tag. 

Welch’s mixed fruit snacks were the ones that I tried first for this ranking. I assume that they’re kind of like the gold standard for fruit snacks, considering they’re a popular option at my local convenience store. But, I’ll be the first to admit that I was underwhelmed by these snacks. They lacked that distinct chewy factor that would set them apart from other brands. I guess I was looking for something with more of a Haribo-like candy texture. When I opened the bag, I was met with three flavors of gummies: grape, orange, and what I presumed to be something in the berry family (but was not any more identifiable than that).

These candies, particularly the grape and the orange, had a distinct plasticky flavor that only a kid could love. I also thought that of all the gummies, the grape ones were the chewiest, while the other two flavors just dissolved into nothingness against my molars. These fruit snacks are passable, but far from iconic or interesting enough to warrant purchasing them. 

What’s with all of these brands trying to get a name for themselves in the fruit snack scene? I’m not entirely sure, but I will admit that Jamba’s mango-adjacent fruit snacks were far better than Arizona’s sad attempt at them. These sizeable snacks come in four flavors: mango, passionfruit, pineapple, and orange. They’re tropical in a way that the “tropical” Gushers weren’t, and they had the most full-bodied flavor of any fruit snack brand I tried. I’m not a big pineapple person (read: I won’t eat a fruit salad if pineapple has touched any of its components), but even I liked this brand’s use of the flavor. The passionfruit gummies brought some novelty to the scene, while the mango flavor really made me feel like I was sipping on a Jamba-branded smoothie. 

However, the texture of these fruit snacks was absolutely awful. I would liken it biting into an over-ripened piece of fruit that’s been sitting on your counter for two weeks too long. They’re so mushy, and that honestly turned me off to these fruit snacks entirely. If they had a little more chewiness, I would have certainly ranked these snacks much higher on my list. 

It turns out you don’t have to spend a lot or visit a major grocery store to find a halfway decent fruit snack. Aldi’s massive boxes of strawberry Lunch Buddies are a great buy. Though, there is only one flavor option in all 22 packs: strawberry. But if you have a kid who loves that artificial strawberry flavor, they’ll surely love these. 

The texture of these snacks is very much akin to a Flintstones gummy. Your jaw really has to work for it, and I would even say that they teeter on the edge of being too chewy. However, they did achieve a level of texture that none of the lower-ranked fruit snacks seem to reach, so I’ll give credit where credit is due.

The strawberry flavor of these candies, as I noted, is not fresh, nor is it evident that real strawberries are used. The label lists apple juice as the primary ingredients in these snacks. They’re affordable and decent enough, though they don’t taste as fresh as my top-ranked brands. 

Mott’s is Welch’s biggest competition (at least in terms of grocery store prominence), and these fruit snacks from the applesauce giant put up a valiant effort in this fruity fight. They had a similar texture to the lower-ranked snacks, and disintegrated against my molars almost immediately. I will say that their fruit flavors are quite bold and well-developed, and although they have some of that plasticky undertone to them, I can appreciate that Mott’s went all out with its flavors. For example, there was no doubt in my mind that the grape fruit snack was supposed to be grape-flavored. But there were also some more obscure shapes, like apples and pears, that were less easily identifiable.

I will say, coming from someone who works in marketing, these snacks have a great thing going for them. The candies all look like the fruits they’re supposed to represent, there are cute graphics on each package, and you can even learn the Spanish words for the symbols if you look close enough. I don’t think I would buy and eat them again, but if they were in a snack basket, I wouldn’t mind eating a pack (or two). 

Who is feeding their five-year-old blackcurrant-flavored fruit snacks? These treats seem a little too grown-up to be fed to a kid, and I doubt that such a young eater would appreciate the breadth of flavors in this pack, which also includes blackberry, raspberry, and grape. Oddly enough, I could definitely point to the blackcurrant-flavored gummies in this pack, though all of the other ones seemed to fall to the wayside as I snacked my way through it. 

The flavors here are very juicy and refreshing, and I felt that they better utilized an acidic contrast, especially compared to the lower-ranking options on this list that could just as easily be stocked with the other candies at the grocery store. I think the texture of these treats was average at best; it wasn’t anything like my top-ranked brand, but it certainly wasn’t as mealy as the brands that fell to the bottom of this list. All in all, it seems like a steep price to pay for a mediocre bag of fruit snacks, organic or not.

I guess Funables are what I think of when I think “fruit snack.” They’re almost bouncy in texture, though I didn’t have to gnaw on them as much as I would have had to with a gummy bear or a gummy worm. They’re toothsome in all the right ways, yet are not tedious to eat. So, it would make sense that they would rank slightly higher than those fruit snack brands that failed to meet my high standards for texture. 

The flavor of these fruit snacks is a little more cumbersome — and almost conservative. It’s not anything revolutionary, as there are clearly some artificial berry and fruit flavors at play. But, the blue raspberry is passable, the apple (which is oddly colored blue) isn’t offending anyone, and the strawberry candy fits my standard for strawberry-flavored things. I was glad to have a fruit snack on this list that was average, though there were just some other brands that had brighter and more developed flavors than this one. 

I tried these Aldi Simply Nature fruit snacks for my ranking of the grocer’s best healthy snacks, and I really thought that they were a winner. But, after trying so many of the other fruit snack brands, I found that the texture and flavor of this Aldi offering just wasn’t the crème de la crème. 

The fruit flavor of these snacks was very bold and well-concentrated. You could tell they were made with real fruit juice, though the fruits got jumbled the more snacks that I ate. I could parcel out something strawberry-adjacent and perhaps something a little raspberry-ish, but all the flavors were rather muddled. The top-ranking brands on this list also had some level of acidity and tanginess to balance out that fruit flavor and sweetness, and I was really craving that complementary flavor here. All in all, they’re not bad for being so cheap — and the fact that they’re made with organic ingredients makes the price all that more impressive. 

I don’t mean to stereotype, but I feel like the kind of parent who would buy these fruit snacks for their kid would also only let them play with neutral-colored toys. The packaging, and the candy itself, is very sterile and unlike the artificially-colored and flavored snacks on this list. However, that obviously didn’t push the fruit snacks back in the ranking. 

Each bag of these bettergoods snacks contains cherry, strawberry, and raspberry gummy candies. However, the first bag I opened only contained cherry and strawberry gummies with one measly raspberry one thrown in. The second bag was almost all cherry, with very few of the other flavors. Now, I love cherry-flavored treats, so it was my lucky day, but someone who doesn’t like the flavor may not share the same sentiment. 

The flavor of these candies was quite juicy, bright, and clearly very fruit-forward, which earned them high marks. They’re also remarkably chewy for being entirely vegan. But, I would have liked to see a little more effort focused on the ratio of flavors in these bags.

If you want a fruit snack that has the consistency of a gummy bear, then Black Forest is the brand you should add to your cart. These candies were just what I was looking for on all fronts. They’re quite large, which I suspect is because they have a Gushers-like effect — and it works for the most part. There is a little bit of juiciness in every bite, though it doesn’t taste as artificial and forced as the Gushers did. I appreciated that these Black Forest gummies were subtly tart, which was not the case for other fruit snacks on this list. 

Each package contains a balance of three primary flavors: strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry. While the blackberry flavor is a little harder to pinpoint, simply because it’s not a typical fruit snack offering, I appreciated that it still tasted like a genuine, fruity flavor. These were one of the most expensive fruit snacks on my list, but I think that their superior flavor and candy-like texture warrants consideration. Based on Black Forest’s success with this fruity offering, I imagine its other fruit snacks are also quite delectable and worthy of a place in your cart as well. 

I purchased these fruit snacks from three grocery stores located in the Southern Rhode Island area and sampled them back-to-back so that I could more readily compare them. My ideal fruit snack was one that really delivered on the “fruit” notes first and foremost. While I knew I wasn’t going to get the same flavor in these processed snacks as I would if I bit into a ripe strawberry or an orange wedge, I still craved a snack that balanced a refreshing flavor and something other than straight sweetness. Although the primary audience of these treats is probably not adults with well-formed palates, I still ranked the snacks that had a balanced flavor above those that were brimming with fake fruit flavors and/or sugar. 

Texture was another big point for me. While the fruit snacks shouldn’t have the same chewiness as a gummy bear, they should still have some structure to them so that they don’t just disintegrate on your molars. The candies that ranked low were almost gumdrop-like and mushy, while those that ranked high offered a chewier and more satisfying texture.