The Best Trader Joe's Gummy Candy Has A Fruity Flavor That Hits On Every Level

Trader Joe's is a veritable mecca of unique goodies you can't find anywhere else. That's because the company sends buyers all over the world to source the best-of-the-best products. This includes lots of exceptional desserts and other top-quality sweets.

Contrary to a common misconception, the popular supermarket is not a health food store (that's a Trader Joe's myth). When looking for something to satisfy your sweet tooth, you can trust that TJ's has a wide array of treats, delightfully sugar-filled and tasty through and through. Among them, Trader Joe's offers a plentiful selection of gummy candies, and we recently did a rundown on 10 of them, ranking them from best to worst. Among the assortment of chew-rrific fruity, sour, and spicy treats, one standout rose to the top: TJ's Sour Strawberry Candy Belts.

While some gummy candy actually isn't vegan, these puckery gems are. So, if you're following a vegan lifestyle, this is a green-light treat you can enjoy without reservation. It's the inclusion of real fruit that results in an attribute our taste tester really enjoyed: The strawberry flavor shines through — leading to our tester's favorite aspect of the candy, which is that the taste balances well with an intense, Sour Patch-esque sourness our writer described as "a satisfying slide from tart to sweet." This perfect balance of natural sugariness couples with puckering sourness in a fun-to-eat, ribbon-like shape, making it a playfully tart standout.

Trader Joe's Sour Strawberry Candy Belts have garnered a huge fan following since hitting shelves in 2025. "Hands down, my new favorite!" one Reddit poster enthused, adding, "These belts are on a whole other level." Another Redditor commented, "We went absolutely feral over these yesterday. I can only assume a good chunk of my paycheck will be funneled right back into TJ's with these bad boys."

Admirers have enjoyed some of the same attributes that won over our taste tester, calling the sweet-sour mashup "a yummy flavor explosion." The texture has also won points with consumers, who find the belts to be thicker than comparable treats, with a good balance of softness and chewiness.

One problem for many consumers is that they can't stop eating the candies once they start. One Reddit user shared they can't even make it home from the store without a large portion of the package vanishing. "Then my mouth is all burned from the sourness[,] and I have to wait a few days for my tastebuds to regrow." Even folks who don't normally like sour treats have found these particular gummies addictive.

There's another "buyer beware" factor to watch out for. Posters across social media have had wildly different experiences with varying batches of the treats, with some having almost no sourness at all, while others are over-the-top tart. It seems the Turkish supplier TJ's sources these from hasn't gotten out all the kinks. Fortunately, it's super easy to return merchandise to Trader Joe's. Many stores also have an informal "try before you buy" policy, so you can ask a worker to pop open a package and let you verify the sour-sweet factor for yourself.