In honor of National Jelly Bean Day on April 22, I decided to analyze all of Jelly Belly’s jelly bean flavors. The bag with the most flavors I could find was a lunker, a two-pound bag with a whopping 49 flavors. I underestimated how many jelly beans I would have to eat in one sitting to compare and analyze all 49 flavors so I had to break my experiment into two days so I didn’t explode. I luckily had some assistants to help differentiate similar flavors and organize the data.
It was very scientific and included a computer-generated graph made by my very sciency friend. I was going to just write it down in my notebook, so thank goodness for scientists!
To start my experiment I bought the supplies (jelly beans) and conducted the experiment (ate jelly beans) in the lab (my kitchen) and found some shocking results. I will share my results separated into the top overall Jelly Belly jelly bean, the top flavor, and the top appearance. I will also make a list of best to worst-ranking jelly beans to end the experiment.
To determine the scores, the appearance and flavor were each scored out of ten to find the best flavored and best-looking bean, and then, (thank goodness for technology) the computer did some math and found the top-ranking jelly bean based on the scores given.
Here are the results.
Top flavored jelly bean:
1. Juicy pear won with a 10/10
2. Ties for second is french vanilla, toasted marshmallow, piña colada, raspberry and blackberry with a 9/10
3. Peach had an 8/10
Top appearance (aka the cutest ‘lil bean):
1. Tying for first, french vanilla, toasted marshmallow and strawberry cheesecake earned a 10/10
2. Kiwi and sizzling cinnamon tied for second with a 9/10
3. Mango had a 9/10
Top overall jelly beans:
1. French Vanilla and toasted marshmallow tied for first with a 9.5/10
2. Peach had an 8.5/103.
3. Mango had an 8/10
No bean earned a perfect 10 for overall taste and appearance. I am still in search of the perfect bean.
More specific official bean data:
Here is a list of the Jelly Belly jelly beans in order from best to worst jelly bean, flavor-wise. Here I did not account for appearance and only for the best jelly bean flavor but will still include the ratings each bean got. These results might surprise you, shock you, even make you angry, but remember, this is official jelly bean data. I can’t argue with science.
1. Juicy Pear
Flavor: 10
Appearance: 1
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: Juicy pear deserves a 100 out of 10. It’s so delicious and amazing. I want an entire bag of just juicy pear. Unfortunately, juicy pear looks like it is moldy. Not casual mold, absolutely covered in disgusting little moldy spores. It’s a green bean with green splotches. Mold. But delicious and juicy mold.
2. French Vanilla
Flavor: 9
Appearance: 10
Overall Rating: 9.5
Rationale: Oh so good. Not as good as juicy pear but still delicious. It’s creamy and light and vanilla-ey and just an almost perfect bean. It looks delicate but the color can be tricked with coconut which is sad, and why it is not the perfect bean.
3. Toasted Marshmallow
Flavor: 9
Appearance: 10
Overall Rating: 9.5
Rationale: This one surprised me. I took one bite and had a vivid flashback to my grandma’s Mr. Sketch markers and just absolutely diving my nose into that marker. It smelt SO good, and that’s exactly what this little bean tasted like. I think it rated so highly for the nostalgia and the nostalgia only.
4. Piña Colada
Flavor: 9
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: I have to say this was another shocker. I do not like Piña Coladas so I thought I wouldn’t like this bean, but WOWEE was I wrong. What a refreshing little taste of summer, MMH. The only issue I had with this bean is the horrendous color. It looks like a little pile of melted butter. It is not appetizing and I kept thinking it was buttered popcorn trying to trick me so I was very nervous about this bean every time.
5.5. Coconut
Flavor: 9
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: Coconut almost tied but just wasn’t good enough to actually tie. It was good but it tasted more like a Piña Colada than the piña colada bean did. It was a little too coconutty for me, but I still wanted more. It’s basically a fruit so it’s a health bean anyways.
5. Raspberry
Flavor: 9
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: What a pleasant bean this is! So underrated! I’ve never thought to myself that I wanted a raspberry jelly bean, but, after this research, I just love the raspberry beans! They are ugly little things, so I think I used to avoid them out of sheer fear, but now I know just how delish they are! They don’t taste like a raspberry, so that’s a little strange, but they’re still just amazing little beans packed with flavor.
6. Wild Blackberry
Flavor: 9
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: This one was another shocker!! It was so good! Kind of light and refreshing like a litter summer berry, but it was also terrifying because this bean could easily be confused with the licorice bean (GAG). So, it was nerve-wracking to bite into the bean hoping it was blackberry and not the dreaded licorice.
7. Peach
Flavor: 8
Appearance: 9
Overall Rating: 8.5
Rationale: The peach bean was just so pleasant. It tasted like a sweet peach. How can you go wrong there?
8. Mango
Flavor: 8
Appearance: 8
Overall Rating: 8
Rationale: Mango was another pleasant bean. Not as pleasant as peach, but pleasant in its own way. It didn’t taste like a mango whatsoever, so that’s probably why I liked it, but it was a solid bean.
9. A&W Cream Soda
Flavor: 8
Appearance: 1
Overall Rating: 4.5
Rationale: Usually I avoid the soda-flavored beans but now I know to go for these beans!! So good! Soda flavor, cream flavor, really good bean! But, downfall, it looked dirty. I really thought there was dust on the bean. Just the way it looked I guess.
10. Strawberry Jam
Flavor: 7
Appearance: 6
Overall Rating: 6.5
Rationale: Strawberry jam confused me because it was delicious and jammy but it also tasted like dust. That’s really all I have to say about it.
11. Sunkist Lime
Flavor: 7
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 6
Rationale: This bean was the first of the yellow bean squad that tried to ruin my life*. I had to eat SO many yellow beans to decide which was which. I am confident I did tell which bean was which and liked this bean much more than the rival lemon-lime. This bean is more flavorful and summery and just YUM.
*Sunkist lemon, lemon drop, lemon lime, and sunkist lime all look identical so I had to eat about 20 yellow beans until I was confident I had the right flavor matched to the right bean.
12. Blueberry
Flavor: 7
Appearance: 4
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: Blueberry was a lot like berry blue but just a better version of it. It had a decent blueberry flavor and wasn’t too fake or sweet but just a decent blueberry bean.
13. Island Punch
Flavor: 7
Appearance: 4
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: I was so prepared to hate this bean, but I loved it! (The first time*) It was fun, sweet, tropical, made me forget I was doing research in my kitchen, and sent me far away to a sandy island.
*The next time I conducted research I stumbled upon another island punch and was so excited to try another one, and I was devastated. It had a rather aggressive sunscreen flavor. I dug for another one to see if it was just one bad bean, but no.
14. Watermelon
Flavor: 6
Appearance: 9
Overall Rating: 7.5
Rationale: Watermelon bean makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s not that it necessarily tastes bad, it just makes me uncomfortable. It’s such a dark green for watermelon and the inside is red. It looks like a tiny watermelon but it doesn’t taste like watermelon, and they just make me uncomfortable. I wish I liked them more because the flavor is decent.
15. Berry Blue
Flavor: 6
Appearance: 7
Overall Rating: 6.5
Rationale: Such a typical bean. So sweet. So artificial. This bean is probably one of the most forgotten about because it’s fine, but nobody would miss it if Jelly Belly gave this flavor the boot. It just tasted like blue.
16. Margarita
Flavor: 6
Appearance: 6
Overall Rating: 6
Rationale: *deep sigh* I love margaritas (thanks for passing down that gene, mom) so when I bit into this bean I was prepared to taste some lime, some salted rim, a little tequila, but no. It tasted like the most average green bean in the world. It also is green with green splotches? I have no idea who made the margarita bean but they have obviously never had a margarita. I’m getting upset all over again.
17. Red Apple
Flavor: 6
Appearance: 6
Overall Rating: 6
Rationale: This bean felt like a punch to the jaw. It was so sour my cheeks hurt. I gave it a decent rating because of just how powerful this bean is. It’s not good, at all, but it packs a punch.
18. Sunkist Lemon
Flavor: 6
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 5.5
Rationale: Ugh. Another yellow. It just tasted like a lemon. Jelly Belly did a great job flavor matching on this one.
19. Sizzling Cinnamon
Flavor: 5
Appearance: 9
Overall Rating: 7
Rationale: I HATE spice, so this bean confuses me. It’s yummy but weirdly spicy for cinnamon. Cinnamon isn’t spicy. And I’m a spice baby. Pepper is sometimes too spicy for me. So I know cinnamon shouldn’t be scary like this. But weirdly enough, I found sizzling cinnamon to be less spicy than the regular cinnamon!
20. Pomegranate
Flavor: 5
Appearance: 8
Overall Rating: 6.5
Rationale: A beautiful bean! But that’s where the praise ends. It was a journey eating this bean, let me tell you. I saw it and was amazed by its beauty, took a bite, thought it was unique, and was liking it. It was sweet but not too sweet, and then I swallowed and it tasted like the dust that comes off an old book. In my mouth. Lingering. These beans almost ruined my entire experiment. I was so mad at them.
21. Cotton Candy
Flavor: 5
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 5
Rationale: It’s cotton candy. What more can I say?
22. Sunkist Orange
Flavor: 5
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 5
Rationale: Just really so average. It tasted like an orange soda. That’s it.
23. Mixed Berry Smoothie
Flavor: 4
Appearance: 8
Overall Rating: 6
Rationale: This one had so much detail in the name I knew it was going to be weird. And I was correct. It was just so sweet and yucky and absolutely nothing like a berry smoothie. Its only perk was that it was a pretty bean and did look blended.
24. Lemon Drop
Flavor: 4
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 4.5
Rationale: This one was kinda fun! It reminded me of the local college bar shots but in my own kitchen! Good job Jelly Belly! When I leave college, I’ll never have another lemon drop in the drink or bean form.
25. Dr. Pepper
Flavor: 4
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 3
Rationale: Oddly okay. I was ready to hate it but I was kind of into it. I liked that it was Dr. Pepper flavored without the weird fizz flavor they add to some of the other soda beans.
26. Chocolate Pudding
Flavor: 4
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 3
Rationale: YUCK. This bean tastes just like chocolate pudding. It was too realistic and made me scared. It really just tasted like a really thick pudding injected into a bean and dried in the sun all day. That’s a no from me.
27. Cinnamon
Flavor: 4
Appearance: 1
Overall Rating: 2.5
Rationale: See Sizzling Cinnamon.
28. Cappuccino
Flavor: 3
Appearance: 6
Overall Rating: 4.5
Rationale: Oh sadness. This one broke my heart. I love coffee, so I was ready to love this flavor. I did not love this flavor. At all. It tasted like the kind of coffee non-coffee drinkers drink. Cream and sugar with a splash of coffee.
29. Lemon Lime
Flavor: 3
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 4
Rationale: This was another average bean but average with a dusty aftertaste. Not fresh at all. Think of a Sprite that was left out in the sun all day, that’s what this bean tasted like.
30. Sunkist Pink Grapefruit
Flavor: 3
Appearance: 3
Overall Rating: 3
Rationale: Strangely like a grapefruit! Another good flavor match for Jelly Belly. I don’t like grapefruits, so it makes sense why this bean did not succeed, but I would like to know a grapefruit lover’s opinion on this bean because I really think they would like it. The color made me uncomfortable though. It looked like an orange pearl. Nothing like a grapefruit.
31. Strawberry Cheesecake
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 10
Overall Rating: 6
Rationale: Just so strange! It was fruity but creamy, and just too weird. It was beautiful, a perfect 10 in appearance but just not right in flavor.
32. Bubble Gum
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 3
Rationale: Y’all, it’s bubble gum. Do I even need to say more?
33. Caramel Corn
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 5
Overall Rating: 3.5
Rationale: YUCK. This bean is a wanna-be buttered popcorn. It makes me mad because it wants so badly to be a buttered popcorn bean but just isn’t. It’s the slightest bit better than the buttered popcorn, but when talking about flavors this bad, is there even a winner?
34. Orange Sherbert
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 2
Rationale: This really tasted like orange sherbet. But if you took that tub and added a cup of sugar and made it not cold like sherbet. The flavor was there but it sure wasn’t right.
35. Sour Cherry
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 2
Rationale: This was another “punch-you-in-the-face” flavor. I just felt unwell after eating it because my cheeks were sore from the powerful sour flavor. I got it. I sure got the point. It was sour.
36. Cantaloupe
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 2
Rationale: This bean was terrifying. I have nightmares about this bean. It tastes identical to a cantaloupe. And I like cantaloupe. But it was a jelly bean cantaloupe. I just am terrified. You have to try it to understand, and I swear you’ll be scared too.
37. Green Apple
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 2
Rationale: Meh. It was a green apple jelly bean.
38. A&W Rootbeer
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 2
Rationale: I could taste the fizz! And not in a fun pop-rocket way but in a “why is my jelly bean fizzy?” way. It was just weird and I didn’t like it.
39. Sunkist Tangerine
Flavor: 2
Appearance: 2
Overall Rating: 2
Rationale: I must have been so underwhelmed with the flavor I forgot to take notes. I had my scientist assistant documenting the numbers and all I had to do was write myself notes, and I must have just been so underwhelmed by this flavor that I didn’t even take notes.
40. Kiwi
Flavor: 1
Appearance: 9
Overall Rating: 5
Rationale: OH YUCK. This bean tastes like when you get conditioner in your mouth and just cannot get rid of the flavor. That is 100% this flavor. It is not good. It does not taste like a kiwi. It is horrible. It also looks nothing like a kiwi. I don’t know who made this bean but they must not have ever seen or tasted a kiwi in their life.
41. Buttered Popcorn
Flavor: 1
Appearance: 8
Overall Rating: 4.5
Rationale: I promised my fellow Her Campus writer, Hannah Hippensteel, I would give this bean a fighting chance… and I did. I hated it but I tried it and didn’t gag, so I gave it a second try and almost gagged. It’s just wrong. I wanted to like it for Hannah, but it’s just not right. It’s not the worst-tasting bean, but it should still be illegal.
42. Strawberry Daiquiri
Flavor: 1
Appearance: 8
Overall Rating: 4.5
Rationale: I’ve never had a strawberry daiquiri before, but, in my head, I thought this bean was going to taste like a kiddy cocktail, so you can imagine my surprise when I bit into this abomination. It’s not fruity, it’s too sweet, it’s just gross.
43. Tutti Frutti
Flavor: 1
Appearance: 8
Overall Rating: 4.5
Rationale: When I see this flavor I cringe. Every bag of Jelly Belly beans I have ever had has SO many tutti frutti beans. Get rid of them. We don’t need them. They’re a worse version of the bubble gum flavor. They taste just like Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape. Even worse, you have to swallow it so you have flashbacks of people reminding you it’ll stay in your stomach for 7 years.
44. Licorice
Flavor: 1
Appearance: 6
Overall Rating: 3.5
Rationale: I just hate it. I tried. I really did. I don’t like it.
45. Crushed Pineapple
Flavor: 1
Appearance: 4
Overall Rating: 2.5
Rationale: This one was just wrong. I was not prepared to give pineapple such a low score because I love pineapple! But this bean, this bean is not pineapple. I don’t know what it is but it is NOT pineapple.
46. Top banana
Flavor: 0
Appearance: 1
Overall Rating: .5
Rationale: Petition to change the name to “Bottom of the Barrel Banana” because that’s what this flavor is. I almost threw up. I’m truly sorry if you like this color but it is horrendous. I really truly gagged in my mouth. This bean is a tiny way too ripe banana. It even looks JUST like a banana. It’s horrifying. I’m glad they look just like a tiny banana because then you can never accidentally eat a banana jelly bean.
Note:
My bag did not have a single plum, very cherry, or maple syrup:( Tragic but I don’t think any would have been top contenders anyway.
All in all, I never want to eat a jelly bean again. I ate approximately a pound of beans to conduct this research.
Okay, nevermind. That’s a lie. I still have a pound of beans calling my name as I write. I will never stop eating jelly beans, no matter the time of year. I believe every day should be National Jelly Bean Day; every holiday should have jelly beans with a little holiday flair, and I just think Jelly Belly should be president of the world.
Please celebrate accordingly and eat some delicious little sugar beans to celebrate today!