Mike and Ike "Italian Ice"

Just Born

Of all the Mike and Ike's that I've tasted in my life, these are easily the most disappointing. The flavour selection is uncreative, the "Italian Ice" feature only ruins the flavour rather than improving it, and they contain one of my least favorite flavours (watermelon). These Mike and Ikes aren't really gross, except for the watermelon ones, but they're not nearly up to the standard you'd expect from Just Born.

The biggest problem with this treat is the Italian Ice feature. I'm not sure what their goal was, but all that these chewy candies seem to be is sweeter, and with far less fruit flavour. I've tasted Italian ice, and I generally find that it's actually a more intense fruit flavour, rather than less, because Italian ice concentrates the flavours. Basically, what I get out of this is an over sugared/watered down version of some classic fruit flavours.

This is where my other problem comes up, the "classic fruit flavours". They're really nothing that creative, and not all of them are really flavours that one might associate with Italian ice. Most notably, I can't say that I've ever tried a watermelon Italian ice in my life (I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I just can’t remember ever trying one). I know that watermelon is generally a flavour that I don't enjoy, but I can accept it when it's appropriate to the candy. In this case I just don't think it's really that appropriate.

As a final note, the bag of Mike and Ike's that I ate was horribly unbalanced with the variety of flavours inside. More than half of the Mike and Ikes in my bag were watermelon, and I think I only received one of the blue raspberry candies. I know that sometimes machines make mistakes and there's an imbalance, but I can't say that it wasn't disappointing.