I’m not very familiar with the history of Life Savers candy, but I think this might be the original flavour. It’s a little strange because there is in fact 5 flavours in the original flavour package. Maybe it isn’t the original flavour then, maybe there was another kind of Life Savers before these. I just always associate this 5 flavour combination as being the original combination. It’s kind of strange, but I’m not sure why. Is it strange that I call this the original flavour of Life Savers because it’s the flavours I first remember of Life Savers, or is it strange because whomever came up with Life Savers decided to make this particular flavour combination first.

Four out of five of these flavours is fairly common in the candy world. Cherry, lemon, lime and orange are all standard flavours of hard candy where I come from. The odd one out is the pineapple flavour. I am however really happy that the lime and lemon do in fact taste really different. While I enjoyed every single flavour, I think the red, I assume cherry, is my favourite. It’s a really powerful flavour that just screams red.

It’s hard for me to rate these flavours completely objectively because in my head they all work perfectly well. Sure they don’t actually taste much like the fruit their trying to represent, but as far as fake candy flavours go they’re pretty much spot on. The reason they’re hard for me to rate objectively on this level is because Life Savers was likely one of the first hard candies I’d ever eaten as a child. So my entire experience of fake fruit flavours is somewhat based on these exact flavours.

What I’m saying is, if you’ve never had Life Savers before, and you’re familiar with the fruit it’s trying to represent, you might be disappointed. However, if you’ve had Life Savers growing up, then they taste fine. The other odd thing about these candies, if you look at them objectively, is the shape. I’m not sure why round rings work well as a candy. For the sake of science, I made sure to suck on one until it disappeared entirely, and it was challenging. When the ring gets thin, it’s really hard not to bite down or even break it with your tongue.

This review has left me rather confused. It’s a candy that’s been around as long as I know. I’ve probably eaten a Life Saver candy at least once, every single year of my life. To judge it impartially is almost impossible, but I really want to believe that they’re pretty tasty candies.