All 18 Flavors of Trader Joe’s Gourmet Jelly Beans, Ranked

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May 29

Written By Louise

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I’m gonna be honest: I haven’t been, traditionally, a huge fan of jelly beans. The texture is wack and they never taste that great, except for a select few flavors (root beer? Hells yeah!). But in the midst of a pandemic lockdown when most people were getting their degrees in virology from the University of Facebook, I turned out to be a natural in the time-honored field of stuffing my face with Trader’s Joe’s snacks.

That, to my astonishment, included Trader Joe’s Gourmet Jelly Beans. I think I like them because the flavors are generally better/more natural-tasting than the traditional Jelly Belly, and I like the firmer texture. They are made with “natural” ingredients–not something that tends to concern me too much when it comes to candy choices–but maybe there’s something to it if these are this much better than Jelly Belly.

Not all the flavors are great, or even good, but since I’m now a TJ’s JB connoisseur (according to me), I decided to share my wisdom and create a ranking of all 18 flavors.

18. Grape

F THIS SHIT. Grape is the worst flavor in the history of candy, and TJ’s has not been able to improve upon it.

17. Banana Split

Banana is also a terrible candy flavor. I feel like they tried to go for just banana, but couldn’t get it to stop tasting like rotten garbage so just decided to call it “banana split” instead.

16. Coconut

I love coconut, and this IS unmistakably coconut, but unfortunately in kind of a sunscreen-y way.

15. Cherry

Not even our heroes at TJ’s can completely eradicate the medicinal taste that plagues so much cherry candy.

14. Licorice

Some people probably think this one should be at the bottom, as I know licorice has a lot of haters. I love licorice, but it’s not the best in jelly bean form, and it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the fruity flavors.

13. Lemon Lime

It’s not bad, but it’s kind of unnecessary, especially since the straight up lemon flavor is so good. Lime doesn’t translate that well to candy or desserts in general, in my opinion. (That’s right--suck it, key lime pie!!)

12. Pomegranate

Another flavor that’s not bad, but it doesn’t really stand out and just kind of tastes like generic fruit.

11. Raspberry

Raspberries are one of my favorite fruits, but this tastes mostly indistinguishable from strawberry.

10. Strawberry

Like raspberry, it’s kind of a “generic berry” flavor. Still pretty good, though.

9. Blueberry

Now we’re getting into being-that-asshole-who-specifically-picks-out-certain-flavors-and-leaves-all-the-bad-ones territory. Blueberry doesn’t taste like blueberries, but it’s still pretty legit.

8. Passionfruit

This one has that delightful arm-pitty flavor of passionfruit that we all know and love (I mean this in the nicest way possible).

7. Mango

It tastes like mango, and mango tastes great.

6. Lemon

Nice sour flavor of lemon. Much better than lemon lime, but not quite as good as the other citrus flavors. It’s better than a lot of lemon-flavored candies.

5. Strawberry Smoothie

I assume this is supposed to be a sort of strawberry banana flavor. Not only is it leagues upon leagues better than banana split, but it also greatly improves on strawberry. It has a brighter, more robust strawberry taste.

4. Blackberry

This is the best of the berry flavors. Somehow, the TJ’s flavor lab (I assume they employ witches?) has been able to perfectly recreate the warm, summery taste of blackberries in jelly bean form.

3. Tangerine

I expected this to be your typical orange flavor, but it actually is much more nuanced. I mean, as nuanced as a jelly bean can be.

2. Apple

I was surprised by how much I like this one. It’s super tart without the overwhelming artificial taste you usually get from green apple candy.

1. Grapefruit

Hello, Trader Joe’s? Are you reading this? Can you make a jelly bean box that’s nothing but grapefruit? Thank you.

There you have it: my deeply biased and wholly opinion-based ranking of Trader Joe’s Jelly Bean flavors. Feel free to fight me in the comments. Just kidding…don’t do that.