Does it seem like I'm on a gummy kick this week?  Okay, you caught me - the grocery store's bulk foods section had a big sale on gummy candy.  Which caught my attention, because I prefer my gummies slightly stale.

Which brings us to the issue of Swedish Fish.  Much like Dots and Red Vines, I feel that Swedish Fish are better when they have been properly ripened.  This used to happen naturally, pre-purchase if you will.  But it no longer does, thanks to the new plastic bag packaging.  Which aside from being wasteful, results in gummies which are tender and soft to the tooth.

Pah!

So these Swedish Fish, with their promise of being stored in bulk food bins so long that the store was putting them on sale to turn over inventory, suckered me in.  I had forgotten how much I like these, actually.  I'm torn between being sad that I only allotted myself half a scoop, and relieved.  If I had put in five scoops, or ten, I probably would have eaten them all by now.  

Swedish Fish come in an assortment of colors.  I assume these are each meant to denote a different flavor.  Try as I might, I was unable to tell one color from the next.  They all just tasted "misc fruity."  

In that respect they diverge from Dots.  Although in most other ways, they are basically just Dots with a different shape.  They have that same more robust texture.  I looked up the ingredients online and found that they are one of the few gummy candies which are not made with gelatin.  The gelatin based gummies (like gummy bears and gummy worms) tend to be much more yielding in texture.  

Swedish Fish, by comparison, are made with carnauba wax and corn starch.  Yum, right?  But I far prefer the harder texture, even though it does tend to stick to the teeth more.  Especially when properly stale.

Swedish Fish were originally invented by a company named Malaco, which was later bought by Leaf.  They still make Swedish Fish in Sweden, including one of the original flavors: salmiak, or salty licorice.  (Salty licorice doesn't really have table salt in it - it contains aluminum chloride, which has "a spicy taste that vaguely resembles that of sodium chloride (table salt).")
These ingredients also mean that Swedish Fish do not contain any direct animal products.  However, they do contain "invert sugar."  This is sugar which has been whitened through a process which involves animal bones.  I'm unclear on how it works, exactly, but the bones are carbonized and then… well, I don't really know.  But animal bones are involved, which rules it off the list of some vegans and vegetarians.  

Others feel that it's acceptable since the final product doesn't actually contain any bone residue.  There's no hard and fast rule, and PETA has approved Swedish Fish, so it can't be that big an issue, right?  Anyway, vegans and vegetarians: search your heart and make your own decision.