All 32 Hi-Chews Flavors Ranked From Worst To Best

The breakthrough Japanese candy Hi-Chews, first appeared on the market in 1956 when its inventor, Taichiro Moringaga sought to make gum-like candy consumers wouldn't have to spit out.  After a stint in the U.S., Moringaga, returned to his homeland of Japan to create confections that boasted the chewy quality of gum, but that dissolved slowly in the mouths of their consumers, so they could sidestep the awkward (and in Japanese culture, rude) moment of disposing of used gum.

Now, over half a century later, Hi-Chews has become a crossover hit within the states and the sweet-tooth afflicted can pick up a pack of the (mostly) fruit-themed candy anywhere from a gas station's candy aisle to the checkout stands of conventional grocery stores. Possibly second only to the coated Pocky sticks, Hi-Chews enjoys mainstream popularity thanks to their unparalleled mouthfeel and a seemingly endless trove of flavor offerings.

Expanding far from the simple strawberry of its origin, the brand now produces specialty packs including "Soda Pop," something called "Infusions," and the ethereal and promising "Fantasy." To untangle the growing cannon Hi-Chew flavors, we taste-tested all 29 variations available within the U.S. and ranked their viability as candies we crave.

To be fair, we don't like açaí bowls or any of the other açaí-flavored items that we've ever encountered. We find it tastes like a bland grape from a school fruit salad, and açaí's glow-up feels like a trendy, false step we'll be able to laugh at later, like crimped hair or leg-warmers. So, it's no surprise that Hi-Chew's attempt to seize upon the fruit-du-jour also falls short of our adoration. Açaí tastes like generic candy and could pass as everything from grape to pineapple or even blackberry. Unremarkable in every way, açaí High-Chew is as dull as a candy can be.

A flavor we'll never understand — from candy to soda pop — is black cherry. Void of all the bright tones of red cherries, black cherry lurks in the shadows of the red package of Starbursts, old-timey sodas, and now the "Berry Mix" bag of Hi-Chew (although, black cherry is considered one of the best White Claw flavors).

Not even technically a berry, black cherry accompanies raspberry and blueberry to assemble the trio of a promising but ultimately wasted-themed bag of Hi-Chew. Smelling closer to a cough lozenge than a piece of candy, Black Cherry Hi-Chew, like other black cherry treats, presents pungent, flat, and without any dimension.

Banana candies are kinda like the edge lords of the sweets world; it's the flavor favored by rebels and intentionally polarizing. Banana devotees make themselves known whenever the topic of artificial banana flavor arises like someone who can't help but tell you they read the book before they saw the movie adaptation.

So, in the vein of classic banana candies, Hi-Chew Banana tastes more like the peel than the sensation of eating the banana's flesh. Just as with Runts, we find Hi-Chew Banana entirely skippable, but we respect its existence because it is somewhat of a fan-service flavor for any hardcore banana-heads.

Tropical flavors in the candy realm are hard to nail down. The fruits the confections are based on are often incredibly juicy and impossible to capture within a sugary morsel. Pineapple, in the wild, carries a pleasurable musky quality difficult to assign in artificial form. Hi-Chew nearly achieves the impossible with its pineapple entry but falls just shy of capturing the prickly fruit's essence.

Slightly over-perfumed with the saccharine notes, Hi-Chew forgets that the spiky, citrus edge we still haven't found a candy capable of replicating. Not an overall flop, Pineapple is strictly for folks searching for a tropical flavor.

Dragon Fruit Hi-Chew, perhaps along with açaí, may be one of the only flavors wherein the audience may never have experienced the original fruit that inspired the candy's taste. While dragon fruit can be found in many Asian markets (and inspired one of the High Noon hard seltzer flavors), it is still unfamiliar to many Western shoppers. The other-worldly-looking fuchsia fruit contains stark white flesh and is freckled with black seeds.

Hi-Chew's interpretation of the dragon fruit tastes something like a fragrant pear with the sweetness of lychee fruit. If tasting blind, we might assume the Hi-Chew Dragon Fruit to be striving for an elderflower flavor due to its floral, perfumed notes and while we appreciate the stretch, it's not a contender for our top 10 in this ranking.

Available only in a "Plus Fruit" pack, Orange & Tangerine Hi-Chew is one of only two Hi-Chew flavors that managed to hybridize a pair of compatible fruits into one chewy trifle. The smell, however, is a little like citrus cleaning supplies, similar to citronella spray intended to detour dogs from rummaging. Despite a middling flavor, Orange & Tangerine can't quite shake the overpowering quality of cleaning spray.

Overtly orange and overly fragranced, we couldn't detect any zesty tangerine notes that could've brightened up the morsel of weight candy. A miss for the brand's library, Orange & Tangerine Hi-Chew drags down the average of the "Plus Fruit" bag making it skippable overall.

Yogurt Hi-Chew mix, a rare theme pack to find in the wild, contains three milky flavors: strawberry, blueberry, and plain yogurt. Out of the trio, only Plain Yogurt Hi-Chew feels necessary, while the remaining two taste superfluous considering the pre-existing strawberry and blueberry flavors.

Plain Yogurt, however, tastes like a yogurt beverage like the Japanese Calpico, not like a cream soda or the confounding and frankly disgusting Smoothie Skittles. It's light, bright, and a welcome addition to the party.

We found Sweet & Sour Lemon Hi-Chew very similar to a lemon Starburst thanks to an extra kick of citric acid. Hi-Chew's lemon contender is sour enough to cause us to pucker but still sweet enough to encourage another reach into the Sweet & Sour mixed bag.

Nowhere near a blunder, Sweet & Sour Lemon's only real fault is feeling derivative of another candy brand and, therefore, uninspired. With all of the varied fruits now represented in the Hi-Chew lineup, we wish we could trade in lemon for the more aromatic and tart yuzu citrus fruit.

Polarizing but with a distinct personality, Piña Colada Hi-Chew will please the devotees of La Croix Coconut can and upset anyone who finds artificial coconut's taste too close to sunscreen's scent. Unapologetically coconutty, Piña Colada Hi-Chew delivers exactly what you'd expect: nutty notes of coconut sweetened by back notes of pineapple. While a handful of Hi-Chew flavors bleed into each other (most notably any berry-driven flavor), we have to hand it to piña colada for embracing a personality of its own.

Not a fruit we often see represented in the candy world, we're happy for Hi-Chew's jaunty kiwi entry into the brand's expanding canon. The Hi-Chew manages to be able to illustrate kiwi's contradictory tropical and snappy appeal. We can't imagine another candy coming this close to articulating kiwi's specific flavor. The package misleads its consumer to believe Kiwi's signature seeds would be represented entwined in the candy, but their presence is muted. 

Maybe not appealing enough to hunt down an entire pack of Kiwi Hi-Chew, its presence in a bowl of assorted Hi-Chews is a welcome sight.

For the most part, Hi-Chew can be separated into two categories: the ones attempting to mimic the sensation of a specific fruit and the ones that manage to ape an established artificial flavor (like banana). Grapefruit Hi-Chew, available only in the Sweet & Sour bag, succeeds in duplicating the flavor of grapefruit and somehow captures the pithy, acidic pucker of an actual grapefruit.

This Hi-Chew delivers pink-hued candy wrapped around a white center. Grapefruit brings to mind brunches of our youth coupled with a glass of white grapefruit juice. Not sour enough to grimace but noticeably acidic, grapefruit wades near the top of the Hi-Chew pile for understanding its muse.

The top dog of Hi-Chew's Fantasy Mix pack, Blue Raspberry Hi-Chew is able to hit the notes missing from the brand's more run-of-the-mill red raspberry flavor. We find this to be the most dimensional candy in the brand's lineup. Blue Raspberry pleasurably transformed during chewing from an almost cotton candy-like confection to a linty, fruit-forward treat. Though we'll never completely comprehend how Hi-Chews chooses to classify its Fantasy Pack (the other two flavors are Rainbow Sherbert and Blue Hawaii), we're forever grateful for the sublime Blue Raspberry Hi-Chew release.

We're fans of both Hi-Chew's green apple and strawberry flavors, so the "Plus Fruit" pack's Red Apple & Strawberry Hi-Chew appeared promising at first sight. Pale pink with flecks of muted red (presumably strawberry bits?) Red Apple & Strawberry Hi-Chew succeeds in smelling specifically like a crimson-colored apple, as opposed to the brand's tarter green counterparts.

Bright and lively, Red Apple & Strawberry tastes like a sweeter, fruit leather and has the appeal of an original Hi-Chew and snacks made from real fruit. We'd love to see an individual pack of Red Apple & Strawberry Hi-Chew outside of the "Plus Fruit" bag they're currently relegated to.

You may have encountered Ramune, the popular Japanese soda whether the drinker pops a glass ball into the neck of the bottle before indulging in its melony, citrus, and berry liquid. Hi-Chew perfectly articulates the soft, cheerful beverage. Part of a duo inside its "Soda Pop" pack, the baby blue morsel tastes like amped-up bubblegum flavoring, and most importantly, exactly like the soda that inspired it. Along with cola, the Hi-Chew Soda Pop bundle remains the brand's brightest specialty pack since its 2020 release.

One half of the Hi-Chew Soda Pop bundle, the candy company nails the landing with its cola flavor. Intensely herbal, Cola Hi-Chew might be the most balanced of all the Hi-Chew candies. We find the caramel-colored chunks of chewy treats taste both sweet and vanilla-esque, as well as botanical and sasaparilla-y in tandem.

We suspect that the cola flavoring is fashioned to taste like Coca-Cola but is legally forbidden to state as much. We find it is so convincing that, upon initially biting down on the trifle, we imagined a psychosomatic expectation of carbonated fizz while chewing.

The absolute pinnacle of the Hi-Chew universe, Green Apple Hi-Chew will always be the wrapper we reach for when we encounter a bowl of the candies. A dazzling midpoint between sweet and sour, green apple captures the cheery promise of biting into a granny smith apple with perfectly crisp flesh. We've heard the buzz that Hi-Chews has already discontinued its greatest flavor in the brand's home country of Japan, according to Yahoo News. We pray the company doesn't continue this ill-fated ideation overseas in the Irvine facility.