Recently, while shopping for my 12-year-old son to go to his friend’s birthday party, I stumbled across a bag of Shaq-A-Licious gummies.
I was startled to see the brightly colored bag featuring none other than colorful Shaquille O’Neal heads as gummy candies, but I was immediately intrigued. The Shaq gummies seemed like the perfect thing to pick up for the birthday party — it made the candy gift more “fun,” appealed to the sporty nature of the birthday boy, and seemed like it would make my son chuckle.
But then, I realized I had a few questions:
- Do tween and teen boys even know who Shaq is?
- Were Shaq gummies even remotely good?
- Why on Earth is Shaq even making gummies anyway?
I found the answers to my questions where I find all of my most burning life questions — in talking to my teens and the good people of the internet.
Here’s what I discovered: The Shaq candies are worth the hype, and the sour version is especially delicious.
Shaq-A-Licious Xl Gummies Sour Chewy Candy
$4.38
from
First things first, because these Shaq gummies seem to be particularly marketed towards the young male crowd (the product images include a lot of pictures of video games, which of course is not gender-exclusive to boys, but at least in my house, the boys are far more into gaming than the girls), I asked my almost-teen son if he even knew who Shaq was.
“Shaquille O’Neal?” he replied. “The No. 1 center in all of NBA history?”
OK, so he knows who Shaq is.
I then proceeded to ask him if he had ever heard of Shaq gummies, to which he replied that he had. My 10-year-old daughter also piped in at this point that she, too, had heard of the Shaq candy and seen them at school and with her friends. Neither of them had tasted the infamous gummies, but they were definitely popular among the tween crowd.
First mystery solved!
Shaq-A-Licious Xl Gummies Sour Chewy Candy
To answer my second question, I did some digging online and found some fun facts about Shaq’s candy. Here are the main points:
- The gummies are oversized, just like Shaq, so that seems completely on brand for him.
- The gummies are more of a firm texture, much like Swedish fish.
- The sour gummies are where it’s at in Shaq Candy Land, with shoppers raving about the sour versions more than the plain Shaq gummies.
- The watermelon and pineapple flavors are especially delicious in the sour gummy pack.
“They are like a big Sour Patch Kid,” one Walmart shopper described. “I just love the better textures, and the flavors are incredible! Pineapple is the bomb!”
“I tried both, the sour ones stood out for me, but I like them both. Shaq does it again,” added another.
I couldn’t find an answer to why exactly Shaq delved into the candy world, but according to the official Shaq-A-Licious gummy Instagram page, the answer is simple: the big guy offers big candy because he’s still “the world’s biggest kid.” Enough said.
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