Skittles are one of the most popular candies around, with their fruity flavors inspiring everything from birthday cakes to flavored vodkas. Everyone who has opened a pack of Skittles knows that the candies come in a classic red, orange, green, yellow, and purple. But what about blue Skittles?
Feeding us Lies?
The big marketing ploy for the Skittles company is that with these candies, you can “taste the rainbow.” But, how are you supposed to taste the rainbow if you don’t have blue Skittles?
Sure, some special edition packages have blue Skittles, but why does the OG lineup not include this primary color? Other popular candies, like M&Ms, have blue flavors and candies, so it’s not like it would be impossible. So what’s the deal, Skittles?
A Question of Taste?
First, you have to think about flavor. M&Ms are just chocolate covered in a sugary candy coating. So, the only “true blue” thing about the M&Ms is just dye. Skittles, on the other hand, are all supposed to be fruit flavored.
How many blue fruits can you think of? Generally, the stock “blue” flavor for candies is a blue raspberry, but blue raspberry isn’t a real flavor. Other stereotypically blue flavors and fruits often get shuffled into the “purple” category—think blueberries, grapes, and blackberries.
Truest Blue
But, more than likely, the issue with the lack of original blue Skittles has something to do with they dyes involved in creating the candies. Skittles were first manufactured in 1974, and while counterculture movements at the time were super into bright colors for fashion, it wasn’t so much a huge draw as far as sustainability was concerned.
In an era of peace and love, unnatural colors were groovy and far our for your personal style, but not so much for your environment and your food. Blue is just a tough color to make, and it didn’t get any easier as time went on.
Keepin’ it Real
But with all the new technology we have in 2017, we can definitely start cranking out blue Skittles, right? Err, not quite. Now more than ever, there’s a big push to start removing artificial dyes (like those used to make special edition blue Skittles) from our food. Unless you can get your hands on a specialty pack, blue Skittles just might not be in the cards anymore.
At the end of the day, how you take this story is just a matter of personal taste. I personally love the lemon best, so I don’t really miss the blue Skittles. Plus, though no candy is really “natural,” the original flavored Skittles are probably filled with less chemicals. At the end of the day, you can still “taste the rainbow,” but you’ll just have one less color staining your tongue.