5 Best and 5 Worst BeanBoozled Flavors (2024)

Jacqueline Eisenbraun(Senior Editor)

If ever you wanted to see truly delicious and truly awful flavors in one box, BeanBoozled is the candy for you. BeanBoozled are an extension of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans from Harry Potter — you get a selection of jelly beans with good and bad flavors. Sound intriguing? Then read on to find out more.

If these jelly beans sound very similar to the Harry Potter ones, that’s actually for a good reason: they were inspired by the Bertie Bott’s beans.

In 2007 Jelly Belly — the brains behind BeanBoozled — decided to take their Bertie Bott’s range one step further. They created a kind of Russian Roulette jelly bean game, where each bean could turn out good or really very bad.

The game includes ten delicious flavors with ten lookalike jelly beans that taste of something rotten.

What BeanBoozled from Jelly Beans Is

BeanBoozled is a kind of Russian Roulette-style game. You get 10 jelly beans that taste great, along with 10 that look the same but have awful flavors.

To play, you’ll need to spin the BeanBoozled spinner. This tells you the color of the jelly bean you’ll need to try next. Whether or not the next bean turns out to be tasty or terrible is down to luck. The person who eats the most jelly beans wins.

Where BeanBoozled Is From

BeanBoozled was created by Jelly Belly in 2007. It was inspired by Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans from the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. Jelly bellies are produced in California and Illinois in the US, as well as in Thailand.

What BeanBoozled Flavors Are Made Of

It may sound worrying to receive a selection of puke, booger, earthworm, or grass jelly beans. When you consider that Jelly Belly do use quite a lot of natural flavoring in their regular jelly beans, you could be put off trying these.

Rest assured that BeanBoozled flavor jelly beans have no strange ingredients, no matter how real they taste.

Jelly Belly previously revealed that they analyze potential flavors in something called a ‘gas chromatograph.’ This machine creates vapors from an object, analyzes its chemical makeup, and converts this into flavors.

So nobody taste-tests stinky socks to create that flavor of jelly bean. It’s all done using a clever machine, and individual flavors are then blended to get as close to the real thing as possible.

Origin of BeanBoozled

BeanBoozled originated in 2007 with the idea of turning the Harry Potter Bertie Bott’s themed jelly beans into a game.

The game is based on Russian Roulette, with the aim of tasting jelly beans that are either delicious or truly foul. If you pick a normal jelly bean, you’re in luck. If you pick one of the terrible ‘look alikes’, you may be in for a nausea-inducing ‘treat.’

The Idea Behind BeanBoozled

The idea behind BeanBoozled is fairly simple: it takes the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans one step further, giving you a chance to potentially try every nasty flavor in the box. The Russian Roulette-style game means you need to spin an accompanying spinner to choose your next color jelly bean.

So rather than picking something at random and, perhaps, sticking to the least offensive sounding beans, you’ll have to try whatever you’re given.

How the Game Is Played

Beans are paired by color and set aside. Each player takes a turn at spinning the jelly bean spinner. They then need to select a jelly bean with the color shown on the spinner and hope for the best.

As each good jelly bean flavor has a nasty look alike you can’t tell apart, you may have to try some (actual) stinkers.

The Best BeanBoozled Flavors You Could Get

With 10 lookalike jelly beans that are either good or bad, you only have a chance of getting a maximum of ten nice-tasting candies. With that said, there’s still a definite ranking amongst the ten good ones, too.

Some are nicer than others, while others just diminish your odds of getting a particularly bad bean. If you’re lucky, they may even wipe out the taste of a particularly foul bean.

Berry Blue

The number one for both flavor and odds of avoiding a terrible flavor has to be Berry Blue. While it’s not the most distinctive flavor Jelly Belly produce, you at least can’t go too wrong with its alternative — toothpaste. It’s described as a medley of strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry flavors.

If you like those bright blue slushies you can sometimes get at the cinema, you’ll like this. The toothpaste alternative is actually quite popular in its own right, too. It tastes minty and inoffensive.

Tutti-Frutti

Tutti-Frutti tastes a little like the old school bubblegum, with a touch more tropical flavors. It’s one of those flavors everyone likes but nobody truly loves.

With that said, this one’s alternative is Stinky Socks, and while that sounds terrible it’s actually alright. The Stinky Socks flavor smells fairly life-like, but doesn’t taste of much. This makes Tutti-Frutti the second safest bet in the BeanBoozled game.

Birthday Cake

The Birthday Cake-flavored jelly beans are amongst the most delicious you can get. They taste like a mix of vanilla ice cream, rainbow sprinkles, and fudge. If you’re lucky to get a birthday cake jelly bean, it really is a sweet little treat. With that said, the alternative is truly horrendous.

Birthday Cake’s lookalike bean is Dirty Dishwater. We expected this one to taste faintly of dishwashing liquid, but it’s cheesy and grimy tasting. Someone once described it as tasting like foods that rotted in the dishwasher, which were then served on one of the cleaned plates.

Juicy Pear

Juicy Pear is an all-time Jelly Belly favorite. It’s juicy, sweet, and ever so slightly tart. In short, it’s a great flavor to get, if you get it. The alternative in the game is Booger, which some find so rotten that it’s hard to swallow. For this reason, Juicy Pear ranks lower on this last than it ordinarily would.

Toasted Marshmallow

If you enjoy toasted marshmallows in real life, this flavor is a real treat. They taste incredibly lifelike and will make you think you’re having an actual gooey, melted marshmallow in your mouth.

Sadly the alternative to this one is the Stink Bug flavor, which few have even dared to try. It starts off tasting slightly smoky and then just deteriorates to a sort of skunk-like flavor.

Needless to say, only try this if you love marshmallows enough to risk getting the disgusting alternative.

The Worst BeanBoozled Flavors

Let us start by saying that all BeanBoozled lookalike flavors are bad. Some are just worse than others. Toothpaste, for instance, is generally tolerated well. Similarly their previous Lawn Clippings flavor wasn’t too bad, and tasted mostly inoffensive. Below are the top worst flavors you can get.

Ideally, steer clear of these and don’t even try to get their nice twins. It’s not worth it.

Barf

This one is known to make people feel sick. It’s one of the few flavors players of the game tend to find difficult to swallow at all.

If you find yourself wishing you knew just what this tastes like, here goes: it starts off tasting slightly sweet and tangy, and then deteriorates into cheesy vomit.

Should you get this jelly bean, you’ll want to swallow it quickly with a big chug of water. Avoid chewing it or leaving it in your mouth for too long, or you’ll definitely need to brush your teeth.

Rotten Egg

Rotten Egg is almost on a par with the Barf flavor in BeanBoozled. This particular flavor tastes a little like a mix of actual rotten egg and sweat. It’s said to feel like a burst egg in your mouth, sending curdling rotten-ness down your throat.

Many players can’t even swallow this. If you do get unlucky enough to have this (over the very delicious look alike that is Buttered Popcorn), make sure you have a glass of water at hand to wash it down with.

Booger

Another contender for the trophy of ‘worst BeanBoozled flavor’ is Booger. This one is almost too gross to describe. It tastes lifelike, to say the least, but the texture makes it truly awful.

Once chewed, the Booger flavor takes on a slimy consistency that’s a little too true to nature. If you can somehow ignore the idea of this one in your head, it’s ok-tasting.

Otherwise, just go with the water trick above, then eat or smell something reasonable quickly afterwards.

Canned Dog Food

This is an older flavor and is no longer part of the game at this time. With that said, consider yourself lucky if you never had to taste a Canned Dog Food jelly bean.

It’s both lifelike and has a very long, strong aftertaste that’s hard to get rid of. If you do get this one, it may be best to spit it out as soon as you can. Otherwise, the taste may well stay with you for a few hours.

Moldy Cheese

Another oldie but a goodie (if you consider something really awful tasting to be ‘good.’) Moldy Cheese has the flavor of rotten milk mingled with a failed homemade cheese concoction.

If the smell of spoiled milk makes you gag, this flavor will be a hard one to handle. Counteract it immediately with a rinse of mouthwash followed by a glass of water.

Tips on How to Play BeanBoozled

BeanBoozled does come with a set of rules as part of the game. With that said, you’re encouraged to amend these to suit yourselves. To start with, the jelly beans must be divided up into identical colors.

You then use the accompanying spinner to select what color bean you have to try. The person who actually eats the most jelly beans by the end of the game wins.

Number of Chews

One of the rules you can modify to suit your own game is the ‘number of chews’ each person has to take before swallowing a bean.

For the worse flavors one chew will certainly be enough, though braver players may wish to set a minimum of two or even three. If you’re playing BeanBoozled for the first time we recommend the one chew minimum. You can always go higher the next time.

Be Prepared

Keep a trash can and some water nearby for those beans you really can’t stand. You may think that nothing can taste quite so bad that you’ll immediately need to spit it out.

Many BeanBoozled players have been down that road before and quickly realized they were wrong. Keeping a box of mints or mouthwash at hand is also a good idea, just in case.

Your Imagination is the Limit

Adults may wish to turn BeanBoozled into a drinking game. Given that ‘booze’ is more or less in the name of the game, this is a fairly obvious idea.

In this instance, the rules should be amended so the loser (the person who draws one of the badly flavored jelly beans) ‘gets to’ wash down their misery with a shot of alcohol.

Bear in mind that there are 10 beans for each player, so shots of beer are advisable over harder liquor.

Best BeanBoozled Alternatives

If BeanBoozled is just a little too much for your stomach, we have the perfect alternatives for you. You can play these games with regular jelly beans, avoiding those strange flavors entirely. They’re just as fun, minus having to frenziedly brush your teeth on repeat.

Jelly Bean Bingo

You’ll need to make up cards with the flavors written down in advance. Each player takes a turn tasting a random jelly bean from a paper bag. The flavor is then crossed off all of the players’ bingo cards. The winner can either win the rest of the jelly beans or another prize.

Double Dare Jelly Bean Game

Buy a BeanBoozled copycat game instead of the real thing. Some we’ve seen contain such flavors as cabbage, chili, and curry as their ‘bad flavors.’ This makes them far less offensive-tasting than the real BeanBoozled challenge.

Make Your Own Game

If the nasty flavors in BeanBoozled just really don’t appeal to you or you have kids playing the game, here’s a fun alternative: buy a selection of jelly beans that look similar.

Jelly Belly have a selection of over 100 flavors available, so you can easily get your own 5-10, each with a lookalike. For this game, players will have to guess which flavor they got.

If they’re correct, they get a point. The player with the most points at the end of the challenge wins.

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