Review of Baby Bottle Pops Candy

Baby Bottle Pops are ingeniously designed to resemble—what else—a baby’s bottle. The “bottle” portion holds a sour flavored powder, while the “nipple top” is actually a hard candy in a corresponding fruit flavor. The hard candy is mounted on a plastic base that unscrews from the bottle, and there is a plastic rod on the bottom that you can hold. The idea is that you lick the top, then dip the wet candy into the powder and eat both at once. The Baby Bottle Pops brand has expanded to include the mini-sized Baby Bottle Pop Juniors, and the Baby Bottle Pop 2-D Max.

Baby Bottle Pops are the top-selling brand from Topps Confections and are one of the most popular non-chocolate candies on the shelves. They are primarily marketed to the child and “tween” generations, through interactive websites and tie-ins with an emerging media-friendly boy band. All of which explains how they can be incredibly popular and still unknown to most adults who are not the parents of said children. Before tasting them for this review, I had seen Baby Bottle Pops on store shelves, but had never paid them much attention.

The original Baby Bottle Pops come in a number of fruit flavors. When I tried to open my first bottle, I found that the sucker was fused to the plastic covering and it broke from its base as I tried to open it. Whoops! I guess this is the downside of such clever packaging. Fortunately, I had a few other flavors that weren’t damaged. Overall, I found the Bottle Pops to be a fun candy whose enjoyment stemmed more from the novelty of the candy/powder combination than from the actual taste. In most instances, the hard candy was excessively sweet and chemically fruity, while the sour powder was simply sour. However, I did greatly enjoy the “citrus craze” flavor. The zesty orange went perfectly with the tart orange powder, and the sweet-sour flavor combination seemed natural. After playing with the bottle for awhile, I can certainly understand a candy that blurs the line between food and toys is so popular with children. I give this product 3 stars.

The Baby Bottle Pop 2-D Max features the hard candy sucker and sour powder of the original, with an added “candy crunch” layer in a matching flavor. This candy looks the coolest of all the bottle pops; it’s about 5 inches tall and has two clear containers holding the powder and the candy, topped by the hard candy nipple top. The colors are all coordinated and the overall effect is actually pretty classy.

Each candy component unscrews so you can disassemble and rearrange them in whatever order you’d like. The “candy crunch” is a sweet, fruity candy similar in appearance and taste to Nerds candy. Supposedly you can lick the lollipop and dip it in the candy crunch so that the candies stick to the pop, just like the powder. In practice, however, I found that the candies didn’t stick very well, and I mostly ate them separately. This wasn’t entirely a bad thing, as it made for a nice texture break between the hard candy and the sour powder. The balance between the sweet sucker, the crunchy candies, and the sour powder was nice, and it was one of the more entertaining candies I’ve tried recently. I couldn’t finish all of the candy in one sitting, as the sweetness got cloying after awhile, but fortunately it’s designed to be eaten in stages and easily held up over several days. I can see why kids love Baby Bottle Pops, and I would definitely add these to my list of children’s stocking stuffers/piñata items/birthday party treats. I give this product 3.5 stars.