Buckle Up Target- Joyride's In Town!

There’s a new candy hitting the shelves at Target today officially, and I gave it a try! 

One night while scrolling through YouTube shorts, I ended up coming across a video from a creator named Ryan Trahan. He stated in the video that he owns a “better-for-you” candy company called Joyride, and that their candy would be hitting Target stores on June 15th (that’s today), but on the bottom shelf. He went on to describe what it means to have your brand on the bottom shelf: that bottom shelf brands don’t usually perform as well, as they are out of eye-level. His goal with this advertising tactic is to grow his brand into becoming the number one best selling candy in the candy section- making attempts to knock out the competitors such as Trolli, Haribo, etc. for the number one spot! But of course, that cannot happen if there aren’t enough sales. So naturally, this made me curious about the quality and taste of his candy brand. I was interested in finding and purchasing at least one of his candies for myself. I am a candy fan at heart, and as I’ve gotten older, occasionally I like to look for ways to still enjoy candy but with lower sugar, and here came Joyride! 

A few days later on an unplanned Target run at my local Target store, I was strolling the aisles and as I came closer to the candy aisle, the familiar purple branding that I had seen in the video caught my eye, of course! I took a picture of the bottom shelf display as I could not believe that I was seeing the same candy that I had just seen online, just days prior, especially since the official launch was a week away. There was a small variety of candy flavors and types to choose from, but I ultimately settled on the Sour Strawberry Rope Bites. I had a hard time choosing between these and the Pink Lemonade Sour Belts. 

A dated photo from my camera roll from my Target visit

front of package

back of package, with health/dietary benefits Joyride claims

inside view of the candies in the bag, sweet center filling has melted on majority of the pieces, making the candy stick to the sides and bottom of the bag. 

a singular piece of the Sour Strawberry Rope Bites. it was difficult to separate the candies due to them sticking to each other and the bag.

this is as close as I could get to showing what the 8-piece serving size looks like, as the candies had stuck to each other in the bag.

After taking all of the necessary photos of the packaging and a few photos of the candy outside of the packaging, I finally had a chance to take a bite- and WOW! These were actually quite sour! I think this aspect of the candy was captured quite well. In my package, you can see that all of the candy had kind of melted together into one big pile- as well as getting stuck to the sides. I think the sweet, white filling is more to blame for that. These little sour bites were pretty good, to be honest. To compare them to a competitor's brand, I would say they are close to the SweetTart rope bites. I am interested in going back after launch day to check out those pink lemonade sour strips I had been eyeing, however, I do think the price point (checking from my Target app- it was closer to about $5 for a bag) is pretty steep. Because of the price factor, I would not likely buy this candy regularly, but instead once every so often.

This was fun to try though, and I am definitely glad I did give it a chance. I’m wishing the Joyride team all the luck with their Target launch! 

If you are interested in trying Joyride's candies, you can find their website and store locator here!