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28 April 2010
Quick poll Have you heard of Swedish Fish?→[More:]
I was talking tonight to someone in a different state who had never heard of them before, which shocked me to the core. Tell me if you've heard of them and where you live, if you don't mind!
Yes! When I was very little we used to buy them by the quarter pound from the candy counter at Sears (err, way back when Sears had mix & match candy counters staffed by a clerk wearing a white apron and paper hat). California.
Yes. I first heard of them when someone in front of me in the concessions line at the theater saw that they sold it and started blasting that it was the most horrible thing in the world, and who the hell would buy Swedish Fish on a theater. So I very conspicuously bought a bag of Swedish Fish. This was after about 2-3 years living in Seattle.
Now they changed the vending machine at work to something that looks like a pinball machine with blinking lights and stuff... and one of the new things that showed up in that machine is Swedish Fish.
So, yeah, I'm at work, and now you all made me get a bag.
Huh? I never considered that you could not have heard of them. They've been around since I was a kid. I can't eat them anymore since one managed to rip a filling right out of a tooth but I used to like them.
A good Saturday afternoon used to be: 1) go to 3rd floor of Sears, 2) get Swedish fish and popcorn, 3) ride Sears exercise bikes, 4) bounce on Sears sofas.
Yes, I adore them. They will forever remind me of refereeing at the ECC because they had them at every single site and what officials did was to take a pocketful of them and snack on them while on the stand and between matches if you didn't have enough time for sit down meals (which was often, depending on if you were in a shit venue).
Yes yes yes. LOVE them. I like the kind you buy in a box at Walgreens. Those are all red. I like the ones I get at the fancy grocery store at their candy counter .. red, yellow, orange and green. My friend had some tiny red ones she put out for snacks at Maj one night. I live in Chicago and I love Swedish fish. Now I want some.
Another Californian, I think I've known about them for maybe 10 or 15 years. I don't remember them from when I was a kid (60's-70's) but I rarely bought candy at anything fancier than grocery store.
Oh here I go to find some proof of Malaco being Finnish, and find an entire wiki page on Swedish fish. Haha! Says they're "Developed for the american market", but I doubt that. Winegum shaped as fish were my mothers favorite treat back in the 50s when she was a kid.mPerhaps they mean the stronger flavors are specifically developed for us palettes.
The small red ones are best, more chewy than the big ones.
But has anyone noticed that sometime in the last few years they changed the flavour of the green ones? They used to be really yummy (enough to hold a candle to the red ones), but now taste like bad fake lime. SO disappointing.
I'm originally from a fish-oriented society (Newfoundland) and had never heard of these; we would've called them "fish jujubes" or "gummi fish" or something. There's probably bulk bins full of them at my local (Alberta) Safeway.
Grew up in New Jersey. We had them, but we didn't call them "Swedish fish," we called them "gummy fish" or "candy fish," ignoring the brand name.
Wikipedia says that they were developed in Finland where they are called (duh) Finnish Fish. It also says that the Swedish fish were developed for the North American market in the 60s and 70s, so maybe there's a generational aspect to it.
Yup, but I only remember the red ones for some reason. I always preferred Sour Patch Kids, though. I've lived all three of my decades in Oklahoma and Texas.
They only ever had them in one candy store in Water Mill, Long Island, where some family friends used to spend summers. Sometimes we would go and visit and I could ride my bike to this magical store where they had the mysterious and delicious red Swedish Fish in a big barrel. I never saw them anywhere else until the last couple years when suddenly they're everywhere but they just don't taste as good as the Swedish Fish from the 70s. I was raised up and down the east coast from South Carolina to Vermont and back again.
The ones we got when I was a kid (late 60s, early 70s) came in red, yellow and green and were about 2" long. I would carefully bite the heads off the yellow ones and transplant them onto a headless green one. The reds were the best tasting ones back then (and thus were spared my Dr Frankenfish experiments) but they taste much different now, very bland and ...flour-y. I also used to like to see how long I could stretch the fish before they ripped in half. They don't stretch very far though, I was thrilled when Gummi Bears came along (80s?) because one can stretch a bear quite a ways.
We used to send a pound of Swedish fish to my relatives in Japan for the holidays, that and fruit slices candy were huge hits. I preferred fruit slices over Swedish fish (loved the orange and lemon flavoring) but we rarely bought any for home, only to ship overseas.
I was in a Bulk Barn with my girls tonight, CANDY SHOPPING (what? we used to do that once in a while BEFORE I became a single dad too!) and I noted that the "Swedish fish" were in a bin labeled "Finnish Fish".
This confused me a bit, because while the city I live in does have a large Finn population, Bulk Barn isn't exactly a local business.
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