Spree Candy: How they can help you lose weight and other fun facts

Spree candy has been a longtime favorite for millions of people over the years. About 60 years, to be exact. This colorful circle candy is still made and still favored by those who used to eat them as a kid and kids discovering them today.

The History of Spree Candies

Spree candy was created by the Sunline Candy Company of St. Louis, MO in the mid-1960s. In the 1970s the brand was bought by Nestlé, which markets the candy under the Willy Wonka brand.

Spree originally was a hard fruit candy sold in rolls and they are also now available in chewy candy, as well. The hard candy is brightly colored and covered in a matching fruit-flavored shell.

Depending on where you are and what is available, they come in 50-gram rolls or in a thin 140-gram movie theater-size cardboard box. Now you can find them in bulk online or in any candy store that sells an assortment of bulk candy where you can dispense them yourself.

Their catchphrase or slogan has always been that eating Spree candy was like “a kick in the mouth”. The good kind of kick in the mouth, the sweet meets tangy fun flavor kind that makes your tastebuds happy. Not the angry horse kind that feels like a punch in the mouth.

There is another variety of Spree candy called Chewy Spree. These have a hard fruit candy shell but a chewy, fruit candy center. For those who like to get their fruity kick in the mouth all at once.

Spree Flavors and Bright Colors

These tasty colorful discs have hardly changed at all over the years. Why mess with perfection, right? Their bright colors match the flavors and will turn your tongue the same color, too, for those of you who like the hard candy and like to keep them in your mouth as long as possible.

Original Spree Candy

â—     Red is cherry or strawberry

â—     Orange is orange, go figure!

â—     Yellow is lemon, but not too sour or tart

â—     Green started out as lime but they were changed to Green Apple after the company was sold to Nestle’s. They claimed it had to do with the cost of production. People were not happy. Who messes with perfection!

â—     Purple is grape

Chewy Spree Candy

â—     Red is cherry

â—     Orange is orange

â—     Yellow is lemon

â—     Green is green apple

â—     Purple is grape

Special Candy Canes

At Christmas time, Spree put out a special series of candy canes in a mixed sour Spree flavor.

Ways to Eat Sprees

Some people like to separate all their Spree candy into each flavor group and then eat the ones they like best first, or, save them until last. Others like to randomly pop one in their mouth to enjoy the different flavors as they arrive.

Other people still will just pull out a Spree candy and pop it in without looking to see if they can guess the flavor they chose. There are also those who will just pop in a few different ones and get a super-duper kick in the mouth from several flavors all at the same time. Like a fruit candy flavor explosion.

Eat them on the couch for movie night at home. They just sit there in your mouth releasing their fruity goodness so you can concentrate on ‘who done it’. * Spoiler Alert * It’s never the butler. Besides, he is the one who brings the Spree on his silver tray, so leave him out of this, okay?

More Than Just Fruit Candy

Did you know you can use them to add their fabulous fruity flavor to other things? Well, you can, and once you see all the ways you can use them, you will want to try them.

Add To Hot Beverages

For a special treat, drop a few of your favorite Sprees right into your hot coffee, hot tea, or your hot chocolate. This works for all types of coffee. You can take several of the same flavors and dissolve them in hot water for a fruity drink.

You can use them in cocktails, as well. People pay good money for flavored vodka, why don’t you just flavor your own? Drop a few of your preferred flavors into your next vodka and soda to give it an extra kick.

Plus, if you have fruit juice as a mix for your cocktails, like orange juice, just add an orange-flavored Spree in it for an extra orangey flavor. It won’t make it too sweet as it will not completely dissolve, so the person drinking it can have the candy once they finish the cocktail.

Crush Them

Crush the Sprees into small bits or even finer. The finer ones can be used like sugar. Excellent for adding to your baking, in your coffee, tea, and cocoa, and even use the Spree sugar to rim your cocktail glasses for an extra sweet kick.

Fine or in bits, they are perfect for sprinkling on top of cakes, cookies, brownies, rice crispy treats, in fudge, on ice cream, and anywhere else that you think they will work. They make great eyes, noses, mouths, and buttons on your gingerbread cookies.

Add them to your homemade chocolates. Use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolates where you can see the colors of the Sprees better. They can dress up anything you want and you can just let your imagination run wild with it.

You can just melt the chocolate down, then add the fruity bits of the crushed sprees, and then make little dollops on a baking sheet. Let them harden in the fridge and you have some special fruit candied chocolates.

If you separate them before you crush them, you can make each chocolate by each flavor of Spree. You can also make some that combine all the flavors if you like or have bits of them leftover at the end.

To break them up, you can freeze them first or just put them in a bag and hit them with something hard, like a hammer. Don’t hit them too hard, or you will tear the bag and that will make a big mess.

Chewy Sprees

You can do all of the same things with the chewy version of Sprees as the hard ones. You can add them to hot beverages, add them to cocktails, add them to your baking. Use the chewy Sprees for decorating your cakes, cookies, pies, and more.

Sprees Can Help You Lose Weight. Say What?

A roll of Sprees has 28 sprees. Eight Sprees are only 60 calories and an entire roll is just 210 calories which makes them the perfect low calorie treat when you are trying to lose weight. Sprees are sweet, take a long time to eat and you can eat a whole roll in one sitting if you want!

Sprees Take You Home

Besides the great flavors of Spree candy, one of their more magical tricks is how they can transport you back in time. For those of us who are as old as Sprees, and all of those who follow, we all have memories of eating Sprees.

Often, even years later, all we need to do is pop in a lemon or a cherry Spree and we are back at the summer cottage at the lake or out on the boat or at Grandma’s place.

Spree Candy is Here to Stay

In a world that seems determined to be in a continuous state of change, isn’t it nice to find something so familiar? Simple, delicious, colorful, easy. That’s Spree candy. It always has been and it always will be.

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