Jelly Belly may have discovered something grosser than getting a whiff of an open carton of expired milk: Eating a bean with a spoiled milk flavor.
This spring, flavors “Spoiled Milk” and “Dead Fish” will be the two newest additions to Jelly Belly’s disgusting BeanBoozled collection of beans, USA TODAY can exclusively reveal. The new beans, according to Jelly Belly marketing VP Rob Swaigen, are meant to “throw your head backwards” and almost make the taster puke, he says. "We want people to respond really strongly to our flavors... no crybabies allowed," he says, quoting the caution label on the Jelly Belly BeanBoozled box.
How gross are the new beans? Let my sister show you, in the video up top.
Jelly Belly’s research and development manager, Ambrose Lee, who developed the new flavors, can’t reveal what’s in the Spoiled Milk and Dead Fish beans (we do know there's neither actual milk nor fish), but he said that all the BeanBoozled beans are edible, allergen- and dairy-free, and have an undisclosed number of artificial flavor compounds. He would reveal that the spoiled milk bean does have vinegar, and was inspired by the smell of milk left in the closet for a few days. (He also said that when he was working on the Spoiled Milk bean, the stink of the beans made factory workers in the floor below cry.) The Dead Fish bean is meant to taste like dry, stale fish, and the scent of a fish market.
In the BeanBoozled Challenge, a game that has players blindly sampling good and gross jelly bean flavors, the Spoiled Milk bean looks just like the Coconut one, and the Dead Fish is identical to the Strawberry Banana Smoothie bean.
Jelly Belly has been making the BeanBoozled flavors since 2007. Other gross-out flavors include Moldy Cheese, Barf, Booger and Stinky Socks, which, according to Lee, was a flavor developed with the help of a colleague’s socks that were put in a plastic bag and kept in a warm environment.
