Candy People is a Swedish pick-and-mix brand, and two of its bags ship to Australia from our own warehouse in Sweden.
Sura Mini Colanappar is 70 g of sour cola dummies. S-märke Supersurt is the super-sour one, and the sourer of the pair by a distance.
Swedish pick-and-mix went viral internationally after a TikTok about a Swedish sweet shop in New York. That was 2024. Lördagsgodis, Saturday sweets, is the tradition underneath it, and both Candy People bags come straight off that lösgodis wall.
Godis is the Swedish word for lollies, and the Saturday habit is why loose bins, scoops and paper bags carry more weight in Sweden than packets do. The Observer, reporting on the craze:
Families chew through more than 1kg of sticky treats in an evening.
Candy People started on that wall, and has stayed on it for four decades. It exports to more than thirty countries now, Australia among them:
1982 Joanis Masudi Youssef opens a pick-and-mix shop at Möllevången in Malmö, the second bulk-candy shop in all of Skåne
1990 A flagship follows on Bankgatan in Lund
2004 Jacob Youssef, the founder’s son, takes over as CEO
2007 to 2011 Export offices open in Shanghai, Dubai, Dallas and Perth
2012 The company moves to Lundavägen in Malmö, where it still is
For a fuller Saturday spread, the Sour but Sweet mix pack and the Super Sour mix pack do the picking for you, and Swedish candy holds the rest of the wall.
Sura Mini Colanappar are dummies, not bottles. Napp is Swedish for a baby’s dummy and sura means sour, so the name describes the bag exactly: 70 grams of cola-flavoured wine-gum dummies in a sour sugar coating. They belong to Candy People’s Sura Mini range and are starch-moulded rather than set with gelatine.
Four acids do the sour work, lactic, malic and citric with sodium malate behind them, and the cola flavour comes from caramelised syrup. The supplier adds that they are palm-oil free.
S-märke Supersurt is the serious sour of the pair, and the S pressed into every sweet is what the name means. It came to Candy People with the 2021 purchase of Jämtgott, whose Östersund factory has been in production since 1956 and which brought the Peacemärke and Dragster brands along with it. The supplier records it as made in Sweden.
S-märke takes its colour from curcumin, carmine and chlorophyllins. The two bags are opposites on almost every count:
If sour is what you buy lollies for, these are the Swedish reading of the idea. Less heat on the tongue, more of a coating that makes you blink. We post both bags anywhere in Australia.
Candy People is Swedish, founded in Malmö in 1982. It has run from Lundavägen in Malmö since 2012 and exports to more than thirty countries.
Joanis Masudi Youssef founded Candy People in 1982, opening a pick-and-mix shop at Möllevången in Malmö. His son Jacob Youssef became CEO in 2004.
Colanappar are sour cola-flavoured wine gums shaped like dummies. Napp is Swedish for a baby’s dummy, and ours are the 70 g sour mini bag. They are not cola bottles, which is a different sweet entirely.
The Colanappar are vegan and the supplier also states they are gelatine-free and palm-oil free. S-märke Supersurt contains beef gelatine and carmine, so it suits neither vegans nor vegetarians.
S-märke means S mark, after the S pressed into every sweet. The brand came to Candy People when it bought Jämtgott in 2021, and the Östersund factory behind it has been producing since 1956.
Swedes call lollies godis, and loose pick and mix is lösgodis. The Saturday version of it is lördagsgodis.
Lördagsgodis is the Swedish tradition of saving lollies for Saturday. It is the reason Swedish supermarkets give a whole wall to loose pick and mix rather than to packets, and it is the tradition behind the Swedish candy that went viral in 2024.
S-märke Supersurt is the sourer of the two, and not by a small margin. The Colanappar are sour in the ordinary sour-coating way.
Sour lollies ship anywhere in Australia from our own warehouse in Sundsvall, Sweden. S-märke Supersurt and the Super Sour mix pack are the sharp end, and the Colanappar sit a step below.
