Old Candy Critic Articles - Is Red a Flavour?

I've decided to take down several old articles from the candycritic.org and re-post them here on the Candy Critic blog.  This week we look at candy companies that insist on naming their candy's flavours based on their colours.

Ahhhhh novelty, one of the key ingredients in any great treat, at least sometimes it can be. I've noticed a new novel trend lately, and I'm not too sure how to deal with it. Several companies have been creating red flavoured treats, not cherry or fruit punch but "red” flavoured.

It's important that we make sure somebody doesn't know something I don't. I'm going to make some assumptions, if you know differently please let me know and I will retract this statement: Orange is both a fruit and a flavour, so right off the bat have established a "grey area". Grape, Lemon, and Pineapple, although with some exceptions (when it comes to house paints) are fruit and not colours. Purple, Yellow and Red as far as I know are colours. Wait a minute, is red a flavour too?

To be honest, when I was a kid, I would never ask for the cherry or grape Popsicle, I would ask for the red or purple Popsicle. Having said that, on the package it is clearly marked as “cherry” or “grape”. So could mean one of two things; either most people used "red" as a description for the Popsicle and I was just using the colloquialism for the product. It could also be that I was the only person in the world doing this and I'm either an idiot or a creative genius. Well now that we’ve established that “red” is used as a flavour context, let's look at whether or not a candy company can just label a candy "red” favoured.

I think it's all right, but only sometimes. For example, if you attach another word with it, like berry, then it’s perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with Berry Red, in fact I believe it's a well-established Kool Aid flavour. I guess this isn't a good example though because it does imply the flavour, by using the word berry. You understand that there are red berries, and then this flavour is most likely a combination of these red berries.

It just seems like some products are trying to sell the colour of their products, rather than sell the flavour. It is a scientific fact that people tend to buy more candies and treats when it has a lot of red on the package, but does it sell if the flavour is red as well?

I guess I'm not really hip to the idea of candy being labelled by colour instead of flavour. Although I've tried many of the "red flavoured" treats and you know what, they tasted red. Some I could place like a cherry or fruit punch, but some just tasted red. It just comes across as lazy to me, are candy companies afraid that they might mislabel a flavour?  Or does red actually have a flavour in our minds; do blind people see red when they eat a red flavoured treat?

CC