Fruit Gushers (also simply Gushers) are a

Betty Crocker Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. The character was created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 to give a personalized response to consumer product questions. In 1954, Gener ...

-branded fruit snack introduced in 1991. They are soft and chewy with a fruity-juice center.

History

Fruit Gushers (sometimes simply "Gushers") were introduced in 1991 as a Betty Crocker fruit snack. Each box of Fruit Gushers was

list price The list price, also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), or the recommended retail price (RRP), or the suggested retail price (SRP) of a product is the price at which its manufacturer notionally recommends that a retailer ...

d at and contained six pouches of Gushers, each of which had nine individual pieces for per pouch.

Composition

Strawberry-flavored Fruit Gushers are composed of

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

, dried

corn syrup Corn syrup is a food syrup that is made from the starch of corn/maize and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften Mouthfeel, texture, add vol ...

, corn syrup, modified

corn starch Cornflour, cornstarch, maize starch, or corn starch (American English) is the starch derived from corn (maize) grain. The starch is obtained from the endosperm of the seed, kernel. Corn starch is a common food ingredient, often used to thick ...

fructose Fructose (), or fruit sugar, is a Ketose, ketonic monosaccharide, simple sugar found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and gal ...

pear Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in late summer into mid-autumn. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the Family (biology), family Rosaceae, bearing the Pome, po ...

concentrate A concentrate is a form of Chemical substance, substance that has had the majority of its diluting agent or diluent (in the case of a liquid: the solvent) removed, such that the substance becomes the majority of the composition. Typically, this w ...

, and

grape juice Grape juice is obtained from crushing and blending grapes into a juice, liquid. In the wine industry, grape juice that contains 7–23 percent of pulp, skins, stems and seeds is often referred to as ''must''. The sugars in grape juice allow it t ...

concentrate. Targeted at children, they were

acorn The acorn is the nut (fruit), nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'', ''Notholithocarpus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains a seedling surrounded by two cotyledons (seedling leaves), en ...

-shaped with a soft "

licorice Liquorice (Commonwealth English) or licorice (American English; see spelling differences; ) is the common name of ''Glycyrrhiza glabra'', a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring is ...

-like" exterior and a liquid inside, included "

strawberries The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid plant cultivated worldwide for its fruit. The genus ''Fragaria'', the strawberries, is in the rose family, Rosaceae. The fruit is appreciated f ...

and

puree concentrate", and came in two flavors: "Strawberry Splash" and "Gushin' Grape". In 2003, one serving of any Fruit Gushers variety was one package with 90 calories, zero protein, of fat, and of

carbohydrate A carbohydrate () is a biomolecule composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The typical hydrogen-to-oxygen atomic ratio is 2:1, analogous to that of water, and is represented by the empirical formula (where ''m'' and ''n'' ...

s. In 2018, 90 calories worth of Strawberry Fruit Gushers weighed and contained of sugar, one gram of

fat In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

, and cost . Prior to 2025, the serving size was reduced to , 80 calories, and contained of sugar.

Varieties

Betty Crocker released a new variety of Fruit Gushers in early 2020: "Galactic Fruit Gushers". These featured the flavors "Asteroid Apple", "Berry Star Cluster", and a mystery flavor labeled "Unidentified Flavored Object"; the latter was part of a contest where consumers could guess at the unknown flavor and win prizes "like sweatshirts, hats, blankets, pop sockets, and more". Galactic Fruit Gushers were sold through Walmart.com for . In June 2024, the brand announced that its most-popular flavor, watermelon (previously available from 1997–2013), was returning to store shelves to meet consumer demands; combined with sour-apple flavored Gushers, boxes of six sachets were to be sold for , while boxes of ten sachets would sell for .

Reception

A 1991 ''

Sun-Sentinel The ''Sun Sentinel'' (also known as the ''South Florida Sun Sentinel'', known until 2008 as the ''Sun-Sentinel'', and stylized on its masthead as ''SunSentinel'') is the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Broward County, an ...

'' review said that the insides oozed rather than gushed, and found the confectionery surprisingly pleasant. In 2013, ''Complex'' magazine ranked Fruit Gushers the second-best fruit snack of all time, coming in behind another Betty Crocker product, Shark Bites. In September 2023, police in St. Marys, Kansas reported seizing fruit snacks and gummies, laced with

tetrahydrocannabinol Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is a cannabinoid found in cannabis. It is the principal psychoactive constituent of ''Cannabis'' and one of at least 113 total cannabinoids identified on the plant. Although the chemical formula for THC (C21H30O2) de ...

, being packaged as real commercial brands thereof—including Fruit Gushers.

References

External links