{{notability, Products, date=February 2018
Sunkist Fun Fruits were a
license
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
d
snack food
A snack is a small portion of food generally eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including packaged snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at home.
Traditionally, snacks are ...
from
Leaf Confections
Leaf International BV was a confectionery company founded in the 1940s. Leaf had sales of approximately €527m (2010) and 2,400 employees. It had 11 factories in seven countries. Leaf was owned by CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital, and mana ...
Limited which were manufactured with
fruit
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering.
Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in partic ...
from
Sunkist Growers, Incorporated
Sunkist Growers, Incorporated is an American citrus growers' non-stock membership cooperative composed of 6,000 members from California and Arizona. It is currently headquartered in Valencia, California. Through 31 offices in the United States a ...
. and packaged by Thomas J. Lipton. These bite-sized
fruit snacks
A fruit snack is a type of gummy snack made with fruit flavoring. They were first made by confectioner Louis Shalhoub in the 1970s as a lightweight high energy snack food for backpackers. Although they are marketed as a healthier alternative to ...
, which were introduced in 1987, were small, soft and pellet shaped, rather like jellybeans. Initially, the confection was available in four flavors:
cherry
A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus '' Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit).
Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet '' Prunus avium'' and the sour '' Prunus cerasus''. The ...
,
grape
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry (botany), berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non-Climacteric (botany), climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The cultivation of ...
,
orange
Orange most often refers to:
*Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis''
** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower
* Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum ...
and
strawberry
The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely a ...
. Later that same year, it was available in assorted shapes such as
dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
s and
rock 'n' roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm an ...
shapes in order to appeal to children.
With the dismantling of Leaf Confections, Sunkist has currently licensed the production of fruit snacks to the Ben Myerson Candy Company for Sunkist Fruit Gems and
General Mills
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company ori ...
, Inc. for Sunkist Fruit Snacks. In
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
, an additional brand, Sunkist First Fruit Snacks is manufactured by Ganong Bros. Limited.
Advertising
Advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
on
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...
and
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. ...
s for Fun Fruits usually featured characters named "Tickle Trees" who would cause those who approached them to laugh uncontrollably. These trees, according to the advertising, produced fruits good enough to be used for Fun Fruits. Advertising for the dinosaur shapes featured the "Fruitasaurus," a friendly
Brontosaurus
''Brontosaurus'' (; meaning "thunder lizard" from Greek , "thunder" and , "lizard") is a genus of gigantic quadruped sauropod dinosaurs. Although the type species, ''B. excelsus'', had long been considered a species of the closely related ''A ...