Hempthy CBD Fizzy Gummy Bears 1000mg

These are not coloured the way the hard gums are

The declaration for the fizzy range lists its colours as E102, E129, E133 and E132.

E102 is tartrazine. E129 is allura red. Both are among the six colours that UK law singles out. Under the retained food additives regulation, a food containing tartrazine, quinoline yellow, sunset yellow, carmoisine, ponceau 4R or allura red must carry the statement that it may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.

That statement belongs on this product. It does not appear on any of the UK listings selling it, and it does not appear in the trade description either.

Here is why we are being emphatic about it. Two products along on this same shelf, Hempthy's American hard gums are coloured with anthocyanins, paprika extract and curcumin, all plant-derived, and we said so on that page because it is a genuine point in their favour. Anyone reading that and assuming the whole brand works the same way would be wrong.

Same manufacturer. Same country of manufacture. Same CBD isolate. Two completely different colour systems, and only one of them carries a statutory warning. Nobody in this market draws that distinction, including Hempthy, and it is exactly the sort of thing a shop carrying both ought to tell you.

None of this makes the sweets unsafe or unlawful to sell. It means the label says something specific about them that the people selling them are not passing on.

Why the fizzy sweets get the bright palette

This is worth explaining rather than just flagging, because the choice is not arbitrary.

A fizzy sweet is defined by its acid coating. Here that is citric and malic acid with E331 as a buffer, dusted over the bear. That coating is what makes it sour, and sour confectionery is bought on a visual promise as much as a taste one. People expect a fizzy bear to look electric.

Plant-derived colours cannot do that. Paprika and turmeric produce a muted, slightly dusty palette, which is exactly what the hard gums look like next to a synthetic competitor. Tartrazine and allura red produce saturation that beetroot and berry pigments simply cannot reach.

So the colour system tracks the product type. A sweet sold on how bright it is gets the bright colours, and a sweet sold as a plain daily gum does not.

That is a real trade rather than a failing, and the point of putting it in front of you is that you can make it deliberately. If the fizzy coating is what you want, this is the sweet. If the colouring matters more, the hard gums are the same brand, the same isolate and the same manufacturing, without it.

Twenty milligrams a bear, and a familiar wording

Fifty bears in the pouch at twenty milligrams each, a thousand milligrams in total, made with CBD isolate at ninety nine point nine per cent and stated as THC free.

Sulphites are declared, in the glucose syrup, and once again not one of the UK retailers ranking for this product mentions them. That is the allergen on this pouch.

Hempthy describes both fizzy pouches as a thirty day supply, which is the same wording used across its hard gum range. Fifty bears do not divide into thirty days and the implied daily amount sits well above the Food Standards Agency's advice. We have worked that through properly on the hard gums listing rather than repeating the arithmetic here, and it applies to this pouch in exactly the same way.

The smaller fizzy pouch holds thirty bears at ten milligrams each, which does divide, and which lands on the advisory figure.

What they are actually like

A soft bear rather than a firm gum, with a granular sour dusting that hits first and fades within a few seconds into ordinary fruit sweetness. The acid is citric and malic together, which gives a rounder sourness than citric alone, less like a lemon and more like a sherbet.

The colours are vivid. That is the whole point of them and there is no sense pretending otherwise.

At twenty milligrams of isolate in a bear this size there is nothing to taste of the CBD itself, since isolate carries no terpenes. Everything you taste is sugar, acid and flavouring.

They are moreish in a way the hard gums are not, which is worth saying on a sweet holding twenty milligrams each. A firm gum takes a while to chew and slows you down. A soft fizzy bear does not.

The Hempthy sweets, side by side

Hempthy runs the same two-tier pattern across its range, a gentler pouch and a stronger one, and the differences that actually matter are texture, coating and colouring rather than the headline figure.

The sugar free range is the one to look at if sugar rather than colour is the concern, since the fizzy bears carry both sugar and glucose syrup.

Who should skip these

Anyone who would rather avoid the listed colours. This is the clearest reason to choose differently, and Hempthy's own hard gums are the same brand and the same isolate without them.

Anyone buying for a household where the children's warning matters. It is an adult product to begin with, but a pouch of brightly coloured bears in a kitchen is not always treated as one.

Anyone avoiding sulphites, which are declared in the glucose syrup.

Anyone new to CBD. Twenty milligrams in a soft, moreish bear is a combination that makes it easy to have two, and the three hundred milligram pouch of the same sweet gives ten.

And anyone expecting the fizz to last. The sour coating is a few seconds of the experience, not the whole of it.