Nerds Gummy Clusters Are Taking Over My Life

Keto sucks, sugar is everywhere, and Nerds Gummy Clusters are an unstoppable force

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: possibly the greatest candy ever made.

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Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Cheese Chips

Around six years ago, when low-carb and keto lifestyles were really locking into the “what you should be doing now to lose weight and live longer,” I decided to give it a go. I didn’t need to lose weight, but I was trying to maximize my running, or my endurance, or something. All I knew is that people were doing it and maybe I should too.

So I gave it a go. I bought a keto cookbook, I braced myself for a period of life without beer, I stocked on tequila, and on a random day in February– I stopped eating sugar. The first couple days were fine, but soon after, things went sideways.

There were the headaches, though it was hard to say if it was from lack of sugar or the tequila that managed the depression caused by the lack of sugar. There were the eggs– so many eggs– a food which I enjoy, but not every day. We’re not made of gold over here. Fake potato chips made of oven baked cheese, lack of condiments, no french fries. It really started to wear on me by day 3.

After a week, things got dark. My body realized I really wasn’t going to give it sugar anytime soon and started rebelling against me. I was tired, I was angry, and I could not stop thinking about sugar. It consumed my thoughts during every waking moment. I tried to make things with monkfruit sweetener, as if my body would say “oh, that’s sweet, that counts.” None of it counted. My mind kept hounding me– just go to the grocery store, just get a little bit of chocolate, it said.

I had not felt this way since I quit cigarettes five years before, and I can honestly say it felt worse. The cigarette cravings would come and go. They were intense but you could wait them out. Sugar cravings were constant: What if I could sneak a bite of ice cream? What about just one Oreo? Or a mini can of Cherry Coke?

Eventually, I broke. It may have been 10 days in, it may have been less. It seemed like a year. There was a dude’s camping weekend coming up, and I knew there was no way in hell I was going to last a whole three days of campfires and cornhole without a beer. I don’t remember what I ate first, but it was probably a whole bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. I’ve never made another attempt since, nor will I ever again.

And while it was disconcerting to know I was 100% addicted to sugar, it was also nice to know that whenever I’m stressed or sad or hungry or wanting to forget about being healthy, I can always just walk five minutes into a Royal Farms and buy a bag of Utz Chips (the Mike’s Hot Honey is my current go-to), a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and a Mountain Dew, and have the best 15 minutes of my life.

I may be sick with sugar, but at least I’m alive.

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

Appetizer: Dessert Chips

Let me preface this by stating that sugar has been a constant throughout my entire life. As I entered into childhood in the late ‘80s, the candy companies were really hitting their stride, from Big League Chew and Bubbalicious to the birth of sour staples like Fun Dip, Pixy Stix, and Warheads. We ate liquids and drank solids, Kool-Aid mix by the spoonful and melted Flavor-Ice popsicles by the sleeve. In terms of flavor, it was the standard cherry, orange, and grape flavors, but one day blue razz didn’t exist, and the next day it did. Nobody questioned it. I feel like blue razz (short for raspberry, because the ‘90s required X’s or Z’s in every name) was the beginning of the absurdity.

If we could make up a made-up fruit flavor and throw it into all our candy, anything was permissible. Over the past three decades since, the flavor creep has spread at an unstoppable rate. Any idea is greenlighted. Walk into any grocery store and marvel at the mashups. Right now, at this very moment, we have alcoholic Sunny D malt beverages, Fruity Pebbles pancake syrup, Peeps coffee creamer, and Coca-Cola Oreos. Take anything with sugar, propose a collaboration with another thing across the aisle, and it gets done. It’s almost the way that congress should be run. It certainly can’t be worse.

Like glucose levels after a hearty breakfast of Cap’n Crunch French Toast (it exists and it’s glorious), the societal state of sugar has spiked beyond what we ever thought was imaginable. Believe me, I grew up in the throes of sugar addiction– I am no stranger to the stuff. And even I feel like things have spiraled out of control. It’s not just the absurdity of flavor collabs and our little paws pressing the ‘more’ button whenever a new one comes along. It’s not that every food in any package has added sugar (pickles, popcorn, and peanuts all require a tablespoon per serving for some reason).

It’s just that the stuff is present, at all times. As a kid, sugar was a family choice. In my own family, we had sugar and ice cream and cereals and popsicles. My dad legit made me drink Mountain Dew before baseball games to get me amped up. We were junkies. Other families snacked on carrots and celery and ate Roman whole wheat bread. They were hippie weirdos and we stayed far away from them, just in case it was contagious.

And that was fine. Sugar at home, more sugar at our grandma’s house. School though? It was unheard of. It was so rare that the promise of a single treat could be hung over our head for an entire quarter’s worth of good behavior. The situation was so desperate that we were forced to pretend our morning fluoride tablets were candy, despite all evidence to the contrary. This makes sense; after all, what teachers are sado-masochistic enough to let a child touch sugar during the school day?

Apparently things have changed. My kids routinely (see: nearly every day) are treated to treats in class. Birthdays come with corresponding cookies or cupcakes for each celebration. There are 35 kids in my oldest child’s class and they’re in school for 38 weeks, so it’s a near-weekly event. Candy appears as a reward for the most mundane of accomplishments. You turned in your homework? Here’s a SweeTART.

During their after school care, a healthy option is presented and promptly ignored. The apple still holds sway, but when given the choice, graham crackers go first (which have the same sugar equivalent as Pop Tarts, by the way). It gets worse. Because they’re always trying to keep the kids busy inside instead of just taking them outside for more than 15 minutes, the admins of after care are always cooking up some voodoo food experiments found on the fringes of Pinterest. It’s like America’s Test Kitchen, but for testing out how to give someone diabetes faster in America, a speed record that nobody thought could be broken.

Upon pickup last week, I walked into the middle of the most absurd food experiment I’d seen in my life. At first, everything appeared normal. My oldest son walked up to me with a small bag of Utz potato chips. Fine, whatever. But then he told me they had just made “dessert chips.” You may have heard of Frito bag nachos, where you open a bag of Fritos and mix in some meat and cheese and there you have it. It’s that, but with sugar. Open the bag and pour in sugar, however much you want, then shake it up and eat. We’re talking rainbow ice cream sprinkles, brown sugar, cupcake toppings, etc. If it came in a shaker and was sweet, it was in the mix. This is literally what Buddy the Elf does at the breakfast table. The difference is that Elf was a comedy bit, not a template for living your best life.

And so it goes. Copious amounts of candy at birthday parties. Candy prize machines at arcades. Ice cream with candy mixed with more candy. I won’t call out my mom and her “whatever they want, they can have” approach to grandparenting, but their risk for heart disease is doubled any time they go to Nini’s house. High fructose corn syrup with more high fructose corn syrup. It doesn’t end. Instead of Charlie Bucket saving up a year’s worth of found money for a single Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight, we’re all living as impetuous Veruca Salts. We want it now and the world is more than willing to give it to us.

At the end of the day, I find myself tossing out more candy than we’re consuming (don’t even get me started on the throwaway plastic trinkets and toys that come with birthday party bags or from the inside of Kinder eggs). Even then, I’m no match for when my kids are out of the house, their weak minds at the mercy of the crystalline methods of sugar consumption.

I have no answers for this. It seems like I’m constantly trying to sweep the sweets away– me, armed with a toothbrush, trying to clean up a beach made of sanding sugar, as the waves of corn syrup keep crashing. The creep is constant and I don’t see a return to normalcy any time soon.

So far, only one of my kids has cavities in their first set of teeth, the result of substandard brushing habits as a toddler (I take full responsibility and still regret it, but we were in the thick of it as new parents). Maybe they’ll burn out on sweets faster than I did, so that by the time they’re in college they’ll be baking kale and growing their own produce in a community garden.

Maybe they’ll become dentists and my problems will be their problems, spending all day looking at the wreckage of mouths and molars, at the effects that sugar has wrought on society. Maybe they’ll be the ones to do something about it, instead of complaining to a bunch of people on their Substack.

Maybe, but it’s more than likely they’ll just be me.

Course 3

The Main: Nerds Gummy Clusters

There are things in life that are so good they should be outright illegal. Luckily, setting off large fireworks and catching striped bass bass on topwater lures are still street legal. One of those may be true. On the other hand, there’s opiates. Drugs so good that they actually are illegal. But as anyone in America knows– for awhile, they weren’t. At the height of the opioid epidemic, any person with a half-beating heart and withdrawal symptoms could swing by their local South Florida strip mall and pick up an order of General Tso’s chicken and a bagful of Oxy.

They were giving them out like Halloween candy, truly. But instead of a mini Snickers, it was the urban legend, razor-blades-in-candied-apples kind. It didn’t have to be this way. Nobody had to resort to heroin and fentanyl. No pain had to be wrought on entire swaths of family trees. The pill mill operators didn’t even have to go to jail.

Because they could’ve just got their clients addicted to Nerds Gummy Clusters.

I know I’m a bit late to the epidemic, but the first time I had Gummy Clusters was this past Halloween. My kids went trick or treating in our neighborhood, a place packed with classic Baltimore row homes. This means that a handful of candy awaits them every ten feet. In short, we live in the Helm’s Deep of the Wonka Wars, where candies of all kinds assemble for the Battle of the Bicuspids. The full sugar spectrum can be found in those bags, from Kinder eggs to full-size Reese’s to baby Twix to square packets of M&M’s. The only thing missing was a Japanese matcha KitKat. Within an hour, we always have enough candy to last the year.

I never had this experience. Growing up, we weren’t allowed to go trick or treating on account of the satanic panic of the 1980s. Witches and shadowy members of the occult awaited around every bend of the back country roads in rural Pennsylvania. Who knew that I was living in the depths of Salem 2.0? So while I never ended up with a razor blade to the tongue, I did end up with a few holes in the molars, mostly because we lived near the candy capital of America– Hershey, Pennsylvania. A place where the streets really did smell like chocolate on account of the factory, the place where my dad and grandma and aunts and uncles all worked (which I wrote about here). Candy was a constant presence in our household. At its peak, our house would’ve served as a wonderful transition base for Buddy the Elf to integrate seamlessly into society.

Back then, Hershey’s was the main food group, but every once in awhile, a Wonka product would make its way into my pocket via the baseball concession stand or a classmate’s birthday party. Rarely, but hopefully, it was a box of Nerds. I absolutely loved Nerds. The box with the sliding tabs on top, opening the portals to the separate chambers of strawberry and grape. A whole box of siblings separated at birth– and I would be the one to reunite them! What an honor. Shake one side, shake the other, sister meet brother. I even miss the way the top of the box would get soggy from shaking them into my mouth, ruining the tabs for further use. Fine by me, I’ll just eat the whole thing.

There is something inherently tactile and unique about Nerds– they’re not aggressive like Pop Rocks, but they also don’t dissipate like the sandy sugar of Fun Dip. The initial taste is sour, but the secondary hit is sweet, a more subdued and well-executed version of Sour Patch Kids. The crunch, of course, is the key player in the experience, releasing the sugar to the bloodstream in one glorious burst. I didn’t think it could get any better.

Then came Nerds Rope, the thick strands of fused gummy bears coated in an outer layer of Nerds. I’m sad to admit that I mostly missed out on the rope experience. When Nerds Rope hit the public market in 2001, I had just graduated from high school and moved on to college. While I still maintained a healthy diet of Reese’s Sticks and peach Snapple, I was slowly moving away from the sugary stalwarts of my youth. I was becoming a man, and so were my tastebuds. My own health insurance was on the horizon and I didn’t have a third set of teeth on the way, so I needed to practice some restraint. This looked like me making Belgian waffles topped with ice cream at 8 a.m. in my college cafeteria, but… moving on. Candy was starting to take a backseat, nonetheless.

For the rest of my adult life, candy remained a rare treat. I just didn’t have much use for it. Much like my family members who never ate chocolate on account of a working life spent in a chocolate factory, I mostly lost my sweet tooth after two decades of growing up around the stuff. Also, vanilla clove cigarettes were a great substitute. Who needs candy cigarettes when you can have the real ones?

Fast forward to now, the era in which we live, the time in which Nerds Gummy Clusters exist. A time that couldn’t be better for Ferrara Candy Group, the Chicago-based candy conglomerate that bought the U.S. Nestle portfolio (including the Wonka brand) in 2018. While their portfolio included established bangers like Fun Dip, Trolli, Jelly Belly, Now and Later, and SweeTARTS, they still had yet to roll out a smash hit of their own.

After toying around with some ideas, product developer Sean Oomen landed on the 50/50 formula for Nerds Gummy Clusters, encasing a simple gummy in a full coating of Nerds. A design that solved the problem of the rope and made them more accessible at all times, to all people. The release of the candy in 2020 coincided with the beginning of the pandemic, which saw a sharp rise in candy sales across the board. Turns out, when people are lonely and depressed they beeline straight towards their vices: sweets, booze, and puppies. At the same time, influencer culture was skyrocketing on Instagram and TikTok, so when Kylie Jenner declared the Gummy Clusters as “next level,” well– it was off to the races.

I mean, it looks like a fruit from the future

Last year alone, the Nerds brand raked in $800 million in sales, a nearly twenty-fold increase in the six years since it was bought by Ferrara, according to The New York Times. Gummy Clusters are reportedly responsible for 90% of those sales.

Never having tried the candy, I would have thought: “What, why, how?” Having tried the candy and having tried to keep the candy hidden and having tried to not eat the entire bag when unhidden and opened, I understand why

It is quite possibly, the most perfect candy to ever exist.

Let’s disregard the ingredient list, which is mostly just corn syrup, dextrose, carnauba wax, and artificial dyes of the red and blue variety. There’s some apple juice concentrate as well, so yay for fruit. We’ll focus on the taste and texture, which lies somewhere between almost heaven and heaven. It’s ASMR for the tongue, a candy that speaks in tones of the chewy and the crunchy, the sweet and the sweeter, the purest balance of sugar that one ever did see. They’re small enough to pop a couple and not feel guilty about it, but also small enough to eat an entire bag without thinking and then feel guilty about it. It is very, very hard to stop at a handful.

I have to say, I’m not sure I’ve felt this way about a candy before. It feels like the pangs of youthful love that’s long gone. A love letter to a crush that comes back to you, checked ‘yes’. Obviously, I’m not the only one that feels this way. The candy has become almost a patron saint of the r/candy subreddit. A thread from this past fall was titled “This sub should just be renamed Nerds Gummy Clusters at this point.” I’ve had conversations with friends where I lead off with “So... have you tried Gummy Clusters?”, and soon find out they’re thick in the throes of their own addiction.

The state of sugar is not good. It is everywhere and it is a dumpster fire and no one seems to be showing up with a hose to put it out anytime soon. But even in Armageddon, an unlikely hero emerges. A group of nerds to make you feel like it’s all worth it, that everything will be okay.

As addicting as they are, I’ve manged fine when I’m not looking at them. The candy exists in our house, but against all odds, a single bag has lasted since Valentine’s Day. It’s technically my kids’ candy, but like a teenager replacing their parents’ vodka with water, I feel like if I just eat a couple at at time, they’ll never notice.

Once I run out though, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I could chop up a Nerds Rope, but they’ll know. I’ll know. Because nothing can replace Nerds Gummy Clusters.

Luckily I’m an adult and I can just buy another bag. Or a pack of cigarettes. Who needs Gummy Clusters when you have the real thing?

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past (Two) Weeks

I’m so sorry for missing last week, but things have been busy around here and I had to travel to North Carolina for my brother’s bachelor party. It was a really fun time and I was lucky to drive over 5 hours each way with Ethan, one of my best friends from high school and co-founder/CEO of Diamondback Truck Covers. Had some great conversations during that time. Also got to run up and over some mountains and on some sections of the Appalachian Trail, which was fun.

Of course, it was great seeing my brother as well and spending some time with him and his friends. And taking their money in a poker tournament.

Running has been fine, the weather is warming up, and I’ve just been getting in about 25 miles a week and trying to stay consistent.

My oldest boy turns 9 next week, and man, time just moves different with kids. We got to celebrate him up in Pennsylvania with my family yesterday, which was nice. He’s turned into a fine hand model, as evidenced by the feature photo for this week’s newsletter.

Before that, though, I helped my uncles on the farm with butchering pigs, which I really hadn’t done since I was a kid. A few months ago I wrote about how I’ve been feeling this need to be honest about how I consume food and meat, and wanted to be closer to the process to make sure I was placing the proper value on its life. It’s incredibly visceral to see it in person, but it’s equally important to see how none of it goes to waste. I was there helping cut off everything that would be used for sausage, chopping up the fat to be used for lard, and tossing the rest in a bin that would be used for scrapple. In all, we processed six pigs that will then help feed our families and others for the rest of the year. Hopefully that’s worthy of the sacrifice made.

Other things I wrote this week:

• Norda 005: Ready to Grip and Rip // Shoe Review for Believe in the Run

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. We took off a week for the first time in over 300 episodes, but you can listen to past episodes here.

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Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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