It happened again. I was browsing around in my local Shop-Rite, and came upon something kind of exciting. A food from South Africa. (Perhaps my first? I can't recall anything else offhand.) Obviously, I bought it without much further consideration. To be exact, the products I got were two kinds of fruit rolls from the Bear brand--their apple/pear/raspberry, and their apple/pear/mango kind.
I spent a bit of time researching Bear, and hit an internet wall of sorts. Basically, all I discovered were some product lists. Aside from the types of rolls I sampled, these included Minis (smaller fruit rolls), Splits (combination fruit flavors), and Fruit Treasures (which are also a sort of tiny rolls). Some of the fruit flavors offered were strawberry, mango, raspberry, blackcurrant, and apple. My packages weren't labeled as being "Splits," but were clearly combinations of different fruit flavors as well. Anyway, a little deeper searching revealed that Bear is a brand of another business, and doesn't appear to be a separate company itself. One which I've already encountered--Lotus Bakeries, out of Belgium. So, as before, I'll try not to repeat myself much here. If you're curious about the Lotus company, head on over to my post on November 2nd, 2019, which covers their Biscoff cookies/biscuits. And it appears that the fruit itself was grown in South Africa--hence the notation on the box. Otherwise, Bear had an advertisement made for it which was directed by an Emmy winner--Anna Mantzaris did a Bear commercial called "Wildly Irresistible." (Mantzaris, a Swedish animator and director, won her Emmy for co-directing an ad for Apple called "Fuzzy Feelings" in 2024 ) But the main memorable feature about Bear fruit rolls is what's included in the box, with the food. They have several cardboard trading cards, similar in size and shape to the baseball and football cards I collected as a kid. Sadly, I was a little disappointed in these. The front of the cards were cool--stylized drawings of the beast in question. But I would have liked it if the back side had statistics and/or fun facts about the animal, such as how big aardvarks get, or how heavy a sailfish weighs, or other bits of trivia. Instead, there were just other pictures, or maze type games. So, just a friendly suggestion to the folks at Lotus--maybe consider changing up the cards.
Bear fruit rolls, apple/pear/mango flavor: The rolls were in a circular shape, about 1.5 inches/4 cm. in diameter, and about 1 cm./.25 inches thick. The color was brownish yellow. The taste was sweet. I could detect the apple in particular. They were okay, but not great. Okay for a fruit snack.
Bear fruit rolls, apple/pear/raspberry flavor: Same size and shape as the previous. These were a purple color. Better than the other kind, I guess. I like raspberry better than mango, it seems, at least for these rolls. Chewy. Again, a decent fruit snack, but not spectacular or anything. I prefer Fruit Roll Ups or Fruit Leather better. (I'm not sure that either or both of these are still made, but I recall liking them more.)
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