Runts: The Complete UK Guide to Wonka's Fruit-Shaped Candy

Tip a box of Runts into your hand and you get a miniature fruit bowl: a banana, an orange, a strawberry, a grape, a green apple. Each one moulded into the shape of the fruit it is meant to taste of. It is one of the few sweets where you can identify every flavour before you eat it, and one of the very few where people will argue with you about the banana.

Runts have been in production since 1982 and have survived three changes of owner, the collapse of the brand they were born under, and a flavour line-up that has been rebuilt from scratch more than once. This covers where they came from, which flavours came and went, why the banana tastes the way it does, and what is in the UK range.

Born Out of a Film That Flopped

Runts arrived in 1982 from a Chicago family firm called Breaker Confections, which had spent years making Lik-M-Aid and Tart 'n Tinys before deciding in 1980 that its future lay in a fictional chocolatier. It renamed itself Willy Wonka Brands and set about building a portfolio to match.

What followed was a remarkable two years. Runts launched in 1982 and Nerds in 1983, and both are still in production more than forty years later — two brands out of one small company inside twenty-four months, at the point when American confectionery was expanding faster than at any time since the war. The name came from the 1971 film, which had not been a hit on release and only became a fixture through television repeats. The candy outlasted the disappointment and turned the name into a brand in its own right.

That parentage matters because it puts Runts in a specific family. Everlasting Gobstoppers, Nerds, Fun Dip, SweeTarts and Laffy Taffy all sit in the same lineage, and most of them have moved through the same set of hands. For how a fictional chocolatier ended up owning a real confectionery portfolio, see who really owns Willy Wonka. Nestlé bought the company in 1988 and ran it as Wonka. In 2018 the American Wonka portfolio passed to the Ferrara Candy Company, owned by Ferrero, which makes Runts today.

Why They Are Hard, and What Is Inside

A Runt is not a boiled sweet and it is not a gummy. It is a hard candy shell around a compressed dextrose centre — the same crumbly, slightly chalky texture as a SweeTART, built at a scale small enough to shape into a piece of fruit.

That construction is the reason for the one complaint people have always had. The original 1982 Runts were genuinely hard — hard enough that biting into one was a gamble, and most people learned to suck them instead. Wonka responded in the 1980s with Chewy Runts, the same flavours and shapes in a soft format, which ran for decades before Ferrero discontinued them in 2014 for poor sales. The hard ones, the ones people complained about, are the ones that survived.

The Flavours That Came and Went

Very few sweets have rebuilt their line-up as often as Runts. The original 1982 box held five: banana, cherry, strawberry, orange and lime.

In the late 1990s watermelon and blue raspberry arrived and lime was dropped — the first casualty, and still the one people who grew up with them bring up first. Anyone who remembers the original box will tell you the same two things: the green one used to be lime, and there was no purple at all. In 2007 the range went tropical: pineapple and mango came in, and watermelon, blue raspberry and cherry all went out, which meant a Runts box briefly contained almost nothing it had started with. Grape and green apple came later. The line-up on shelves now is banana, orange, strawberry, grape and green apple.

Only two flavours have survived every reshuffle since 1982: banana and orange. Strawberry has been in for almost all of it. Cherry and lime, both original, are both gone.

There is a detail in that history that quietly undoes the whole premise of the sweet. When flavours were swapped, the moulds were not always replaced. Green apple took over the shape that had been used for cherry. Grape took over the shape that had been used for mango. So the grape in a modern box is a mango, and the green apple is a cherry — a sweet built entirely on the idea that the shape tells you the flavour, quietly reusing the wrong shapes. Most people have never noticed, which is arguably the point.

The centres changed too. Early Runts had coloured centres that matched the shell, so a cracked strawberry was red the whole way through. Those were dropped in favour of a plain white centre, which is what you get today. And there were spin-offs along the way — Tropical Runts and Rock'n Runts in the 1990s, and Runts Freckled Eggs at Easter, which gave up on fruit shapes altogether and came egg-shaped in a box with a built-in handle.

The Banana Argument

The yellow one is the flavour people either seek out or pick out, and there is a reason it tastes the way it does rather than like a banana you would buy in a shop.

Artificial banana flavouring is built around a compound called isoamyl acetate, and it was standardised at a point when the dominant commercial banana was the Gros Michel — a larger, sweeter, far more intensely perfumed variety than the one we eat now. Panama disease tore through Gros Michel plantations through the 1950s and ended commercial production. The Cavendish replaced it, and the Cavendish is milder. The flavouring never changed.

So banana Runts do not taste like a banana. They taste like the banana that was on shelves when the flavour was invented, and that variety effectively no longer exists in the shops. The same explanation covers banana Laffy Taffy and most American banana sweets, which is why they all taste of the same thing and none of them tastes of fruit.

Banana is also the only Runt to have been given a pack of its own. Bananarama is an all-banana variation — nothing but the yellow ones, still made in America decades after it appeared — and it exists for the obvious reason. Banana is the flavour people either dig through the box for or pick out and leave, so somebody sensibly made a bag containing only that. The name will also ring a bell for anyone who was buying records in the early 1980s, when a British girl group of the same name was charting.

The Dispenser Years

For a generation of Americans, Runts were not something you bought in a shop. They came out of the coin-operated dispensers — the rows of clear plastic globes with metal handles that stood by the exits of shopping malls, in arcades, and beside the tills in corner shops with the penny sweet bins. A quarter in the slot, a turn of the handle, and out came a handful of whatever the machine decided to give you.

That distribution is why Runts occupy the specific nostalgia slot they do. The dispenser meant you never chose your flavours, so everyone has an opinion about the ratio they used to get, and the small hard pieces were exactly the format that machinery suited. For more of that era, see the retro American candy guide.

Runts at Sweet and Glory

Runts come to the UK in the classic 141g theatre box — the tall cardboard carton with the pour spout that is the standard American cinema format, and the one most people picture when they picture the brand. The current mix is banana, orange, strawberry, grape and green apple.

It is a strong impulse line for the same reasons it always has been: the fruit shapes make it instantly recognisable on a shelf, the price point is low, and the theatre box display well beside the rest of the Wonka-heritage range. Position it alongside Nerds, Laffy Taffy and SweeTARTS and you have a fixture that reads as a coherent family rather than a set of unrelated boxes. Browse the Runts brand page for current availability, or the full candy range.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What flavours are in Runts? The current mix is banana, orange, strawberry, grape and green apple. That line-up is not the original — the 1982 box held banana, cherry, strawberry, orange and lime, and only banana and orange have survived every reshuffle since.

Are Runts still shaped like the fruit they taste of? Not all of them. When flavours were swapped the moulds were reused rather than remade, so green apple took over the cherry shape and grape took over the mango shape. The grape in a modern box is a mango and the green apple is a cherry — which is a strange thing to be true of a sweet whose entire selling point is that the shape tells you the flavour.

Why did they stop making lime Runts? Lime was one of the five original flavours and was dropped in the late 1990s, when watermelon and blue raspberry were brought in to replace it. It is the flavour long-time fans mention most, and it has never come back. Cherry, also an original, was cut later in the 2007 tropical reshuffle.

Why does banana Runts taste nothing like a banana? Because it was modelled on a different banana. Artificial banana flavour is built on isoamyl acetate, standardised when the Gros Michel was the commercial variety — sweeter and far more strongly perfumed than what we eat now. Panama disease ended Gros Michel production through the 1950s and the milder Cavendish took over, but the flavouring was never updated. Banana sweets still taste of a banana most people have never eaten.

Are Runts a Wonka sweet? They were. Runts launched in 1982 under the Willy Wonka Candy Company, the brand built off the back of the 1971 film. Nestlé bought the company in 1988 and ran it as Wonka; in 2018 the American portfolio went to the Ferrara Candy Company, owned by Ferrero, which makes Runts now. The Wonka name has gone from the packaging but the lineage is the same — the same family as Nerds, Fun Dip and Everlasting Gobstoppers.

What happened to Chewy Runts? Discontinued in 2014. The original Runts were hard enough that biting one was a genuine risk, so a soft version was introduced in the 1980s with the same flavours and shapes. It ran for decades but never matched the original for sales, and Ferrero cut it after taking the brand on. The hard ones, the ones people complained about, are the ones still in production.

Related guides: Who really owns Willy Wonka? · Gobstoppers and jawbreakers guide · Nerds complete UK guide · Laffy Taffy complete UK guide · Retro American candy: 80s and 90s brands · Most popular American sweets UK