You can all stop arguing about this now

0:00 I can't believe Redvine's actually exist.

0:03 They are so bad.

0:05 But apparently, some people, like my otherwise wonderful husband,

0:09 think the very same thing about my beloved Twizzlers.

0:13 It turns out basically everyone has a weirdly

0:15 strong preference when it comes to red licorice.

0:18 I'm about to go to great lengths, maybe ridiculous lengths,

0:22 to [music] figure out what's going on here

0:24 and which red licorice really reigns supreme.

0:27 This is MinuteFood.

0:30 First things first, red licorice isn't actually licorice.

0:33 Real licorice candy, aka black licorice,

0:36 has been around for hundreds of years and was traditionally

0:39 flavored and colored with the root of the licorice plant.

0:42 Red licorice didn't arrive on the scene

0:44 until the 1950s when the American Licorice Company

0:46 decided to use raspberry flavoring and red

0:48 coloring instead and market the candy as Redvines.

0:52 Today though, the flavor of Redvines is apparently just uh red.

0:57 A few decades later, another licorice company,

0:59 which was eventually acquired by Hershey's,

1:01 started making their own fruit-flavored licorices, one of which was strawberry.

1:06 This is what we know and love, or [music] hate, as Twizzlers.

1:10 Hershey's also makes a bunch of spin-offs,

1:12 [music] but the flagship Twizzlers and Redvines candies are really the top

1:16 dogs when it comes to red licorice here in the US.

1:19 And people have big feelings about them.

1:22 I mean, some people hate them both,

1:24 but people who like one are staunchly devoted to that brand.

1:28 There are tons of forum [music] discussions and articles and videos

1:32 out there arguing why one is better than the other.

1:34 Even Parks and Rec referenced the rivalry.

1:37 But nobody has actually looked at this question scientifically, until now.

1:42 [music] The MinuteFood team put together a survey

1:44 asking some basic questions about people's red licorice preferences,

1:48 and more than 900 people were willing to geek out with us.

1:51 And luckily, our favorite data nerd was willing to sort through the stats.

1:56 Only about 15% of people that responded

1:58 to our survey had no preference between the two brands.

2:01 From the responses, most of them seemed to dislike both options equally.

2:05 But when we look at those with a preference, [music]

2:07 way more people chose Twizzlers than Redvines.

2:10 So Twizzlers is the better red licorice.

2:13 Woohoo!

2:15 Ugh.

2:15 Look, I would love to stop here and tell

2:17 you that Twizzlers are the quantifiably superior red licorice,

2:21 but I have to keep going because scientifically,

2:23 there is something pretty interesting going on here.

2:25 [music] See, we also asked some other questions in our survey,

2:28 like which candy people grew up eating,

2:31 because [music] there is a ton of evidence that we tend

2:33 to prefer foods that were exposed to earlier and more often.

2:37 Like in one study, kids rated vegetables that they ate more frequently as better

2:41 tasting than those they didn't [music]

2:43 eat frequently or didn't recognize at all.

2:46 Another found that the more often adults tasted various [music] types of juices,

2:50 the better they liked them.

2:52 And a landmark experiment, one of my all-time favorite studies,

2:56 found that babies whose mothers drank carrot juice [music]

2:59 during pregnancy and the first few months after birth.

3:02 In other words, they were exposed to carrot flavor in utero and via breast milk,

3:06 liked carrot-flavored cereal better at 6 months old

3:09 than babies whose mothers didn't drink carrot juice.

3:12 So there's [music] reason to believe that people who

3:14 grew up eating Redvines might prefer Redvines later in life.

3:18 And the same for those that grew up eating Twizzlers.

3:21 And that's exactly what we saw in the data.

3:23 The red licorice brand you grew up eating is

3:26 an incredibly strong predictor of which one you like now.

3:29 Out of the 900-plus [music] respondents,

3:31 only 33 people grew up eating one candy and now prefer the other.

3:36 So because [music] I grew up in a Twizzlers family,

3:39 I was basically predestined to like Twizzlers.

3:42 Same with my husband and Redvines.

3:44 But my Twizzlers-loving family on the East [music] Coast,

3:48 whereas my husband's Redvine family is on the West Coast.

3:51 So I also wanted to know whether geography matters here.

3:54 [music] So we classified each state as either a Twizzlers state

3:58 or a Redvines state based [music]

3:59 on data from the survey about brand availability,

4:02 so which candy or candies people remember being available where they grew up,

4:06 and popularity, which brand people preferred most in each state.

4:09 [music] And this is what we ended up with.

4:12 It lines up pretty darn well with this other survey

4:14 I came across showing which brand wins each state's Instacart sales.

4:18 And it also makes sense when we look at where these candies are made.

4:22 Redvines have always been produced in the San Francisco Bay Area.

4:25 Twizzlers, on the other hand, have always been made in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

4:29 For a while, they were also produced in New Mexico,

4:31 although that plant was relocated to Memphis in the late '90s.

4:35 [music] So each red licorice brand has kind of carved out its own territory.

4:39 And the data shows that if you grew up in Twizzlers territory,

4:42 your family was more likely to eat Twizzlers.

4:45 And remember, if you grew up eating Twizzlers,

4:47 you're much more likely to prefer them now.

4:49 If you grew up in the Redvine belt, you probably grew up eating those and you're

4:53 much more likely to prefer them today.

4:55 So scientifically, which brand is better?

4:58 Whichever one ruled the state you grew up in.

5:01 But this doesn't explain why people seem to absolutely hate the other brand.

5:05 [music] In our survey, more than 40% of people rated the strength

5:08 of their preference as a five out of five, the highest strength possible.

5:13 And when we asked people to describe the one they didn't like,

5:16 they didn't hold back.

5:17 To Twizzlers lovers, Redvines taste like vomit-flavored rubber.

5:21 Redvines taste like Madame Tussauds.

5:23 They taste like the lost dreams of the elderly.

5:26 Poetic and accurate.

5:29 Twizzlers, on the other hand, are literally made from the same plastic

5:33 used to coat electrical cords on appliances.

5:36 The texture is like a tire masquerading as a candy with a facade of strawberry.

5:42 And the taste is like someone had a mental breakdown in a Florida gas station.

5:47 I mean, if you've never had a mental breakdown in a Florida gas station,

5:50 are you really living life?

5:52 But seriously, what is with the hate?

5:55 Because Redvines and Twizzlers aren't all that different.

5:57 They're both fruity, twisty, and as a lot of people mentioned,

6:01 no matter which side they're on, plasticky and artificial.

6:04 In other words, Redvines and Twizzlers [music] seem similar enough

6:07 that if you're trying the one you didn't grow up eating,

6:10 you probably expect that it's going to be what you're used to.

6:13 But the two products are just different

6:15 enough that you don't get what you expect.

6:18 And research has shown that we don't tend to like things,

6:21 especially foods, that defy our expectations.

6:24 Two of my favorite comments got at [music] this idea.

6:26 Twizzlers are like Redvines, but with no redeeming qualities.

6:30 And Redvines taste like someone tries to recreate a Twizzler

6:35 from memory while having dementia and COVID at the same time.

6:40 For most of us, Twizzlers and Redvines seem

6:42 to fall into an uncanny valley, an uncanny valley,

6:46 if you will, where they're just different

6:48 enough from our expectations to cause utter revulsion.

6:52 So we now know that if you grew up with one of these candies,

6:55 you're probably not going to like the other one.

6:57 But what if you didn't grow up with either?

6:59 Could people who have never tasted either

7:01 one help us determine which one is better?

7:04 We were already really deep into this whole

7:06 ridiculous question and I wasn't going to stop here.

7:08 So I sent Twizzlers and Redvines to friends in three countries,

7:12 India, Spain, and Brazil, where these brands aren't common.

7:15 And we had people taste each one.

7:17 The first takeaway, there is a lot of red

7:19 tape involved in sending candy around the world.

7:22 But eventually, all the packages completed their journeys.

7:24 And after [music] 40 people tasted each brand, it was basically a tie.

7:29 Although honestly, nobody liked either one all that much.

7:32 So while one answer to the Twizzlers versus Redvines rivalry is

7:36 that whichever brand you grew up eating is the better licorice,

7:39 and therefore both of these groups are right,

7:41 another way to look at it is that neither one is actually any good.

7:45 And these people had the right idea all along.

7:48 And that was a twist I didn't [music] see coming.

7:53 This is the actual end of the video, I promise.

7:56 But I just want to say that a lot of people came together

7:58 to help answer this question that I've been thinking about for literally years.

8:02 Our survey participants, our international taste testers,

8:05 and our incredible patrons.

8:07 Thank you all for finally making this long, twisty explanation a reality.