This article is about the candy. For real fish in Sweden, see List of fish in Sweden.

Swedish Fish is a type of chewy fish-shaped candy. It has been developed with special flavors specifically for the North American market by the Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 candy producer Malaco

Malaco

Malaco is a brand of confectionery products owned by Leaf, their products are sold in Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland as well as Sweden....

, which exports products to North America.

History

In 1958, Malaco, a Swedish confectionery

Confectionery

Confectionery is the set of food items that are rich in sugar, any one or type of which is called a confection. Modern usage may include substances rich in artificial sweeteners as well...

 manufacturer, expanded its business by exporting a few of their products to North America. Various licorice ribbon and licorice lace candies were the first products to be exported.

Malaco's export trade grew and in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Swedish Fish and Swedish Berries

Swedish berries

right|thumb|300px|A bag of Swedish Berries.Swedish berries are red berry-shaped soft chewy candy. The name Swedish Berries is trademarked by Maynards Candy, a division of Cadbury Canada...

 were developed specifically for the North American market. Malaco was eventually acquired by Leaf International.

During the late 1960s, Swedish Shells were created. These were identical in composition, flavor, and color to the original Swedish Fish, but were in the shape of scalloped seashells and came in red (cherry), yellow (lemon), orange (orange), and green (lime). The Swedish Shells were the first color/shape expansion of the Swedish Fish line. They were sold by the Broadway Department Store chain from the late 1960s well into the 1970s. From the late 1970s until they were discontinued in the early 1990s, they were carried and sold by various bulk candy stores and candy specialty shops.

Today the Swedish Fish consumed in North America are made in Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...

, Canada, by the Cadbury Adams Company, which bought the brand from Leaf in 2006. The fish are distributed in the U.S. by Cadbury Adams USA in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey

Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey

Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, commonly called Parsippany, is a township in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2000 United States Census, the township population was 50,649. The name Parsippany comes from the Lenape Native American word parsipanong, which means "the place where...

. In the UK, Swedish Fish can be found in IKEA

IKEA

IKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture such as beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. The company is the world's largest furniture retailer...

's Swedish Food section, including the salmiak flavour.

Ingredients

Swedish Fish are one of the few gummy candies that do not contain gelatin

Gelatin

Gelatin is a translucent, colorless, brittle , flavorless solid substance, derived from the collagen inside animals' skin and bones. It is commonly used as a gelling agent in food, pharmaceuticals, photography, and cosmetic manufacturing. Substances containing gelatin or functioning in a similar...

. According to the USA distribution packages, the candy is made out of the following ingredients:

• Sugar
  Sugar
  Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
  
  
• Invert Sugar
  Inverted sugar syrup
  Inverted or invert sugar syrup is a mixture of glucose and fructose; it is obtained by splitting sucrose into these two components. Compared with its precursor, sucrose, inverted sugar is sweeter and its products tend to remain more moist and are less prone to crystallisation...
  
  
• Corn syrup
  Corn syrup
  Corn syrup is a food syrup, which is made from the starch of maize and contains varying amounts of maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor...
  
  
• Modified corn starch
• Citric acid
  Citric acid
  Citric acid is a weak organic acid. It is a natural preservative/conservative and is also used to add an acidic, or sour, taste to foods and soft drinks...
  
  
• White Mineral Oil
  Mineral oil
  A mineral oil is any of various colorless, odorless, light mixtures of alkanes in the C15 to C40 range from a non-vegetable source, particularly a distillate of petroleum....
  
  
• Artificial flavors
• Coloring (FD&C Red 40
  Allura Red AC
  Allura Red AC is a red azo dye that goes by several names including: Allura Red, Food Red 17, C.I. 16035, FD&C Red 40, 2-naphthalenesulfonic acid, 6-hydroxy-5--, disodium salt, and disodium 6-hydroxy-5--2-naphthalenesulfonate. It is used as a food dye and has the E number E129...
  
   for the red color)
• Carnauba wax
  Carnauba wax
  Carnauba , also called Brazil wax and palm wax, is a wax of the leaves of the palm Copernicia prunifera, a plant native to and grown only in the northeastern Brazilian states of Piauí, Ceará, and Rio Grande do Norte. It is known as "queen of waxes" and usually comes in the form of hard yellow-brown...
  
  

In the United States

Swedish fish are most commonly found in specialty candy stores in which they can be bought by the ounce. A recent resurgence in popularity has resulted in greater accessibility in supermarkets and convenience stores where they are often sold in packaged plastic bags.

Originally colored red with a flavor unique to the candy (often guessed to be lingonberry, but never verified), they are now also available in several different colors, such as Orange & Lemon-Lime. Purple Swedish Fish in grape

Grape

A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...

 flavor were discontinued in 2006. The fish come in two different sizes. Initially, the smaller fish came only in red; now fish of both sizes are available in all flavors.

According to a visit to the factory on the Food Network

Food Network

Food Network is a television specialty channel that airs both one-time and recurring programs about food and cooking. Scripps Networks Interactive owns 70 percent of the network, with Tribune Company controlling the remaining 30 percent....

's show Unwrapped

Unwrapped

Unwrapped is an American television program on Food Network that reveals the origins of foods. It first aired in June 2001 and is hosted by Marc Summers. The show leads viewers on tours of factories and other food-related locations. Popular subjects include candy, breakfast cereal, snacks, and TV...

, green is not lime, but pineapple

Pineapple

Pineapple is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. It was given the name pineapple due to its resemblance to a pine cone. The pineapple is by far the most economically important plant in the Bromeliaceae...

 flavor, while yellow is a lemon-lime

Lemon-lime

Lemon-lime is a common carbonated soft drink flavor, consisting of lemon and lime flavoring. Sprite and 7 Up are the most popular examples.-Description:...

 flavor.

Rita's, a U.S. chain which serves Italian ice

Italian ice

Italian ice, also known as water ice, is a sweetened frozen dessert made with fruit or other natural or artificial food flavorings, similar to sorbet. Italian ice is not shaved ice that is flavored; rather, it is made by the same process by which ice cream is made: freezing the ingredients while...

 and ice cream, makes a red Swedish Fish flavored Italian ice as a cobranded

Brand alliances

Brand alliances is a branding strategy used in a business alliance. Brand alliances are divided into three types:-Cobrands:Cobrands are the usage of two or more brands on one certain product...

 product.

In Sweden

In Sweden large amounts of wine gum

Wine gum

Wine gums are chewy, firm pastille-type sweets similar to gumdrops without the sugar coating. While generally manufactured from gelatin, at least one winegum, Swedish Fish, contains no gelatin; all have their own mixes containing various sweeteners, flavorings, and colorings...

 candies are sold every year, in all kinds of shapes in shops and supermarkets, where everyone serves themselves, purchasing any type of wine gums and candies they desire, placing the assorted candies in small paper bags available in the shops. Common shapes are rats, flowers, coins, boats, guns, elephants, cars and also fish. The fish shape of the Swedish Fish is just one of the many candy shapes.

In Sweden, the Swedish Fish candy is marketed under the name "pastellfiskar", literally "pastel fish". The fish in Sweden are generally much paler in color and more translucent

Transparency and translucency

In the field of optics, transparency is the physical property of allowing light to pass through a material; translucency only allows light to pass through diffusely. The opposite property is opacity...

 (save the black fish). In particular, the yellow fish color is almost cream. The taste also differs slightly, the Swedish version being less sweet but more fruit-flavored, especially the yellow one, which is more tangy. The green fish is not lime flavored; the green candy color in Scandinavia is usually associated with apple or pear flavor. They are slightly thicker, have the text "Malaco" instead of "Swedish" embossed.

The North American variety of Swedish Fish can be found at Swedish IKEA stores under the original name.

Aqua Life

"Aqua Life" is a certain style of Swedish Fish candy in the shape of sea animals

Marine biology

Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...

. They are available in yellow (lemon) starfish, green (lime) whales, purple (grape) puffer fish, orange (orange) seahorses, and blue (blue raspberry) dolphins.

External links

• The Original Swedish Fish website, run by Cadbury Adams