One very big pet peeve in candies is the artificial favoring of fruit, especially cherries.

Cherries have a very bold, fruity flavor. Best when firm and really juicy. The ones I prefer tend to have the sharp tartness once you bite in it. This morning, I ate a bag of cherries as my breakfast.

But I didn't grow up on cherries. The only "cherry" flavor I ever got was through candy or soda.

Most of the time, when I eat candy and have a bite of the cherry flavor, I don't get this:

Instead, I taste something like this:

These candies painted a very negative picture on me ever eating cherries until I decided to try them a few months ago.

IMO, only Pepto Bismol and NyQuil taste worse than "cherry-flavored" candy.