This oddball food combo is taking TikTok by storm

Call them gummy polar bears.As if there weren’t enough incongruous-seeming food combos circulating TikTok: Social media gourmands are marinating gummy bears in Sprite and then freezing them to create a texturally anomalous treat.

This phenomenon was started as an ASMR trend by @emiriASMR, who illustrated the auditory appeal of crunching down on the frozen candies in a video with over 9 million views.Like so many food fads on the platform nowadays, clips of these glaciated gummy bears quickly snowballed across social media.As user Kat Chao explains in her viral tutorial, the recipe involves submerging Haribo-brand gummy bears in a container filled with the aforementioned soda pop and then refrigerating them overnight.

The liquid is then dumped out and the bears are placed on a plate and slapped in the freezer for two to three hours.Voila, the final product is not only a lot bigger but boasts a “smooth icy consistency” — a major contrast to the gelatinously chewy mouth-feel of a normal gummy.No need to use just regular-sized gummies — TikTok influencer Julia Vuong reimagined the dish with a one-pound gummy bear, creating the ultimate frozen Frankenfood.Needless to say, these gummy bear pop-sicles are blowing up online with one X user gushing, “These Sprite marinated frozen gummy bears are so good.”“There’s something so satisfying to my brain about the little pops it’s making during osmosis,” said another.However, not everyone was so enthralled.“Guys don’t make the frozen Sprite gummy bears they taste so bad,” warned one X user.Another dubbed the snack “overrated.”“It’s awful, it just tastes like ice,” declared TikTok user Sarah Betts during one video taste test.

However, commenters pointed out that she incorrectly put them in the freezer — and not the fridge — for 24 hours.They added that when done correctly, the bears “should be like a jelly on the inside.”...