World's First Sour Patch Kids Store Opens In New York City
Did you know that Sour Patch Kids have been around for 35 years now? These Millennials have have grown up right before our very eyes. To celebrate 3.5 decades of the Kids' puckery exploits, parent company Mondelez International is opening the very first Sour Patch Kids store at Broadway and Bond in New York City.
The new store is 3,300 square feet, and both the photos and this virtual tour video featured in the press release show a pretty sizable interactive confectionery. "Visitors will get a chance to create their own candy mix, pose with the Kids inside a full-size yellow taxi, and experience a first-of-its-kind SOUR PATCH KIDS Sweets Bar with treats to-go," says the press release. "Chefs have reimagined classic desserts and put a sour-then-sweet spin on smoothies, ice cream, cookies, edible cookie dough made in collaboration with DŌ, Cookie Dough Confections and more."
The store is a collaboration between Sour Patch Kids and IT'SUGAR, the latter of which is a big, splashy candy retail chain that has been described in the past (by me) as "a monument to corporatized brand optimization that happens to sell a bit of candy on the side" and "not spiritually a sweets shop at all." While this continues to be the case, throwing IT'SUGAR levels of funding behind a store dedicated to one type of candy—a candy that has both a delicious flavor and a strong brand identity—actually makes a kind of sense: it allows the shop to go deep on its merchandise concepts and act like it really cares about the particular magic of Sour Patch Kids (as we all should). Perusing the Sweets Bar menu below, I know I would be very excited to try the "Sour. Sweet. Smoothie," described as "soft serve ice cream blended with Sour Patch flavored swirl and Sour Patch candy pieces topped with whipped cream and Sour Patch Kids bitz." There are bitz now? I didn't know there were bitz! (By the way, if anyone is interested in seeing how on earth the rainbow cake shake is served, you can catch a glimpse at around 0:45 in the video tour.)
This is a permanent location, not a pop-up shop, so hopefully anyone interested in paying a visit to the Sour Patch Kids store will have ample opportunity to do so whenever they feel safe to venture out to major NYC shopping districts once more. To that end, the press release included a section on COVID-19 safety precautions, which I've included below for posterity; it's a fascinating relic of a very particular moment in PR history.
The Kids may like pranks, but they know visitors' safety is no joke. For now, the SOUR PATCH KIDS Store has lowered its maximum capacity to allow enough room for social distancing, and all visitors are required to wear face coverings. Additionally, the Sweets Bar will only feature a to-go menu until the city permits indoor dining. At the SOUR PATCH KIDS candy station, tongs and scoops are regularly sanitized, and visitors who want to create their own candy mix are required to use disposable gloves. A full list of precautions the SOUR PATCH KIDS Store is taking to keep all visitors safe is available at sourpatchkids.com/store_nyc.