BUBS skulls are the Swedish candy that went viral in 2023, kept selling in 2024, and have since become an entire category at most American specialty candy shops. If you've watched a single 'Swedish candy haul' TikTok, you've seen them. Here's what's actually in your hand when you pick one up.
What a BUBS skull actually is
Every BUBS skull is a two-layer candy in a single mould. The top half is a chewy fruit layer — usually some combination of cola, raspberry, pineapple, or apple. The bottom half is a soft foam licorice base. The two textures meet in the middle, and the whole thing is sized to fit in your mouth in one bite, which is the whole point.
Each skull weighs around 3-4 grams. A standard 90g bag holds roughly 25-30 of them. The texture contrast between layers is the engineering — and it's why BUBS has spent over a century quietly perfecting recipes that other confectioners haven't matched.
The flavour lineup, decoded
- Cool Cola Skulls — the classic. Cola fizz on top, soft licorice underneath. Tastes like a really good cola float, in candy form.
- Sour Skulls — the same dual-texture build, with a sour-sugar dusting that hits citric-acid sharp on the first second. The TikTok darling.
- Passion-Pineapple Skulls — tropical fruit on top, lighter licorice underneath. The fruit-forward gateway product.
- Raspberry Skulls — red, sweet, raspberry-forward. Closer to a soft gummy than the cola version, but with that signature foam base.
- Foam Skulls (the original Raspberry Liquorice) — the heritage SKU. Less sour, more foam, classic Swedish licorice profile.
“Cool Cola Skulls are the gateway. Sour Skulls are the addiction. Foam Skulls are the long game.”
Where BUBS comes from
BUBS Godis was founded in 1908 in Jönköping, Sweden. They were good at this a century before TikTok caught on. If you want the full BUBS backstory — the founding, the 2024 US expansion, the upcoming flavour drops — we wrote a brand page about them: read the BUBS deep dive.
How to start
If you've never tried BUBS, do yourself a favour and don't start with the Sour Skulls. They're the most extreme version. Start with Cool Cola Skulls or the classic Foam Skulls so you can read the underlying candy before the sour layer scrambles your palate. Then graduate to sour. Then build a bag with all five.
Better yet, build your own mix with several BUBS varieties side by side — that's the proper Swedish way to do it. Our build-your-mix tool lets you stack 100 grams of any combination, with the bag filling in real time as you add.
We ship BUBS direct from Sweden the same week we pack — fresh from the source, not from a US warehouse pallet that's been sitting since the hype peaked. 100+ tons of Swedish candy delivered, 75,000+ customers, and BUBS is in a meaningful fraction of those bags.