A pick-and-mix spread of Swedish candy with sour elderflower fish, raspberry and licorice skulls, foam clouds, gold coins and sour diamonds on a marble counter

Swedish Candy: The Complete Guide

September 9, 2026

Sweden has a candy day. It is Saturday, it has a name, lördagsgodis, and it has been observed for about seventy years. The rule for children is simple: candy on one day a week. Families still keep it. The Local counts Swedes among the world's top candy eaters, and the country has built its confectionery culture around a single day.

The rest of the world caught up around 2024, when videos of candy from BonBon, a Swedish candy shop in New York, went viral online. The hype skipped the interesting part. Swedish candy is different in texture and flavor, and its candy day began with a public health experiment that has a dark history. This guide covers that history first, then what to put in the bag.

Where Saturday candy came from

Between 1945 and 1955, researchers at the Vipeholm institution in Lund ran dental studies on patients with intellectual disabilities, and between 1947 and 1949 fed groups of them large quantities of sticky sweets, toffee and caramel among them, to study tooth decay. The study showed that eating sugar between meals, especially in sticky forms, increases cavities, and it did so on people who had not given informed consent. In the late 1950s Swedish health officials and dentists recommended that children eat sweets once a week rather than a little every day, and Saturday became the day. Lördagsgodis is the descendant of a study now widely described as unethical, and Sweden has kept the rule anyway.

The pick-and-mix wall, the lösgodis counter, is a fixture of Swedish grocery and convenience shops, and it has helped make lördagsgodis common.

How it chews, and what it tastes of

One thing that sets Swedish candy apart is texture. BUBS candies are known for a chewy-meets-marshmallow texture, part gummy and part foam. BUBS makes its candies vegan and without gelatin; for other brands, check the bag.

The other is flavor. BonBon's fish are named for a specific fruit or flower: elderflower, wild strawberry, blackberry. BonBon's sour elderflower fish (shop BonBon sour elderflower fish) is the clearest example. The sweet wild strawberry fish (shop BonBon sweet wild strawberry fish) is the sweet counterpart, and the sour blackberry fish (shop BonBon sour blackberry fish) is another flavor in the line.

The fish you already know

The soft red fish sold across the United States as "Swedish Fish" really are Swedish in origin. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Malaco developed them for the North American market in the late 1950s, and Swedes eat a version of them as pastellfiskar.

Skulls and the BUBS range

If the fish is one familiar shape, the skull is another. BUBS, a Swedish candy maker founded in 1992, makes foam gummy skulls, skalle in Swedish. The sour skulls (shop BUBS Skalle Sour) and the tutti frutti sour diamonds (shop BUBS tutti frutti sour diamonds) are the sour side of the range. On the sweet side are the banana toffee Goody Ovals (shop BUBS Goody Ovals). The family story and the rest of the range are in the BUBS Godis producer guide.

Stock Boy Candy Co. and So Sweet build mixes around BUBS. Stock Boy Candy Co.'s BUBS mix (shop Stock Boy Candy Co. BUBS mix) is a half pound of assorted BUBS pieces and comes in a sweet version (shop Stock Boy Candy Co. BUBS sweet mix). So Sweet makes one as well (shop So Sweet BUBS mix).

A four-part rule for a lösgodis bag

The rule of thumb this guide uses for a Swedish pick-and-mix is four categories, and the pleasure is in the ratio. Sour gummies bring sharpness and sweet gummies and foam bring softness. Licorice or salmiak adds depth, and one or two pieces is enough if you are unsure. Chocolate-coated pieces add weight. It is easy to over-buy sour on a first trip.

Category	Share of the bag	What it does	Where to start
Sour gummies	About a third	Sharpness, wakes the palate	BonBon sour elderflower fish, BUBS Skalle Sour, BUBS tutti frutti sour diamonds
Sweet gummies and foam	About a third	Softness, carries the fruit	BonBon sweet wild strawberry fish, BUBS Goody Ovals, BonBon Moomin candy clouds
Licorice or salmiak	One or two pieces	Depth, resets between sour and sweet	The licorice collection (shop licorice)
Chocolate-coated	The rest	Weight and a slower finish	Lakrids By Bülow (Danish) sour strawberry white chocolate coated red licorice (shop Lakrids By Bülow C sour strawberry)

The So Sweet mixes are pre-built bags: a sour mix (shop the So Sweet sour mix), a skulls mix (shop the So Sweet skulls mix), a red mix (shop the So Sweet red mix), and a sweet and sour mix (shop the So Sweet sweet and sour mix). Pair one with a bag of BonBon fish and a few licorice pieces and three of the four rows are covered.

For the young or the nostalgic, BonBon's two Moomin bags split the same way: sour gummies (shop BonBon Moomin sour gummies) and candy clouds (shop BonBon Moomin candy clouds).

The salty question

Sooner or later a Swedish mix leads to salmiak, licorice flavored with ammonium chloride, which is popular in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. In a lösgodis bag it works in small quantities, one or two pieces to reset the palate between sour and sweet. The full story is in the Licorice: The Complete Guide article, and for a bowl by the door in October, the Halloween Swedish candy guide puts skulls, sour and salmiak together.

Where to start

For the curious: BonBon sour elderflower fish. For a household: the So Sweet sweet and sour mix and a bag of BUBS sour skulls. For a gift: two bags of fish, a bag of skulls and a Moomin bag packed in a gift box (shop gift boxes). Browse the Swedish candy collection (shop Swedish candy). Products ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com, and the shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, where visitors can ask staff questions.

Saturday is the traditional day to open the bag.