Rotten Gummies Paves The Way For A New Generation Of Iconic Candy Brands

‘Healthy candy’ doesn’t sound too appetizing. The more rebellious–the more devilish–the better candy tastes.

So the irony of ‘healthy candy’ doesn’t mean its makeup has to be rotten, but the way it contributes to an experience is a different story.

By meshing legacy branding with modern diet concerns, Rotten, a new gummy candy brand that feels like a blast from the 90’s, is creeping its way into many households, with the potential to become the candy brand that actually breaks through just a niche market.

The ingredient list of Rotten’s packages of gummy candies aren’t completely different from other modern candy brands–mainly in terms of natural dyes, low sugar and probiotics. But founder Michael Fisher makes that secondary, taking a page from old-school Nickelodeon’s gross slime culture to create a universe in which his sour gummy worms live, and a world in which those who slurp the worms down can be a part of too.

Two years after launch, Rotten is starting to gain significant traction, on the verge of entering 6,000 brick-and-mortar stores across the country. “We’re growing about 1,000% year-over-year,” Fisher tells me. “We’ll have eight figures of revenue by the end of 2025.”

Creating the brand is more than a business venture, but a nod to his most cherished childhood memories. “Road trips, movies always meant candy. It’s connected to what were always fun activities for me as a kid,” Fisher adds. “Candy is about experiences.”

Freakishly Fun

Inspired by 90’s Nickelodeon magazines and dirty Adult Swim cartoons, Fisher concocted Rotten, if nothing else, to slither in pure fun and creativity to better engage today’s more health-conscious landscape.

Upon graduating from Stanford University with an engineering degree, Fisher began his career as a fellow for Venture for America, the former organization from Andrew Yang that connected young entrepreneurs to startups around the country. “It wasn’t just about entrepreneurship, but social impact, thinking bigger,” Fisher says. He ended up launching his own e-commerce startup, but despite enjoying the lifestyle that a young startup provided, the work itself, Fisher bluntly explains, “was so boring.”

He balanced that boredom by purchasing gummy worm molds and experimenting with his childlike infatuation. “My older brother was always eating candy, so I definitely picked up that habit from him,” he says. “One of my favorite products was Trolli eggs, the little gummy balls coated in a candy shell.”

Part of having fun with candy, to Fisher, means resisting the modern day branding of healthier foods. “I don’t want it to be called ‘smart’ or ‘healthy,’” he says. “They weren’t just taking the sugar out, they were also taking the fun experience out.” He built a brand that screams anything but ‘healthy,’ despite the product itself having a significantly stronger macronutrient profile than its legacy competitors. “If we’re screaming something healthy and it’s candy, no one is going to be attracted to it,” he says.

Fisher hired a cartoonist with Adult Swim credits on his resume to help him build out the entire Rotten lore, which goes well beyond a logo and packaging design. “We’re building a cartoon universe,” he says. “Brands need to be media companies…you need to entertain.”

That leads to Dr. Rotten–the whackadoodle scientist working all day long in his laboratory, behind everything Rotten. He’s the one always communicating with his Freaks, the forgotten species he recently discovered, lying dormant because they all were eating too much sugar. “The Freaks are uninhibited, goofy, wacky and a little mischievous,” Fisher says. ”They’re up to no good.”

Those Freaks are the customers who create the Rotten fandom themselves. “Everyone has their own personal freak lying dormant inside of them,” Fisher continues about the fiction world he developed. “Rotten is the formula Dr. Rotten developed as the key to help you unleash your freak.”

And the misfit Frankie Freak is not to be forgotten either, with his slimy green skin, bulging eyeballs and an electrifying purple tongue permanently hanging out of his mouth, greeting every freaky customer who picks up a bag of Rotten, welcoming them into the lore.

The universe created sets up the opportunity for an entire media company where Rotten can begin to license characters. The gummies may be the focal point of the brand today, but they may soon just be one element of a larger franchise.

Just as he followed what felt an authentic calling for him, Fisher now encourages every customer, wherever they may lie on the freak scale, to do the same, inspiring Rotten’s tagline, ‘Feed Your Freak.’ “It’s a call to action…” he says, “… to let your freak out and live your truest self.”

Subdued Sweetness

Rotten wouldn’t be the counterintuitive brand that draws you in from the shelf unless the candy itself were made with ingredients that are far from rotten.

In terms of sweeteners, Rotten products do not contain any high fructose corn syrup and are all at least a 60% reduction in sugar compared to its legacy competitors. Sweeteners in Rotten are low calorie, naturally occurring ingredients like allulose, chicory root fiber and monk fruit.

Fisher became a mad scientist himself while researching and formulating the product with all sorts of sweetening agents. “When you’re pulling sugar out of a gummy, you have to replace it with something,” he explains. “One thing that works well which also tastes sweet is fiber.” That’s what led him to adding chicory root fiber as both an additional sweetener and for added fiber. Extra probiotic fibers also help each bag of Rotten hit 7g of fiber.

Completely eliminating all sugar was not the direction he felt would compel shoppers to pick up a bag, as it would risk being perceived as a diet product. “Other modern zero sugar candies are all maltitol-based, he says. “The texture and flavor felt off and everyone was having stomach aches.”

Unlike other gummy brands too, Rotten uses no artificial dyes. Fisher initially dehydrated fruits himself and pulverized them into powdered dyes when working on original formulations. Today, dyes are made out of turmeric, spirulina, sweet potato and carrot. Still, Rotten gummies taste nothing like a ‘healthier’ candy–just candy.