# Cola bottles

**Canonical URL:** https://sweeties.net/wiki/cola-bottles/
**Source:** sweeties.net, online pick and mix sweet shop

## Summary

Cola bottles are cola flavoured gummy sweets shaped like bottles. One recipe uses four added colours, another lists only caramelised sugar.

## Description

Cola bottles are gummy sweets flavoured to taste like cola and shaped like a bottle. Haribo sells them as Happy Cola, one of its key brands, and other makers sell their own: see how are cola bottle sweets made?
Two recipes
The UK retailer The Candy King gives two sets of ingredients on its cola bottles page, one for Kingsway's and one for Haribo's.
Kingsway cola bottles. Glucose syrup, sugar, water, beef gelatine, citric acid, palm oil, carnauba wax as a glazing agent, flavouring, E331 as an acidity regulator, and the colours E102, E129, E133 and E132.
Haribo cola bottles. Glucose syrup, sugar, gelatine, dextrose, citric acid, caramelised sugar syrup, sunflower oil, flavouring, and beeswax as a glazing agent. The retailer lists the same ingredients for Haribo Giant Cola.
Where the brown comes from
The two recipes get their colour in different ways.
Kingsway's lists four added colours: tartrazine (E102), allura red (E129), brilliant blue (E133) and indigo carmine (E132), a blue made from indigo.Haribo's lists no added colours at all. It does list caramelised sugar syrup, and caramelisation is the browning of sugar by heat: see how is caramel made?
Tartrazine and allura red are two of the six colours that must carry the warning may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children, and the Kingsway listing shows it: see the Southampton six colours
A label about GM
Sweets and Candy lists a cola bottle recipe much like Kingsway's, and marks its glucose syrup as containing genetically modified ingredients. The Food Standards Agency says all GM foods, including glucose syrups from a GM source, have to be labelled as GM, so a note like this is what the rules require when glucose syrup comes from a GM source.
Diet and allergy points
Gelatine. Both recipes contain gelatine, so neither is suitable for vegetarians or vegans. Kingsway's is beef gelatine; Haribo's listing does not say which animal it comes from: see gelatine in sweets explainedGlazes. Carnauba wax comes from the leaves of a palm tree, and beeswax is made by bees: see what is carnauba wax on sweets? and what is beeswax on sweets?Palm oil. Kingsway's recipe contains palm oil, and Haribo's uses sunflower oil: see palm oil in sweetsCaffeine. Neither recipe lists caffeine.Gluten. The Candy King shows a gluten free symbol on its cola bottles, while Sweets and Candy says its sweets are packed where wheat and gluten are handled: see pick and mix and allergies
For the sour, sugar coated kind, see fizzy cola bottles
In our pick and mix
We sell SW002 by the 100 g. Recipes differ between makers, so the card opens up to show the full ingredients and allergens for the cola bottles we actually stock.

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