# Why is Swedish candy so popular?

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**Source:** sweeties.net, online pick and mix sweet shop

## Summary

Swedish sweets went viral on TikTok in 2024 for their textures, shapes and flavours. Behind the craze is a nation of champion sweet eaters.

## Description

Swedish sweets have been a Nordic institution for decades, but in 2024 they suddenly caught on far beyond Scandinavia. A few viral videos turned them into a worldwide craze, and shops struggled to keep them on the shelves.
How the craze began
The spark came in early 2024, when a New York marketer, Marygrace Graves, shared TikTok videos of her visits to BonBon, a Swedish sweet shop in Brooklyn run by three Swedish friends, and they went viral. The trend followed a craze the year before for candy salad videos, in which people layered colourful sweets into bowls. Swedish sweets, with their bright colours, odd shapes and satisfying textures, were perfect for the camera.
Demand soared. BonBon expanded its online ordering from about 50 orders at a time to more than 1,000, and had to fly in more stock from Sweden. By late 2024 there were reports of dwindling supplies in Sweden itself, with some Swedish shops putting local customers first. Scandinavians living in the UK turned to shops such as ScandiKitchen in London for their Saturday sweets.
What fans love
People praise Swedish sweets for:
Textures and shapes. Discs, diamonds, skulls, hearts, twists and ropes, from soft foams to firm chews.Flavours. A balance of sweet, sour and salty that is less familiar to many British and American shoppers, including salty liquorice flavoured with ammonium chloride.Ingredients. Fans and sellers point to sugar rather than corn syrup, plant based colours, and some sweets made without gelatine.
BonBon's co founder Leo Schaltz summed up the pitch as "a little bit of an upscale candy, but it's affordable."
Those claims vary from brand to brand, and Swedish sweets are still sugar, so it is worth reading the ingredients rather than assuming.
A nation of sweet eaters
The craze has deep roots. Sweden has had the highest sweet consumption per person in the world since at least 2009, with about 18 kilograms of sweets per person per year as of 2014. A lot of it is bought loose, by weight, from candy walls in supermarkets, a system approved for ordinary shops in 1984.
Then there is lördagsgodis, Saturday sweets. Since a health recommendation in 1959, many Swedes have saved their sweets for Saturdays, turning a weekly bag of pick and mix into a family ritual. That tradition is part of what social media fell in love with: see what is Swedish pick and mix?
Swedish and British pick and mix
British pick and mix and Swedish lösgodis work the same way: choose your sweets, fill a bag and pay by weight: see why is pick and mix sold by weight? The difference is in the mix itself, which in Sweden often includes salty liquorice.

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