The Spiciest Gummy Bear In The World Is So Hot Only One Comes In A Package

Some people enjoy spicy food, like buffalo wings or Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Some people enjoy food that's even spicier than that, seemingly going nowhere without a bottle of some palate-blasting hot sauce they can drizzle on their food. (Careful, though: some restaurants won't let you do that.) But there are times when something is so spicy that nobody in their right mind could possibly enjoy it; in fact, it only exists so people can torture themselves with it and post the video on social media. Such is the case with Lil' Nitro, the world's spiciest gummy bear. You only get one per package, but that's more than enough.

That one single gummy bear, only a few shades darker than a cherry-flavored gummy bear from Haribo, contains 9,000,000 Scoville units. To put that number in context, a habanero pepper is "only" 160,000 units; a Carolina reaper is 1,500,000 units; and pepper spray is 5,300,000 units. That's right, if you straight-up spritzed pepper spray on your tongue, you would have a marginally more pleasant time than if you ate Lil' Nitro. (This should go without saying, but please do not spritz pepper spray on your tongue.) There's no shortage of ultra-hot, single-serving snacks made for viral challenges, but the fact that this one comes in the shape of a cute little bear somehow makes it worse. How could you betray us like this, Lil' Nitro?

Testimonials to Lil' Nitro's hotness are all over social media. A few solid chews are all it takes to turn normal people into twitching, coughing balls of agony, writhing in their car seats with alarming intensity. These reactions, intense though they may be, are nothing new: you'll find them when celebrities eat Da Bomb on "Hot Ones" (on wings that are often made by Shorty's in New York), when newscasters take the since-discontinued One Chip Challenge, and when people try an ultra-spicy lollipop known as "the Toe of Satan". But there are a couple of reasons why Lil' Nitro may be worse than all of those.

There's the flavor, of course, which is so unpleasant, it's been compared to gasoline. Then there's the fact that Lil' Nitro is a gummy candy, and an especially chewy one at that. The texture is said to be closer to Swedish Fish than a typical gummy bear, which means you'll have to chew it more than you'd probably like — and it also means lots of incredibly spicy gunk sticking to your teeth. Even experienced spice hounds have suffered greatly at the paws of this tiny bear, so unless you're confident in your ability to get views, or if you're doing it for charity or something, it may be best to spare your stomach the trouble (to say nothing of other parts of your body).