Getting to know the Googly Fruit Organic gang (review)

Googly Fruit Organic is a new brand of 100% organic fruit and veg snacks for toddlers and children, but the company's mission is much bigger than just trying to sell healthy snacks - they want to encourage kids to build a lifelong friendship with fruit and veg, which all begins with getting to know them.

Along with a selection of products, they sent a fun picture book, Learn Your ABC's With Your Googly Fruit Friends, which introduces a fab selection of fruit and vegetable varieties that your child may or may not know.

It's hilarious to see how much personality you can give to random items from your fruit bowl just by adding googly eyes ! I love the fact that they use genuine photos of food, rather than illustrations, so that kids can really recognise the fruit and veg that they will see in the supermarket and on their plate.

Even as a grown-up, I loved looking at the way the details on the produce, such as the little imperfections on the potato or the stalk part of the mango, have been used to give them shocked or smiley expressions.

I also like the fact that they introduce some of the lesser known varieties, as well as the family favourites. Even I had never heard of vitelotte, even though I love trying new and exotic foodie products and they're French. (I asked French Madhouse Daddy and he hadn't either, so I don't feel too ignorant !)

The book came accompanied with lots of googly eyes so we'll be having great fun making googly fruit and vegetable friends of our own. We've already enjoyed drawing scary Jack o' lantern faces on clementines, so this will be met with great enthusiasm, I'm sure, especially as we can enter our creations in the competition over on the Googly Fruit website.

The main event, however, was not the book or even making googly eyed 5-a-day friends. It was sampling the fab selection of products from the Googly Fruit Organic range. I'm afraid you'll have to make do with packshots rather than pictures of the contents, because these were packed away in school bags and lunch boxes as school approved snacks and sweet treats.

The first thing to catch the Madhouse kids' eye(s) were the Crunchy Puffs, because they sound and even look like crisps. They are a much healthier option though as they are air-puffed corn bites that are coated in carrot powder (it tastes better than it sounds !) with just a few drops of sunflower oil to create a satisfying crunchy texture. The Madhouse kids liked the tomato and carrot ones but weren't keen on the banana and strawberry variety, because they said it seemed weird having a sweet "crisp".

The "real fruit made crunchy" was a unanimous hit (even with the grown-ups !) - additive free, freeze-dried fruit that tastes like sweets is a guaranteed thumbs-up. We loved all of them - apple & blueberry, strawberry and banana & raspberry.

The squeezy pouches were slighty more hit and miss, but this will depend largely on personal taste. The Madhouse kids loved the pure fruit ones (Apple, Strawberry, Blueberry & Raspberry or Apple, Mango & Peach) but weren't so keen on the vegetable/fruit blends (Apple, Sweet Potato & Clementine, Apple, Pear, Carrot & Pumpkin and Apple, Blueberry & Purple Carrot). If you have fussy kids, it's definitely worth trying to sneak some extra veg in there though as they may not notice ! I think they may also appeal more to toddlers than older children.

The snack flavours have been created to appeal to young palates and the small pieces are designed for little fingers and mouths. The cute branding, which aims to make fruit and veg relatable to creative young minds, is a big bonus and can be further exploited with the "fun for kids" section on the Googly Fruit website, with competitions, printables and online fun.

for more information  : www.googlyfruit.co.uk

Disclosure : We received the products in order to write an honest review.