Not to be overly dramatic, but last month when Sour Patch Kids were declared the second most popular Halloween candy, I was ready to issue the clarion call to bitches far and wide that we ride at dawn. SOUR PATCH KIDS?! In SECOND?? Any Halloween candy list that doesn’t have chocolate-forward treats occupying at minimum the first five slots, is what my grandmother would call a shanda! So I’m taking gleeful comfort in this week’s news that Sour Patch Kids’ parent company, snack behemoth Mondelēz Global, is beefing with a copycat candy. For me, it already feels like justice. Just as Crocs went after Five Below over their obvious dupe of Crocs’ intellectual podiatric property, so too is Mondelēz challenging Joyride over their Sour Smacks dupe, in a lawsuit filed on Monday. The bitter tang of Mondelēz’s language in the filing is especially delicious:
Mondelēz Global, which also owns snack brands like Oreo and Ritz, described Texas-based Joyride as “a well-funded, private equity-backed candy company who wasn’t making friends on its own. So it stole SOUR PATCH KIDS’ popular look, and dared Mondelēz to do something about it.”
In April 2025, Joyride released “Sour Smacks,” brightly colored chewy candies in the shape of grinning people inside yellow-and-green packaging.
Mondelēz said in its complaint that the candy’s design and package is a copy of its iconic kid-shaped gummies and yellow-and-green packaging. It also said Joyride announced a social media campaign in January 2025 to “usurp and surpass” Sour Patch Kids’ popularity by drawing more online followers.
Joyride Chief Creative Officer and co-owner Ryan Trahan posted on Instagram that he planned to make the company the most followed candy brand on the platform — a title the official Sour Patch Kids’ Instagram account held, the suit said. Trahan, 28, is also a YouTube personality with more 24 million subscribers.
“Joyride’s strategy to associate itself with SOUR PATCH KIDS was successful: according to Joyride, its posts ‘went viral,’ supposedly gained Joyride ‘over 300,000 followers,’ and induced other major retail brands to comment on Joyride’s posts,” according to the lawsuit.
Mondelēz and Joyride didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Founded in 2008 as Project 7, the company rebranded in 2022 to Joyride and hired Trahan. Its products are sold at retailers like Target and Walmart, as well as online.
Joyride’s sour gummy candy and Sour Patch Kids are often sold at the same retailers and on the same shelf, the lawsuit said.
The company also disclosed in a May 2025 securities filing that it raised $30 million in private equity funding, valuing Joyride at about $100 million.
Mondelēz said Joyride was able to raise funds because the brand increasingly associated itself with Sour Patch Kids. The complaint cited Joyride’s 2020 and 2022 sour candy packaging, which had different names, candy shape and packaging.
The food manufacturing giant is seeking permanent injunctive relief to stop the selling of Joyride’s “Sour Smacks” and monetary damages for financial losses.
Mondelēz described Joyride as “a well-funded, private equity-backed candy company who wasn’t making friends on its own. So it stole SOUR PATCH KIDS’ popular look, and dared Mondelēz to do something about it.” You guys, this was written in a lawsuit. I thought those things were supposed to be dry and bogged down by citations; this reads like the logline for a CW Network pilot! Does the latest Joyride Sour Smacks packaging look like Sour Patch Kids? Yes, it does. Do Sprite and 7Up look like they’re in obvious competition? Also yes! Why should Sour Patch Kids have a monopoly on neon-hued kid-shaped gummies? Sounds like what Mondelēz is *actually* sour about is not being good enough to keep their customers! To be clear: I do not object (courtroom pun!) to this litigation. Not for Mondelēz’s sake, though, but for my own entertainment. I look forward to sitting back with a bag of KitKats and watching how this consequential candy case shakes out.
I understand the point of copyright, that you have to defend it to keep it, but I don’t see why they should go after Joyride as opposed to any one of the other dupes floating around out there. At any rate, it’ll be an interesting challenge for Joyride and Target, that’s a youtuber brand of candy.