You've been fooled by Skittles

When a British distributor for Mars Inc. first shipped Skittles in 1974, the candies were destined for a great slogan. Twenty years later, representatives spoke with New York advertising agency D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles. And “Taste the Rainbow” was born. It’s among the most memorable catchphrases in marketing history.

But is it true? Can you really taste different flavors, or are all Skittles the same flavor?

To test it, I gathered five people for ten rounds of tasting.

Results

Since there are 5 different flavors, my thought was that pure guessing would result in an accuracy rate of only 20%. But out of 50 total taste tests across all rounds, the group guessed correctly 32 times, resulting in a collective 64% accuracy rate. Statistically, achieving a 64% accuracy rate by chance is virtually impossible. This means the participants could genuinely taste the differences, and Skittles do have different flavors!

Thoughts and facts

1. Why do people think all Skittles taste the same? If you eat Skittles one by one (like I do), you usually know which color you’re eating. But the color can trick you. This is called expectation bias; since childhood we’ve been conditioned to correlate certain colors with certain fruits. Lemon is yellow, grape is purple, and lime is green. Along with a flavor key on the package, these two create such a strong cognitive expectation that when you taste the candy, your brain can “create” the flavor it’s expecting. The brain is pretty strong, mind you.
2. I’m pretty glad that there are different flavors; my life would be a lie if not.
3. Not all Skittles are created equal when blindfolded: orange was the easiest to guess, at 83% accuracy. Grape was 75% accuracy, strawberry was 61% accuracy, lime was 55% accuracy, and lemon was deemed hardest to guess at 50% accuracy.
4. The tests I did matched other tests almost identically.
5. When participants made mistakes, they tended to confuse flavors with similar profiles: 
6. Lemon was mistaken for orange 3 times, and lime was mistaken for lemon 3 times.
7. Grape was mistaken for strawberry 3 times, and strawberry was mistaken for grape 2 times.

6. At the bottom I’ve enclosed the full spreadsheet if you’re interested. Also, below it is a flavor-by-flavor chart; it’s cool once you understand it.

Thanks to Blaise, Tim, Emily, and Clare for being a part of this test. And thank you for reading! Turns out you CAN Taste the Rainbow!

Blind Skittle's Taste Test - SPREADSHEET