What Are Twizzlers?
Twizzlers are the twisted, chewy licorice-style candy made by The Hershey Company, best known for the red "strawberry" flavor sold in grocery store checkout lanes across the U.S. Unlike gummy candy or gelatin-based licorice ropes from other brands, classic Twizzlers get their chew from a wheat-flour-and-cornstarch base rather than animal gelatin — which already puts them in a different category than most soft candy on the shelf.
But "Twizzlers" isn't one product. It's a whole lineup: Twists, Nibs, Pull 'n' Peel, Bites, Filled Twists, and — the one that changes the answer — Twizzlers Gummies. If you've ever used the spvegan.com ingredient checker on a bag of Twizzlers and gotten a different result than a friend scanning a different bag, this is why: the format matters as much as the brand name.
Twizzlers Ingredients
The ingredient list varies slightly by flavor, but the core formula for classic Twizzlers Strawberry Twists (per Hershey's own labeling) is built around: corn syrup, enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), sugar, and cornstarch. Rounding out the "2% or less" list: palm oil, salt, artificial and natural flavor, citric acid, potassium sorbate (a preservative), mono- and diglycerides, artificial color (Red 40), and soy lecithin.
Black Licorice Twists swap in licorice extract and typically use Red 40 and Blue 1 for color balance rather than a plant-based licorice black. Nibs and Pull 'n' Peel use essentially the same corn syrup/wheat flour/sugar/cornstarch base, just in a different shape. Twizzlers Gummies are the outlier: they're built on the standard gummy-candy formula of corn syrup, sugar, and gelatin, plus citric acid, malic acid, and flavoring/coloring.
Nowhere in the classic Twists, Nibs, Bites, or Pull 'n' Peel formulas does Hershey list dairy, egg, honey, or gelatin. That's the headline. The asterisks are about sourcing, not obvious animal ingredients on the label.
Why Twizzlers Are Different From Most Chewy Candy
Most soft, chewy candy on U.S. shelves — gummy bears, gumdrops, marshmallow-based treats, jelly candies — relies on gelatin to set its shape and give it that stretchy bite. Gelatin is made by boiling collagen out of animal bones, hides, and connective tissue, usually from cattle or pigs, which is why it's one of the first ingredients vegans learn to watch for on a candy label. Twizzlers avoid that entirely for their core lineup by using a completely different manufacturing process: the dough is essentially an extruded wheat-flour-and-corn-syrup paste, cooked and shaped under pressure, closer in mechanism to a soft bread stick than to a gummy bear. That's a structural choice Hershey made decades ago for texture and cost reasons, not a vegan-marketing move, but it happens to be the reason classic Twizzlers land on the "safe" side of the ingredient list more consistently than most of the candy aisle around them.
Are Twizzlers Vegan?
Classic Twizzlers (Twists, Nibs, Pull 'n' Peel, Bites, Rainbow Twists, Filled Twists) are vegan by ingredient list — no gelatin, dairy, egg, or honey appear anywhere in the formula. Twizzlers Gummies are not vegan, because they contain gelatin, a protein rendered from animal bone, skin, and connective tissue.
That's the short version, and for most plant-based eaters who define "vegan" as "no animal ingredients on the label," classic Twizzlers pass. But there are two gray areas worth knowing about before you toss a bag in your cart, because they're the kind of thing that trips up ethically-strict vegans even when the ingredient panel looks clean:
- Refined sugar and bone char: Cane sugar in the U.S. is sometimes filtered through activated bone char (from cattle bones) during refining. The finished sugar contains no detectable bone char, and the FDA doesn't require it to be disclosed as an ingredient, but the process itself involves an animal product. Hershey sources sugar from numerous suppliers and, like most large candy manufacturers, does not publicly confirm whether bone char is used at any given plant. Beet sugar, which is never bone-char filtered, is also common in the supply — but there's no way to know which sugar source is in a specific bag from the label alone.
- Palm oil: Twizzlers list palm oil in the "2% or less" ingredients. Palm oil itself is plant-derived and technically vegan, but it's controversial among ethically-minded vegans because of the deforestation and orangutan/wildlife habitat loss tied to non-sustainable palm oil production. Hershey has publicly committed to sourcing certified sustainable palm oil, though that doesn't fully resolve the concern for everyone.
Neither of these is an "animal ingredient in the product" in the way gelatin is. Most vegan advocacy groups and ingredient databases still classify classic Twizzlers as vegan on a dietary basis. If you're strict about supply-chain purity down to sugar refining, you'll want to treat that piece as unresolved rather than a hard no.
Twizzlers Product Lineup: Vegan Status by Type
| Product | Base / Texture | Contains Gelatin? | Vegan (dietary)? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twizzlers Strawberry Twists | Wheat flour / cornstarch chew | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Black Licorice Twists | Wheat flour / cornstarch chew | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Nibs | Wheat flour / cornstarch chew | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Pull 'n' Peel | Wheat flour / cornstarch chew | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Bites | Wheat flour / cornstarch chew | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Rainbow Twists | Wheat flour / cornstarch chew | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Filled Twists | Wheat flour chew + fruit-flavored filling | No | Yes (check specific filling flavor) |
| Twizzlers Sugar-Free Strawberry | Wheat flour chew, maltitol/sorbitol sweetened | No | Yes |
| Twizzlers Gummies | Standard gummy candy (corn syrup, gelatin) | Yes | No |
The pattern is simple to remember: if it's shaped like a rope, nib, or twist, it's almost certainly gelatin-free. If it's shaped like a gummy bear or gummy worm and sold under the Twizzlers name, assume gelatin until the label says otherwise.
Taste and Texture
Twizzlers occupy a specific lane in the candy aisle: they're softer and more pliable than a Red Vine, chewier and less brittle than a Sour Patch Kid, and noticeably less "gummy-dense" than a gelatin-based licorice rope like a Panda black licorice. The strawberry flavor leans artificial-fruit rather than true strawberry, which is either exactly what you want from a nostalgic movie-theater candy or a letdown if you're expecting something more natural. The wheat-flour base means the texture is more bread-like at the center and slightly waxy on the outside from the palm oil coating — that's part of what keeps the ropes from sticking together in the bag.
Black Licorice Twists have a more assertive, actual-licorice-extract flavor that reads as more "adult" than the strawberry version. Nibs and Bites are functionally the same recipe in bite-sized form, useful for portion control or sharing. Pull 'n' Peel is a novelty format — strands you peel apart — that doesn't change the flavor, just the eating experience.
One trade-off worth naming: because classic Twizzlers lean on corn syrup and enriched wheat flour rather than fruit puree or real fruit juice concentrate, the flavor profile reads as more "candy" than "fruit" compared to some newer plant-based gummy brands that use fruit and vegetable juice for color and flavor. If you're coming from a whole-food or less-processed mindset, Twizzlers won't scratch that itch — they're a mainstream, mass-market candy that happens to be gelatin-free, not a "clean label" health snack.
Twizzlers vs. Other Licorice-Style Candy
| Candy | Base | Vegan? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twizzlers (classic Twists/Nibs) | Wheat flour chew | Yes | Most widely available; sugar sourcing unconfirmed |
| Red Vines | Wheat flour chew | Yes | Similar formula to Twizzlers, also gelatin-free |
| Panda Licorice (black) | Gelatin-free wheat/molasses base | Yes | Widely cited as vegan; imported European-style licorice |
| Haribo Twin Snakes / gummy licorice | Gelatin gummy | No | Contains gelatin like most Haribo products |
| Twizzlers Gummies | Gelatin gummy | No | Exception within the Twizzlers lineup itself |
How to Check a Bag Yourself
Because Hershey rotates seasonal and limited-edition Twizzlers flavors (holiday shapes, movie tie-ins, filled varieties), the safest habit is to check the actual ingredient panel every time rather than assuming a new flavor follows the classic formula. Specifically:
- Scan for "gelatin" in the ingredient list — it will always be spelled out, never hidden under a code number.
- If the product is described anywhere as "gummy," "gummi," or has a bear/worm/snake shape, treat it as gelatin-containing until proven otherwise.
- "Natural and artificial flavor" on Twizzlers is a flavoring blend, not a code for animal-derived flavoring in this specific product — Hershey's classic Twizzlers formula has not listed animal-derived flavor carriers.
- When in doubt, cross-check the exact flavor and format against the spvegan.com ingredient checker before buying, especially for limited-run or holiday packaging.
Who Should (and Shouldn't) Buy Twizzlers
Classic Twizzlers are a reasonable pick if you're a dietary vegan who wants an easy-to-find, gas-station-and-grocery-aisle candy that doesn't require label archaeology every time, and if you're not bothered by the unresolved sugar-refining and palm-oil questions that apply to a huge share of processed candy generally, not just this brand. They're also useful for anyone managing a household with both vegan and non-vegan eaters, since the classic lineup doesn't require separate shopping.
They're not a good pick if you're an ethically strict vegan who avoids any product with unconfirmed bone-char sugar or non-explicitly-certified palm oil, or if you're specifically craving a gummy-textured candy — reach for a certified gelatin-free gummy brand instead, and steer clear of the Twizzlers Gummies line specifically.
Final Verdict
Twizzlers' classic Twists, Nibs, Pull 'n' Peel, and Bites are vegan by ingredient list — no gelatin, dairy, egg, or honey — making them one of the more reliably plant-based options in the mainstream candy aisle. The catch is the Twizzlers Gummies line, which breaks from the rest of the family by using standard gelatin-based gummy candy, and the ever-present, brand-wide uncertainty around bone-char sugar refining and palm oil sourcing that applies to most processed candy in the U.S., not just this one.
For dietary vegans who just want to avoid obvious animal ingredients, classic Twizzlers are a solid, low-effort yes. For strict ethical vegans, they land in "probably fine, can't be 100% certain" territory — same as the vast majority of supermarket candy.
Rating: 7.5/10 — vegan-friendly by ingredient list, held back a point for the unresolved sugar/palm-oil sourcing questions and for the gummy line being an easy mix-up.
