The newest product offering from the imaginative minds at Sacramento-based Alien Labs and Connected, meet the Alien Labs Galactic Gummies. These little hash gummy bites in the subtle shape of an alien’s head pack a punch, thanks to flavors like Cotton Cluster (due to regulations, the brand can’t say cotton candy), Blue Raspberry Coconut, Cherry Vanilla, and Orange. The Galactic Gummies have crunchy, colorful clumps of sugar on the back, called Flavor Asteroids, which gift a textural contrast to the consumer.
Ted Lidie, the founder of Alien Labs, told me on the floor at Hall of Flowers in Palm Springs that nostalgia mixed with the desire to create a really delicious candy. “These taste like straight candy you can buy at the store,” says Lidie. “All these flavors were really inspired by something out of my childhood.”
New Galactic Gummy flavors are dropping soon, including Coconut Lime, an invention from Chef Anthony, who Lidie calls the “Willy Wonka of cannabis edibles.”
The vegan gummies use all-natural colors, all-natural flavors, and pure cane sugar. “To me, a lot of edible companies are aiming for a certain demo, we just wanted to make candy for people that like to get high or medical users who truly use this as a medicine. We also see these as an entry point into the Alien Labs universe, they’re at a great price, and for a solventless gummy they are very approachable.”
“At the time of idea conception, there was really only one solventless gummy on the market,” says Lidie.
Lidie says their team spent about a year alchemizing the ideal flavor profile. “After a ton of R&D with flavors, we settled on hash instead of rosin as I felt the rosin left a little oily aftertaste that I wasn’t in love with. After we settled on the form factor, biomass and flavors, we took a look at the price points of the solventless gummies that were on the market, and what that showed was that the market was overpriced and most people that use edibles were kinda stuck eating distillate based gummies for the price point,” says Lidie. “We came out low at 16.00 MSRP, to shoot for an affordable, full-spectrum edible option.”
Taste is very important to consumers, Lidie says, as new consumers don’t really want an overabundance of weed flavor when they start using a product. “We really tuned in this flavor to make sure that it wasn’t too cannabis flavored, but it was enough to get that excitement of ‘oh here it comes’ when you took a bite. I felt the hash gave not only a better flavor, but a more complex high,” says Lidie.
Lidie says the Alien Labs team is shooting to get the gummies into all 350 of the stores their brand currently sells in. “We’re also very cognizant of consumer feedback and want to make sure that we’re rolling out a product people actually like,” says Lidie. “Our Budtenders and Consumers have great trust in us, so when we release a product it needs to be great so that we can continue to keep and earn their trust.”
Alien Labs will be bringing the hash gummies to Arizona, a market the brand is already in, as well as Florida, where the brand plans its first drop in October of 2022. The company is looking at several new marketplaces, says Lidie, “New York is our top priority. It has always been a huge contributor to California cannabis culture and we want to make sure they get the quality they deserve.”
