From Liquid Death to Sour Stamina: Science Inc. Launches Final Boss Sour

CPG investment and brand development firm Science Inc. – the initial investor behind runaway beverage hit Liquid Death – is asking consumers to pucker up for its latest in-house product: a new brand of gaming-themed snacks called Final Boss Sour.

Launched online today, Final Boss Sour produces a line of dried cranberry snacks available in three “levels” of sourness. The packaging and imagery that looks to invoke the feel of old school, 16-bit console video games.

Developed by Science managing director James Hicks, Final Boss aims to provide a healthier alternative to sour gummy candies by using real fruit with no added sugars, though the snacks still contain about 22 grams of natural fruit sugars per single-serve 30 gram bag. While Final Boss currently only offers cranberries, Hicks told NOSH that the brand will look at adding additional SKUs with different fruits in the future.

The brand is available online direct-to-consumer for $19.99 per 12-pack and intends to launch on Amazon next month. Shoppers can purchase multipacks that contain bags of all three SKUs, or multipacks with bags of just level 1, 2 or 3 cranberries. While a retail launch is the goal, Hicks said it’s too soon to say when a brick-and-mortar rollout might come.

The idea to create a gamified candy brand, Hicks said, came from the popularity of extreme spicy foods, such as Paqui’s One Chip Challenge, PepsiCo’s various Flamin’ Hot products and the YouTube series-turned-hot sauce brand Hot Ones.

“At the end of the day, a lot of these sour candies, whether they’re little [gummy] bears or straws or tape, they all kind of taste the same and they’re all kind of bringing the same level of sourness,” Hicks said. “I thought that there were ways to adapt it and touch on different aspects of sourness.”

Of around 100 taste testers, Hicks said fewer than 50 could finish an entire bag of the most sour level, while the lower-level products are more readily consumable day-to-day and intended to help drive trial.

“We found that with three products that hit different segments across the sour spectrum, half the people will stop at Level One and love it, while others will hit Level Three and even ask for more.”

Through its studio, Science has helped develop over 40 brands to date, including work on Liquid Death, Kyoku, Biiite, and Off Limits.

Science isn’t the only group looking to disrupt the sour candy set with a gaming-adjacent product: Earlier this year, YouTuber Brian “FaZe Rug” Awadis launched 1UP Candy, an “experiential” candy brand that debuted online with its Sour Gummy Challenge, a $17 set of six sour gummy candies; consumers are encouraged to record themselves sucking on the candies for 30 seconds without making a face. Like Final Boss, 1UP Candy also takes at least some of its branding influence from video games (hence the name), albeit not to the same degree that Final Boss has.

Gen Z consumers in particular have embraced sour candies as a go-to snack food. A Morning Consult survey last year found that 45% of Gen Zers had a positive opinion of sour gummy worm brand Trolli, compared to 24% of all U.S. adults, ranking it among the generation’s most favored brands.

For the gaming imagery, Hicks said he took inspiration from “retro and original Nintendo-style running-man games” and developed a simple story for the brand: an evil villain has taken over the realm and has made everything sour, leaving the hero (the consumer) to defeat them by “traveling to different areas” and eating fruits at different levels of sourness to build “sour stamina.”

Hicks also would refer to his six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter for additional consultation – as well as the rest of the in-house brand development team at Science, of course.

“The lens that I created the brand and the humor with is ‘would this have made 14-year-old me crack up and laugh?’ And if it does, we’ll include it,” he said.