Original

What is it?

The shell is what makes a Skittle a Skittle. Chews are tumbled in a rotating drum while sugar syrup is added in layers and dried, a process called panning, and it's the same technique used for everything from chocolate beans to medical tablets. That shell does three jobs at once. It holds the colour, it stops the chews sticking to each other in the bag, and it cracks before the chew starts, which is the two-stage texture the whole product is built on. Colour is doing more work than flavour, which is the quiet truth about most sorted sweets. The differences between them are real but narrow, and the sorting is a large part of the appeal.