Gummy supplements are supposed to be the “easy win” format: pleasant to take, simple to use, and widely appealing. Yet gummies also generate some of the most persistent customer complaints-melted bottles, sticky pieces, white spots, texture changes, and flavor that seems “off.”
From a supplement manufacturing perspective, the most useful way to look at these issues is also the least talked about: most gummy complaints aren’t really about the gummy at all. They’re about the packaging-product system failing under real-world conditions.
Unlike tablets or capsules, gummies are a moisture- and temperature-responsive matrix. They don’t just sit on a shelf-they equilibrate over time, trading moisture, oxygen, and volatile flavor compounds with the headspace and the packaging. If you treat a gummy like a static product, complaints tend to show up later-often after shipping, storage, or a few weeks in a consumer’s home.
The overlooked root cause: gummies keep changing after they’re bottled
A gummy can pass in-house checks and still disappoint a customer weeks later. That’s not always because something went “wrong” in manufacturing; it’s often because the product was never validated as a full system: formula + process + packaging + distribution.
Over time, gummies can:
- Gain moisture in humid environments and become tacky
- Lose moisture in dry environments and turn firmer or chewier
- Soften under heat during transit and stick together
- Lose flavor intensity as aroma compounds move into headspace or get absorbed by packaging materials
- Develop surface haze or speckling as sugars or acids crystallize under the right conditions
Complaint patterns and what they usually mean in the plant
“They arrived melted” or “the gummies fused together”
This complaint almost always points to heat exposure plus a gummy that softens too easily-or becomes tackier as moisture shifts. Shipping lanes, summer warehouses, and last-mile delivery conditions can push product well beyond comfortable temperatures.
Common manufacturing contributors include:
- Softening behavior that isn’t stress-tested against real distribution heat
- Water activity drift that increases tackiness over time
- Oil-based flavors that can act as internal “plasticizers,” subtly reducing firmness
- Inadequate curing (the gummy meets weight specs, but the interior hasn’t fully stabilized)
The prevention mindset here is simple: don’t rely on room-temperature stability alone. Build in heat-stress testing that mirrors real-world shipping, and pair it with tighter controls on the parameters that actually predict stickiness and softening.
“They’re sticky” or “they feel wet”
Sticky gummies are often a humidity story. If the gummy is hygroscopic (many are), it will pull in moisture when conditions allow-and packaging with a poor moisture barrier makes that easier.
Typical drivers include:
- High humidity exposure during bottling (or long hold times before sealing)
- Packaging with a high WVTR (water vapor transmission rate) relative to what the gummy needs
- Desiccant mismatch (wrong capacity, wrong placement, or simply not the right approach for the product)
If you want fewer sticky complaints, focus on environmental control in the handling and packaging areas, and select packaging based on barrier performance-not on what’s “standard” or most common.
“There are white spots” (often mistaken as mold)
White spots and haze can be alarming to consumers, but many times this is crystallization-commonly sugar bloom or acid crystallization-rather than contamination. The underlying cause is frequently a moisture gradient created during drying/curing, then amplified by temperature swings in storage or transit.
What tends to help most:
- Engineering the drying curve (time, airflow, temperature) to avoid surface-overdrying
- Using straightforward investigation tools to confirm the defect mechanism
- Maintaining an internal visual defect library so teams can classify issues consistently
“This bottle tastes different than the last one”
Flavor drift is one of the most misunderstood complaint categories. It’s often not a flavor “miss” at all-it’s volatile loss, oxidation, or scalping (where packaging materials absorb aroma compounds and mute the profile).
Common contributors include:
- Volatilization into headspace followed by gradual loss over time
- Oxygen exposure that accelerates flavor changes
- Packaging compatibility issues between bottle/liner materials and the flavor system
- Insufficient sensory standards for lot-to-lot consistency
In practice, reducing these complaints often comes down to pairing a solid sensory program with packaging validation that measures flavor stability over time, not just at day one.
“They’re harder/chewier than before”
Texture changes are frequently tied to moisture loss over time (especially in dry climates) or continued setting of the gummy matrix. If a package allows moisture to escape, the consumer will feel it-sometimes dramatically.
What drives consistency here is less “taste testing” and more process discipline:
- Consistent cook endpoints (solids/Brix, temperature profile, vacuum parameters)
- Texture analysis trending so you catch drift before the consumer does
- Verifying seal integrity (torque alone doesn’t guarantee a protective seal)
“There’s liquid in the bottle” (sweating or separation)
Pooling liquid or an oily residue often points to syneresis or phase separation-water or oil migrating out of the gel matrix. This can show up when emulsification isn’t robust enough, hold times are too long, or the system is overloaded with liquid components.
Best practice controls include:
- Validating the emulsification step (shear, addition order, stabilizing system)
- Setting and enforcing hold-time limits between mixing and depositing
- Including handling/vibration in stability work to reflect real shipping conditions
A complaint-prevention framework that works in the real world
At KorNutra, the most reliable way to reduce gummy complaints is to stop treating them as random events and start treating them as measurable failure modes. The goal is to predict and prevent, not react and patch.
- Translate consumer language into technical signals
“Sticky” becomes water activity drift, barrier mismatch, or finishing/coating issues. “Melted” becomes a heat-stress threshold problem. “Taste changed” becomes headspace loss, oxidation, or packaging compatibility.
- Test like distribution is real
Constant-condition stability is helpful, but it’s not enough for gummies. Heat dwell, humidity cycling, and handling/vibration simulations catch failure modes that consumers actually experience.
- Control what predicts consumer experience
Moisture % matters, but water activity (aW) often predicts behavior better. Add texture trending, cook endpoint discipline, and seal integrity checks that go beyond “it feels tight.”
- Close the loop with smarter complaint intake
Lot code, photos, climate region, storage conditions, and whether the bottle was left open are the difference between guessing and solving. Collect the right inputs and investigations become faster, cleaner, and more accurate.
The bottom line
Gummy complaints are rarely mysterious when you view gummies as what they are: a responsive system that needs to be engineered for moisture, oxygen, heat, and time. When formula, process controls, packaging barrier choices, and distribution testing are aligned, consumer experience becomes far more consistent-and the complaint volume typically drops with it.
If you want a quick diagnostic lens, start here: when a complaint appears, ask whether it’s really a formula problem-or whether it’s the packaging-product system telling you it wasn’t designed for the environment the consumer lives in.