SweeTarts are hardly part of the mega-sour family tree. They are essentially compressed Pixy-Sticks, as the article you linked to said. They're tart, but being for was never part of the advertising, that I recall. That may have changed since '94.
...if you're specifically talking about modern malic-acid flavors, that technology wasn't developed until the mid-seventies in east asia and wasn't imported stateside until the early nineties, but it was an immediate hit and quickly swept through the domestic sour-candy market, with most brands offering 'extreme' variants of their existing products...
...i can't recall any time when sour candy wasn't a major product sector and a quick perusal of candy history essays shows it dating back nearly as long as manufactured candy has been a thing, with a history of sour preserved confections before that...
https://www.leaf.tv/articles/history-of-sweet-tarts/
SweeTarts are hardly part of the mega-sour family tree. They are essentially compressed Pixy-Sticks, as the article you linked to said. They're tart, but being for was never part of the advertising, that I recall. That may have changed since '94.
...if you're specifically talking about modern malic-acid flavors, that technology wasn't developed until the mid-seventies in east asia and wasn't imported stateside until the early nineties, but it was an immediate hit and quickly swept through the domestic sour-candy market, with most brands offering 'extreme' variants of their existing products...
...i can't recall any time when sour candy wasn't a major product sector and a quick perusal of candy history essays shows it dating back nearly as long as manufactured candy has been a thing, with a history of sour preserved confections before that...
Now THAT is an awesome answer to the question! I'm sure that's EXACTLY right!
Thank you kind person!