How a viral TikTok video led to a year-long global shortage of Swedish candy

A global shortage of Swedish-made candy, all thanks to a viral TikTok video? Stranger things have happened.

But that's exactly what went down earlier this year, when TikTok influencer Marygrace Graves showed followers the sweets she'd scooped up from a weekly visit to BonBon, a Swedish candy shop in New York.

"This is a strawberry squid. This is the first time I've ever had these, they're delicious," Graves told her followers in the January video, as if letting them in on a secret.

Well, the secret got out — and other TikTok users starting making their own Swedish candy videos, resulting in millions of posts, a viral internet phenomenon and an ongoing global shortage of the nation's prized sweets.

Graves's viral haul from the original video included some candies were were foamy, and others that made her teeth feel like they were going to break, she said. Some were bizarrely shaped, including a rat gummy that she held by its tail; and many were uniquely flavoured, like a sour raspberry-lemon gummy that she approved of, and a grapefruit candy that she said made her feel nauseous.

All of them were imported from Sweden, a country known for manufacturing high-quality sweets.

What makes Swedish candies stand out is that they lean into unusual forms and flavours, and away from additives typically found in North American candy, according to Michelina Jassal, who owns Swedish candy shop Karameller in Vancouver.

"No GMOs, no corn syrup, typically [fewer] ingredients than your conventional candy that you're going to find at the grocery store," said Jassal of the Scandinavian sweets. "You don't quite have that sick-to-your-stomach [feeling] that you sometimes experience with conventional candy."

The shortage sent Canadian importers scrambling to find supply.

Jessica Borchiver, who runs online Swedish candy shop Sukker Baby from her home in Toronto, said an an increasingly impatient (and increasingly American) clientele urged her to restock on a particularly high-demand brand: Bubs Godis.

What had previously been a steady business for Borchiver skyrocketed overnight. But the run on Bubs "tipped everything over the edge," she said. "Everyone who was anyone wanted to get their hands on it."

Bubs Godis is one of Sweden's largest candy manufacturing companies. As demand spiked from its sudden virality, it was forced to stop taking on new international customers, an ongoing policy as of late December. The company was already running low on stock by the summer months, when Sweden began its yearly six-week factory holiday.

Any company would be glad to see a sudden surge in international interest. But the makers of Bubs decided to take care of their own people first.

"We have had long relationships with our customers in Sweden and the rest of the Nordics," said Niclas Arnelin, director of international expansion at Orkla, the Swedish food and snacks corporation that owns Bubs. "And we need to prioritize them currently."