Watermelon is summer. Or at least it’s one of the season’s brightest, juiciest, most delicious symbols.

Never mind that it’s available all year long these days. In summertime, watermelon really comes into its own. Its flesh always seems cool, even if it hasn’t been refrigerated, and its juices dripping down your chin and fingers when you bite into it are sheer summer sensuality. Even the seeds are summery: Spitting them as far as you can is a classic campfire game (though they’re actually edible, and are said to be full of nutrients — and, no, if you swallow them, a watermelon won’t grow in your stomach). Oh, and another plus: Watermelon is, not surprisingly, full of water, so is an excellent way to help you stay hydrated.

Let’s face it: A summer without watermelon is like, well, a summer without pool parties and trips to the beach and backyard barbecues. No summer at all, in other words.

Known botanically as Citrullus lanatus, watermelon is not a true melon but actually a gourd related to pumpkins, squashes, and cucumbers. The typical traditional watermelon is red-fleshed with black seeds and in the shape correctly called a prolate spheroid — though most folks call it oval. There are also yellow-fleshed watermelons, though, and some are bred these days without seeds or nearly so. Some are also rounder than others — and the Japanese have taken to breeding novelty examples that are actually cubes.

The fruit’s ancestral home is Africa, though scientists can’t agree on exactly which part of the continent it came from. The ancient Egyptians cultivated it as much as 4,000 years ago. By 500 A.D., it had spread around the Mediterranean. Watermelon came to the Americas with the slave trade — contributing to the origin of the fruit’s identity as a racist trope — and was first grown on this side of the Atlantic in Florida in the 16th century.

In his 1894-vintage novel “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson,” Mark Twain said of watermelon, “It is the chief of this world’s luxuries … When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat.”

Watermelon’s flavor is indeed remarkable — sweet, simultaneously intense and subtle, and very faintly sour. It is also a flavor that is immediately identifiable, and not quite like anything else. That — along, no doubt, with the fruit’s identification with carefree summers — is probably why food and beverage companies (among other enterprises) so often choose to imbue their products with its savor.

Sometimes, these products are fun. Other times, they are just plain silly. Two things you can be sure of when it comes to most watermelon-flavored products: Only rarely are they flavored with real watermelon; and the genuine article will almost certainly be better.

Click here to see toothpaste, rum, Oreos, and 17 other things flavored with watermelon

Captain Morgan Watermelon Smash

Described on the label as “an explosive watermelon shot,” this comparatively low-proof flavored rum (it’s 25% alcohol by volume) is packaged in a thick-necked spherical bottle that’s mottled like a cracked watermelon skin but otherwise doesn’t look much like fruit. The packaging is, however, watermelon-scented.

[in-text-ad]

Colgate Kids 2in1 Watermelon Burst Toothpaste

“Comes in a bright and colorful package that your kids will like,” boasts Colgate, promising “tasty Watermelon flavors.” (Does watermelon have more than one flavor?)

Four Loko Watermelon

Four Loko’s parent company reached an agreement in 2014 with 20 state attorneys general and the city of San Francisco to stop selling its caffeinated alcoholic malt beverages. The energy drink had already been banned in some places, and the Food and Drug Administration had warned that its formula was potentially unsafe. The product line, now reformulated without caffeine and two other criticized ingredients, taurine and guarana, is no longer banned. The stuff still has alcohol, though. The ingredient label on Four Loko Watermelon reports that it contains 12% alcohol by volume, and is a “Premium malt beverage with artificial flavor and certified color.”

Friendly’s Wattamelon Roll

This big rounded slab of frozen dessert looks more or less like a smallish watermelon sliced in half lengthwise, with its ends cut off. The interior is made of bright red watermelon sorbet with a lemon sorbet “rind” colored green on the outside for the skin. There’s actual watermelon juice concentrate involved, listed in the ingredients right after the milk, water, sugar, corn syrup, and cream, though beet juice is added for color.

[in-text-ad-2]

Halls Defense Watermelon

This is one of the flavors in Halls’ vitamin-C-laced “dietary supplement drops” line, despite the fact that people tend to associate products like this, rightly or wrongly, more with winter than with watermelony summer. Consumer reviews are overwhelmingly positive for these artificially flavored little sweets.

Juicy Jay’s Watermelon Rolling Papers

Talk about a warning label: This one reads “NOT for use with or sold for use with Tobacco. ONLY for use with legal smoking herbs.” Mint, presumably, which goes well with watermelon. The papers are made with hemp, using plant-based glue, and imprinted with soy ink with a seeded watermelon pattern.

[in-text-ad]

Marie Brizard Watermelon Shot

The venerable French liqueur house of Marie Brizard, founded in 1755, gets into the watermelon game with this 17% alcohol-by-volume cordial. The ingredients aren’t revealed, but when Wine Enthusiast reviewed it, they found “a juicy scent somewhere between cantaloupe and watermelon,” with a “light but ersatz flavor” and “a trace of berry sweetness” in the finish.

Mentholatum Softlips Watermelon Lip Moisturizer

The Kansas-born, Japanese-owned Mentholatum Company’s Softlips products are described by the company as “ultra-hydrating,” so it was probably a natural move to formulate a lip moisturizer scented with an evocation of one of the most hydrating of fruits. It isn’t clear whether the product’s watermelon characteristics are artificial or not, as its ingredient label lists simply “flavor” among the inactive ingredients.

Monin Watermelon Premium Gourmet Syrup

Founded in France by Georges Monin in 1912, Monin produces a wide range of syrups, beverage concentrates, sauces, and cocktail mixes, among other products. The syrups are often seen at coffee bars, where they may go into various teas and coffee drinks, though whether watermelon chai is a good idea or not is uncertain. After cane sugar and water, the main ingredients here are “natural and artificial watermelon flavor.”

[in-text-ad-2]

Smirnoff Watermelon Vodka

People have long been infusing watermelon’s porous flesh with spirits — frequently vodka. Smirnoff, the world’s best-selling vodka brand (its sales are more than twice those of its second-place competitor, Absolut), has reversed the process, infusing vodka with watermelon. Or at least, as the label says, with “natural flavors.”

Sour Watermelon Peeps

The colored-sugar chick-shaped marshmallow confections called Peeps appear periodically in unusual flavors. When these little green-hued examples, made with natural and artificial flavors, appeared back in 2014, snack reviewer Mike Fahey went wild for them on Kotaku. Praising their “bold, sweet watermelon taste,” he called them “the best Peeps I have ever tasted.”

[in-text-ad]

Sun-Maid Sour Watermelon Golden Raisins

The centenarian Sun-Maid company is the world’s largest producer of raisins and other, as they say, “premium quality dried fruits.” At some point, the company must have decided that its plain golden raisins needed some jazzing up, so it added sour watermelon flavoring — presumably natural, since their promotional material claims “no artificial flavors or colors!” No sugar is involved, either, though the raisins are treated with sulfur dioxide, as dried fruit has commonly been for centuries.

Taco Bell Watermelon Freeze

The faux-Mexican fast-food chain’s slushie-like Watermelon Freeze starts with carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, water, and citric acid, and then gets to natural and artificial (presumably watermelon) flavor. The black ovoid specks in the drink are candy seeds. These, warns Taco Bell, can be a choking hazard, so the Freeze is recommended only for ages 4 and up.

21st Amendment Brewery Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beer

Available annually from April through September, this wheat beer — made with a blend of malted wheat and malted barley — is actually flavored with fresh watermelon purée. The brewery recommends pairing it with “a watermelon wedge and a seat behind home plate.”

[in-text-ad-2]

Watermelon Flavor Perrier

A zero-calorie flavored water, this version of Perrier is nothing but H2O with natural watermelon flavor. Customer reviews are mixed, from “icky” and “not so much a fan” to “by far my fave [Perrier flavor]” and “absolutely delicious and very pleasing.”

Watermelon Jolly Ranchers

These individually wrapped hard candies are naturally and artificially flavored. Like all the brand’s hard candies, these list corn syrup and sugar as their two primary ingredients. Fun fact: Last summer, Houston rapper Gorgeous George The Pimp God released a song called “WaterMellon JollyRancher [sic],” the lyrics of which will not appear here.

[in-text-ad]

Watermelon Oreos

Released in 2013 as a limited edition offering, these cookies — with a filling that was half red and half green between two vanilla wafers — were considered one of the major product flops of the year, and are no longer available. MIT marketing professor Duncan Simester and coauthors of a marketing research study, “Harbingers of Failure,” used people buying Watermelon Oreos as examples of those who habitually buy doomed products.

Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Fruity Chews Watermelon Flavor Gum

The ingredient label on this sugar-free gum, packaged in can-like “car cups,” lists natural and artificial flavors in the “less than 2%” category. Consumers have commented on how sweet it is.

WTRMLN WTR

This isn’t exactly a watermelon-flavored product but pure “cold pressured juiced watermelon,” made from blemished fruit that might otherwise be thrown away. Besides the original, the WTR is available in flavored with cherry, ginger, lemon, orange, mint, cayenne, and cucumber. Beyoncé is an investor in the company, because, she told Fortune, “it’s the future of clean, natural hydration.”

[in-text-ad-2]

Yum Yum’s Watermelon Popcorn

One of a number of watermelon-flavored popcorns on the market, this snack, a vaguely unsettling Day-Glo pink in color, is coated with a “watermelon mix” and cooked at a very high temperature. In the process, the Mississippi-based Yum Yum’s assures us, it becomes “very flavorful and sweet.”

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.