Vitamin Friends - Vegan Multivitamin & Iron for Kids - Daily Nutritional Support Gummies w/Ferrous Fumarate B-Complex, Vitamin C, Zinc, Biotin - Body Function & Anemia - Strawberry Jam(60 Day Supply)

Iron supplements for kids are difficult to find. Well, iron supplements that taste good! We, as a family, do not eat gelatin and settled on Flintstones for a while, (because it was what we could find, and what we could afford) but they started adding gelatin to their vitamins... they just snuck it in there, suddenly, and we stopped buying that product immediately. We needed a replacement and wanted something affordable and much healthier -- no artificial coloring, no preservatives, no gelatin/animal products, etc. I did a lot of research and decided to try this brand. My son (11) loves these! I tried one and there is a teeny bit of an aftertaste, but very slight... a typical metallic penny taste that comes with iron, but, again, very slight. The actual gummy texture and taste is just like Sunkist fruit gems! Some parents have complained about the sugar the gummies are dusted with. We make this part of my son's morning routine... iron gummy then brush your teeth. It's that simple. Good brushing practice! :) As for the nutritional issues others have mentioned.... read the label completely. It clearly states that 1 gummy is the serving size and there is an age break down for ages 2-4 and 4-adult. If your child is 2-4 years old, one gummy will satisfy 71% of the daily recommendation, whereas 1 gummy taken by someone 4 to adulthood meets 28% of your daily needs. If your kid is 4 and they are on the smaller side, or if your kid is "big for his age" you would go by weight, just like if you were giving them cold medicine or Ibuprofen. Also, you need to pay attention to all of the other vitamins included in this gummy as well, especially if your child (or you) is taking an additional multivitamin. You don't want to go over the daily recommended values, especially on iron. Vitamins should be treated like medicine... too much is a bad thing. It is a supplement... not a replacement. Ideally, iron should be from food first. I know that some people/kids have issues with texture, color, etc. and parents cannot get them to eat certain things... so the supplement is really important. Vital even. But, before I doubled the dose (or more), to try to get it up to 100%, I would meet with a doctor or nutritionist to ensure you don't over do it, especially if the child is around 4-years-old and in a transitional weight/age. Another thing to remember... iron should be taken with something like oranges, but not with morning cereal (should not be taken with calcium, milk, yogurt, etc.). We space out the iron by two hours from calcium and/or his multivitamin to ensure everything gets absorbed properly.

I am so beyond THRILLED with this product!!!! Thank you so much!! My son, 11, has autism. With that diagnosis came so many others....sleep disorder, OCD, and an eating disorder to name a few. He will only eat about 15-20 items. I finally found a good gummy multivitamin for him that he will take but to my horror, it does not have iron!! His doctor has even been helping with my search for an iron supplement. I have bought several of the top reviewed items from several places for iron and even the highest reviewed was horrible!!! No way he was going to put it in his mouth. Texture of foods is an issue so gummies are all he will take right now. After so many purchased failures of supposedly wonderful iron supplements, and after spending so much on them, I had little hope left that this product would be different, but of course I had to try. The package arrived today, I nervously opened the bottle and tried one. OMG!! They taste incredible!! I do not mean tolerable, I mean they are good!!! My son loves them. The relief I feel can not be expressed!! Thank you again for making this and I will carry your label in my purse and share it with everyone I know or meet that is having the same trouble with iron for their child with autism or other eating disorders!! I can not praise this product high enough. Buy it without fear and with total confidence bevause you have found what you were looking for!!! UPDATE: Still a happy customer after 4+ years!!! Vitamin Friends is a fantastic company with a very special staff! Their website has several other vitamins and supplements.

I have been iron anemic most of my life. I have searched for various ways to take iron supplements, because no matter what I try to eat it never seems to be enough. My problem with tablets, even long release ones, is my body would never absorb enough, and I'd end up flushing most of it down the toilet... literally. I got hooked on gummy vitamins for the rest of my daily intake, and thought, hey, maybe there is a Gummy Iron! Well, there are two of them, and I've tried them both. I have to say I like this brand SOOO much better. I take one Iron tablet in the morning with breakfast, and this one midway through the day with lunch, and I see no sign of wasted Iron anywhere. I am able to go back to donating blood (special blood type), so I am VERY happy with this product. For those who can't handle tablets on their stomach, I greatly recommend this as a change to your iron intake. Update May 10, 2017 The new formula did not go over well, mainly due to the lack of coating making the gummies sticky and unpalatable. I took the time to write Vitamin Friends directly, and was happily informed by Pat from their customer service department that they had heard our cries and were switching back to the old formula. And on top of that, she offered to send me a bottle of the old formula to replace the bottle of new that I had received. The new bottle came today and it looks and smells JUST like it used to, so I am happy once again. Like so many others I have to take this because pills just tear up my stomach, but this is gentle enough that it satisfies my stomach and makes my Dr happy because my iron count is up. So be patient everyone, the Old Formula is on its way back. Or you could go directly to the vendors site and contact them.

My six year old with Aspergers, who also has serious sensory issues and as a result doesn't eat but a few things, doesn't get anything at all with iron in it in his diet. His pediatrician referred us to a dietician, who was especially concerned about lack of iron, and unfortunately the multivitamin selection is either the hard multivitamins such as Flintstone style or the various gummies. Here's the snag: The Flintstone style hard vitamins have the right amount of iron, whereas *NOT A SINGLE ONE* of the gummy multivitamins have iron in them. We haven't been able to determine why exactly this is, but it is starting to look as if there is something about iron which is inherently difficult or impossible to incorporate into the typical gummy candy. The gummy vitamins taste pretty much like a gummy bear, but with the vitamin stuff mixed in. The consistency is even that of a standard gummy bear. So why not just give him the Flintstone vitamins? He hates them. He has had to gag them down, every time. He does love the gummy vitamins, but then he really NEEDS the iron. So the solution would seem to be to find a stand-alone iron solution and give him the gummy vitamin with it. But he's not going to like an iron tablet, and you may as well just give him a Flintstone vitamin if you were going to do that. The iron liquids are a candidate, but they reportedly taste bad and I'd have to really bury it in a large drink, which might still have enough taste that he's going to notice. Not to mention that if the drink is large enough to mask it, trying to get him to take that much liquid at once might be a problem. Then we find *this* product... and he actually LIKES IT. It isn't QUITE the same as a gummy bear -- it's stickier, and harder to get out of the bottle. That makes me continue to suspect the original hypothesis that it's hard to make a gummy out of iron. Maybe this substance either is something different that will contain the iron or it's the same stuff but this is what happens to it when you put iron in it. Anyway, the stuff is quite sticky, and they had to put sugar or something on each one to try to keep them from sticking together quite so badly. They're also a bit mushier than regular gummies. My son says they do have a bit of an odd taste, not quite like regular gummies, but he says he likes them enough better than the Flintstone vitamins that he's very happy to take them so that he doesn't have to go back to those. I'm giving it a 4 rather than a 5 because of the excessive stickiness and I expect that as the bottle gets low it's going to get harder to get them out. The shipping cost was so high that in order to qualify for free shipping I had to order several bottles -- and I've take a huge risk because I'm hoping the shelf life isn't bad. I'm hoping by the time I open bottles 2 and 3 they aren't a big mass of goo....

We keep buying this vitamin because my kids love the taste and I like the ingredients. I’ve tried other brands but keep coming back to this one, because simply my kids like it.

Unfortunately, these vitamins are not palatable to my child 9 yo child with a huge sweet tooth. There are a few strikes against it (and to be fair, I have not been able to find a well-balanced vitamin supplement targeting Fe (iron) that checks all the boxes): 1. Unpalatable. It still has to be eaten to do any good! 2. An astounding amount of sugar in each one (3 grams, I think, per gummy). In spite of the sugar, still does not taste good to the child. 3. The texture and consistency is a little off-putting. It’s turned into a sticky, gooey mess in the jar, and I have to pry one out with a fork. I keep it in the fridge, and perhaps it would be less sticky at room temp? 4. Finally, and this is probably the key for me, it isn’t USP certified. I knew that before buying, but I was being unrealistically hopeful about it being so tasty, that I could overlook the lack of USP, and instead, accept the GMP seal. USP is critical for me since now a days, supplements are a big risk. No one knows if there are extra ingredients, lack of ingredients, toxins, heavy metals, etc. With a USP seal, the risk is mitigated. A verifiable 3rd party lab testing is okay, too. But there is no certificate with this line (again, to be far, it is not easy to find certifiable supplements since it is not required but law, and the FDA or USDA does not oversee quality). Back to searching for an iron supplement.

UPDATE: ALL THE OTHER PARENTS OUT THERE WHO HAD A PICKY EATER WHO LOVED THIS VITAMIN BEFORE THE FORMULA CHANGE! Back when I wrote the earlier review, I also emailed Vitamin Friends pleading for the old formula to come back. I received an email last week that they were returning to the old formula and offered to send me another bottle. It just arrived and IT IS LIGHT IN COLOR AND HAS THE SUGAR COATING AGAIN!! My texture sensitive sweet baby ate it up and said he was so happy to have "his vitamin" back again! According to Vitamin Friends they are returning to the "old formula" so hopefully if you bought a bottle and were oh so upset like we were they will send you a replacement too. We will be going back to autoship ASAP!! Thank you Vitamin Friends for listening to our feedback! I am so so bummed! We have ordered these iron vitamin gummies for 3 years and until now the rating was 5 stars all the way! My son is so texture sensitive (no autism just super super texture aware...big time gag reflex), and when we received our most recent order, to my HORROR the vitamin has changed. It is a totally different color, taste, and TEXTURE. HE HATES IT! I was so bummed. Please oh please Vitamin Friends go back to the old formula!

Taste good, especially considering there is iron. It took my kids a few days to get used to it because it is VERY chewy - think gummy bear, not fruit snack. If you have younger kids, I would be sure to supervise because it can be very sticky and I could see a potential choking hazard if they don't chew well.