In the run-up to any big summer blockbuster, there are usually any number of tie-in products hoping to take advantage of the cross-promotion possibilities.  With ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ right around the corner, M&M’s has introduced a new variety, Mint Crisp.

I picked up a pack to give them a try, not really knowing what to expect.  Upon opening, I was greeted by M&M’s that were colored with the three generic mint related colors of white, light green, and mint green.  I was also treated to a slight minty aroma. The candies themselves were about the same size as the standard crispy M&M’s, but their shells were less uniform in shape. In keeping with the tie-in to Indiana Jones theme, some of the M&M’s have an additional symbol printed on the side with the ‘m’. Upon biting one in half, I could see there was the standard candy shell, a layer of mint, chocolate, and the crispy rice center.

As for the most important characteristic of the new variety, taste..they tasted exactly like a crispy Andes mint would. Since Andes are the gold standard of drug-store chocolate-mint candies, this is not a bad thing at all. Would I have them again? Yes, absolutely.

Rating: 8/10

Skittles advertises that you should, “Taste the rainbow”. I always thought that rainbows were bright and colorful, but tonight I found out that they can be dark and monochromatic. They can also taste pretty good.

For whatever reason, I had a craving for chocolate tonight. I tried to fight it, but it was too strong, so at 10pm I found myself on my way to the corner newsstand to get a Hershey bar. What I found there was something surprising…a package of Chocolate Mix Skittles. Since I had a craving for chocolate, and since I like Skittles, I decided to give it a try.

It’s a normal sized pack and claims to have five flavors: S’mores, Vanilla, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, and Brownie Batter. First off, if it’s a Chocolate Mix pack…so what exactly is Vanilla doing in there? What does Vanilla have to do with Chocolate, other than being it’s arch nemesis? That aside, I found the taste of Brownie Batter and Chocolate Pudding to be quite good. Chocolate Caramel tasted just like the caramel square candies, but I couldn’t detect any chocolate in it. Vanilla tasted like a bland vanilla, not the sharp vanilla that I love. As for S’mores…I really can’t comment on it because I don’t know what real s’mores taste like, but it was nice nonetheless. Their consistency is that of a regular pack of Skittles, and the flavors are released almost immediately upon biting into them. They are not even close to the amazing taste experience that can be found in a pack of Jelly Belly’s, but in their defense, I don’t think they’re trying to compete with them.

Did they satisfy my chocolate craving? Nope, and that’s why I thoroughly enjoyed the Hershey bar. Would I buy them again? Possibly. The problem I have is that when I bite into a Skittle I expect to be greeted by a rainbow of fruit flavor, and these are quite different; and that’s most likely its true weakness.

Rating: 5.5/10

I love M&M’s. I’m partial to the plain Milk Chocolate variety, but I’ve been known to have a Peanut from time to time in order to remind myself why I don’t like them that much. Often, while eating a pack, I’ll wonder how they’re made and how the colors are distributed.

I once took a factory tour at Ben & Jerry’s and saw that they make ice cream by making one flavor per production run and then storing them to be shipped out later. While that kind of production makes sense for ice cream since there are many different flavors and each flavor has many different ingredients, it doesn’t make sense for M&M’s since, except for the color of the candy shell, they are all the same. I assume that all the different colors are made at the same time and they’re combined together along the way into the different size packages.

After wondering about it a little more, I checked out M&M’s web site. According to it, each package of Milk Chocolate M&M’s should contain 24% blue, 14% brown, 16% green, 20% orange, 13% red, and 14% yellow M&M’s. I checked the next few packages of M&M’s that I ate and found that their percentages were not even close to the stated distribution. In my mind, this sort of confirmed my thoughts about how they produce M&M’s: When they make M&M’s, in any production run, they produce the stated percentage of each color and then just fill the packs off a conveyor line or some other weight based method. This would mean that any single package could be way off from the stated percentage; but analyze the counts over a large number of packages, and they should converge towards the stated percentages.

That’s what I aim to do here.

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