Null-tella.

I'm not planning to turn this page into a regular candy review, but my curiosity keeps getting the better of me. And I pay for my sins.

Hazelnut Spread is the latest variety in a long series of oddly flavored M&M's. I've reviewed some on this site. Some are quite successful; others less so. The hazelnut spread flavor, clearly a move to catch on to the popularity of Nutella, was out in force at the store. The company's marketing shows it to be so delicious that the other M&M's characters actually eat the M&M like cannibals, leaving nothing but his hands and feet. It's a horror show, like those Krave or Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials.

But so what -- I enjoy Nutella, so I caved in and tried it.

These are the worst.

First of all, let's look at the package design. That M&M-insignia jar of hazelnut spread looks less like a chocolate jar and more like... 💩. I'm sure it's not just me. It's a harbinger.

Second, the taste is just bad. Nutella is overly sweet with lots of chocolate and barely any nut flavor; as one comedienne (can't remember who) said, it's nothing but toast frosting. Like that's a problem. This stuff doesn't taste like that.

Many years ago, children, before Keurigs and Flavias and their knockoffs were everywhere, a small office might have a cheap coffeemaker or two that people could use. The company might buy the supplies, or there might be a fund into which coffee drinkers would contribute. Frequently these would run into a kind of tragedy of the commons -- no one would want to clean the pot or make the coffee; the person stuck buying supplies would get a resentment; people would neglect the fund and take coffee anyway; the tea drinker would complain about inadequate tea; some idiot would drink milk out of the carton; no one would think to turn the thing off; some jerk would leave it on with a milliliter of coffee in the carafe (to avoid having to clean the pot by claiming there was some coffee still in it); some fool would make flavored coffee without asking, like the extremely strong hazelnut; and so on. Sometimes, in a grand coalescence of foolishness, someone would make hazelnut coffee, a tiny bit would be left in the carafe, and no one would turn the pot off, resulting in a burned, blackened ring of stale hazelnut slag in the bottom of the pot, a possible visit from the fire department, and the smell of burned hazelnut coffee permeating the office for days.

THAT is what these M&M's taste like.

Now I think those M&M's in the commercial ate the hazelnut guy to try to stop the madness. Unfortunately the product made it to shelves anyway. You have been warned.

I told you I pay for my sins, and now I saved you some empty calories. Win-win!