Choco Dotsties!

I don't want you to think I get all my Many Deep and Varied Thoughts from the New York Post. But it an interesting paper. Sometimes they have the best exposés, of course, and are willing to publish stories that the rest of the media would rather bury. Sometimes, though, they're just dumb. 

As we barrel down the chute to the various candy seasons of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the paper thought it was time to shock its readers with a bit of information that has always been readily available online and isn't all that interesting. Brace yourself: 

M&M’s fans discover meaning behind the chocolate’s name

And here's the bombshell:

The two ‘M’s in the name actually represent Forrest E. Mars Sr. – the founder of Mars – and Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey Chocolate’s president William F. R. Murrie.

Now, to be fair, this article was originally published in Australia by another Rupert Murdoch outlet. M&M's is the little candy that started in the United States and spread all over the world, and the story of how it was invented may be less familiar to our friends down under. 

In a nutshell, or in a candy shell as it were, per Wikipedia:

Forrest Mars Sr., son of the Mars Company founder, Frank C. Mars, copied the idea for the candy in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War when he saw soldiers eating British-made Smarties, chocolate pellets with a colored shell of what confectioners call hard panning (essentially hardened sugar syrup) surrounding the outside, preventing the sweets (candies) from melting. Mars received a patent for his own process on March 3, 1941. Production began in 1941 in a factory located at 285 Badger Avenue in Clinton Hill, Newark, New Jersey. When the company was founded it was M&M Limited. The two 'M's represent the names of Forrest E. Mars Sr., the founder of Newark Company, and Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey Chocolate's president William F. R. Murrie, who had a 20 percent share in the product.

I got to thinking about this story, about the famous names connected to candy, namely Hershey and Mars. Both became famous because the inventors put their names on their popular chocolate bars. You didn't ask the candy butcher for a slender American-style milk chocolate bar; you asked for a Hershey bar. Back then, companies were named after their founders, men who wanted fame for a successful venture, but also were proud to back their products for quality. If you put your name on something and it sucked, people knew whom to blame. Further, putting your name on a product helped protect it -- someone could steal the formula for the Mars bar, but they wouldn't steal the name of its inventor.

Interestingly, that doesn't happen with a lot of confections now. Now, for ease of soliciting a trademark and for consumer memorization, companies tend to name their products something weird that will indicate in a way what it is. For example, Smash Mallow, which I sampled here in 2018. You know it's going to be a mashup by the name, and that it's going to be marshmallow. And it's a phrase that didn't exist before, so that makes it easier to obtain trademark. If M&M's were invented now, they might be called Choco Dotsties!

The exception to this rule is snacks. Those carry the inventors' names. The Great Lileks mentioned these "boo-teek" snacks the other day on the Bleat, "Amanda's Kettle-Baked Chips or Monica's Pita Fragments, the ones that always have a story about someone who had an idea and a passion".

This seems to have started with Annie Withey, who founded Annie's Homegrown in 1989. Her products became quite popular -- so much so that General Mills bought the company for $820 million in 2014. Now everybody wants to come up with a snack idea that will get popular traction, get the attention of a food conglomerate, and cash out. 

I know I do. If I can just perfect my recipe for Frederick's Chocolate Lima Bean Snack Surprise, I can retire, I just know it! Watch for it in your local supermarket. 

Meanwhile, I wonder if the Mars company is ready for a big takeover. This photo also ran in the Post: 

Sure, Elon may have been talking about the planet Mars. Or maybe he's in the mood to snap up some chocolatey goodness....

Oh, fudge.

(Q; Why did the dumb guy get fired from the M&M's factory? Tell ya later.)

Every now and then it pays to peek into the candy aisle and see what the chocolate boffins have been up to. Here's the latest from the gang at Mars: 

Fudge Brownie flavored M&M's have landed: "These innovative treats have delightful notes of freshly baked brownies in a fudgy, chewy center, no baking necessary," says the company.

Now, to some people, this may be a curious development. Many people prefer the more cakey type of brownie. Martha Stewart was even called in to consult on this great controversy. Will this be the next big issue to divide our nation? Will Fudge Brownies Matters hold rallies? Will Cakey for America march through cities? Will Antifu (the Anti-Fudge terrorists) burn down buildings? Will the Brownshorts of the CLO (Cake Liberation Organization) shatter candy store windows on Chocolatnacht? In other words, do we have to fight over every damned thing that shoots down the pike?

Nah, probably not.

Here's the Fudge Brownie M&M's, au naturel:

Kind of lumpy, aren't they? And larger than most M&M's. So they're here, they're fudgey, they're not going shopping. Are they any good?

Yeah, sort of. They do taste like a fudge-type brownie. If you eat several at once, you can see that they even have a fudge-brownie consistency. So okay, I'll give it to Mars Wrigley on this; if a fudge brownie is what you crave, but you can't wait to break out the Betty Crocker mix, this is a good way to satisfy your hunger.

Now, before I leave this blog today, I want to use some chocolate to tell the Baked Goods Social Warriors to just cool it:

I was surprised to see some of these near the register at our local CVS. These of course are the famous Moritz Ice Cubes, delicious milk chocolate cubes from the Nappo & Moritz company in Germany. When I was a kid in the city, every candy store and indoor newsstand seemed to have a bucket of these on the counter, right near the bucket of Bazooka gum. The store had to have A/C, or these would melt all over the place in the summer. Despite the low melting point, the Ice Cube seemed to have something chill about it, as if it chemically cooled your mouth. Maybe it was the touch of hazelnut flavor; maybe it was the power of suggestion. Either way, approaching the counter with a quarter to buy gum could turn into an internal struggle, as the kid did math to figure how many of these he could get and still buy some Bazooka.

See? Not every idea out of Germany is bad!

(A: He kept throwing out all the W's.)

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!

Candy for Mom?

OMIGOD IT'S MOTHER'S DAY AND I FORGOT TO GET MOM SOMETHING!

Is that your problem today? Boy howdy, it's a bad one. Fortunately there is hope. All you need to do is pop into your local supermarket or gas station and get Mom some awesome chocolate.

No, not a Whitman's Sampler or those awful Cella's chocolate cherries! Skip the Dove and Godiva and Perugina and Ghirardelli! If Mom likes a good strong cup of coffee, and if she raised you she probably needed it, then she wants these:

Yes, it's another of the apparently endless series of M&M's variations, this one Crunchy Espresso. (Note to New Yorkers: It is not Expresso. There is no such thing.) Crunchy Espresso is one of the flavors in the current vote for new flavor, along with Crunchy Raspberry and Crunchy Mint. All of them have that riceyness that gives the Crispy M&M its crunchiness. Last time M&M's went to a vote, peanut-based Coffee Nut was elected to be a regular flavor, so I guess Crunchy Espresso might be considered the favorite here.

Going the crunchy route for the espresso flavor makes it sort of a junior-varsity chocolate-covered espresso bean. If you liked those but you hated the bits of coffee bean in your mouth, this could be the M&M for you.

Here's is a closeup of the three Crunchy Espresso M&M's:

They all taste the same -- like dark chocolate with a strong instant-espresso taste. You might think one tastes like a twist of lemon peel and the other a glass of sambuca, but this is not an Italian restaurant. I find them to successfully portray their flavor, but I'm not sure how much America will go in for that. When Starbucks sells espresso, after all, they usually have all kinds of other crap in the cup along with it. That's how we got "latte," which I think is European for "can barely tell it's coffee."

Definitely not the case here. These M&M's have a very strong taste, very bitter -- so very, very bitter. Bitter, bitter, bitter. Bitter like a mother who realizes her beloved child forgot to get her something nice again this Mother's Day and wound up getting cheap candy at the Quick Chek. That kind of bitter.

Maybe you'd better see if the jeweler is open.

Sugar bowl.

So today we memorialize our New Year's Resolutions with an entry all about stuff with sugar in it. Farewell, resolutions! Hello, sweet, sweet taste!

Our first item up is a Mentos flavor I've never seen before -- Caramels? With a chocolate center? 

Like many in the Nerd-American community, my first exposure to Mentos was the commercials that ran on heavy rotation during Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Annoying and yet very successful, the "Freshmaker" ads were parodied in an episode of MST3K itself, biting the hand that fed it.

I like Mentos well enough, but this caramel candy with the chocolate center hardly seems to fit in with the idea of "freshmaker," which would be a candy that might make one fresh. Then again, Mentos come in many flavors in other countries, and most of them aren't mint. So, what the hell, let's give them a try.

The candy is a bit odd, in that most chocolate caramels have the chocolate on the outside, but I'll try caramel in any form, as long as it isn't in the feast from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or something like that. And these Mentos are too good to belong there. They are very tasty, a nice caramel flavor and pleasant milk chocolate in the middle. I found them a little hard, but that often happens with Mentos if they've been hanging around for a while. Possibly they would have been soft if they'd been fresher. Hard Mentos need their own freshmaker to freshen them up.

In another case of stuffing chocolate into something else, M&M's has introduced a limited edition Double Chocolate candy. This actually is milk chocolate with a white chocolate center, covered in the usual M&M's candy coat.

I liked these quite a bit. White chocolate is awfully sweet, but here its sweetness is tempered by its combination with the milk chocolate. It might have been even better with dark chocolate. Me, I can handle the sweetness of white chocolate, because I have like a super power for that (kind of like Roger Mooking with hot food), but other, lesser folk can't handle the sweet. Even those unfortunates may like these M&M's.

Now that we've had dessert, on to breakfast! Today we're serving exploding cereal!

General Mills' new Blasted Shreds, which are available in Peanut Butter Chocolate and what I got, the Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor. General Mills wants us very much to know two things about this product:

1) Its #1 ingredient is whole grain;

2) It's got a lot of flavor. As they say on the site:

MORE WHOA THAN WHEAT!

I opened the box and didn't think there was a lot of WHOA obviously apparent. The individual shredded wheat blocks are not half a foot high, as on the box; here's one in a tablespoon measure:

My first impression, eating one dry: They did seem to have a good deal of flavor, but I thought it was more like the Apple version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that I reviewed last year. For a pro review, I turned as always to the inimitable Mr. Breakfast and his Cereal Project. Mr. B was impressed by the density of the cereal: "I'd recommend filling your cereal bowl about 1/2 as full as you would with other cereals you eat.... Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds have a big cinnamon punch (just short of overwhelming). The flavor is more bold than in regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. This new cereal is just slightly too sweet."

Again with the too sweet! 

On the whole he liked them enough to award them 6 of 7 golden eggs, although he did prefer the Peanut Butter Chocolate variety.

As I post this, I am eating a bowl of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds, and I find that they do indeed pack a lot of cinnamon and a lot of wheat into those little squares. Most shredded wheat blocks have a lot of air in them, but not these bad boys.

Now I am just hoping that the Blasted part doesn't refer to what they do in your colon. I've got church later, and there's a lot old folks and small kids in our congregation and just two bathrooms. Wish me luck.

(Such an intestinal reaction would sum up my opinion of "Lance Armstrong" Brady and the rest of the NFL, but that's a story for another time. The only bowl that interests me on this Super Bowl Sunday is the cereal bowl. And, uh, maybe the toilet bowl.)

I got 'em! I got 'em!

They were not supposed to be available until May, but I got 'em!

"Sharing Size." Heh.

I must confess I have been riveted to the saga of the Caramel M&M's since they were announced last year. Like many of us, I grew up with just two M&M's, plain and peanut. Since then they've introduced fillings like almond, peanut butter, crispy, pretzel, cherry, dark chocolate, lots more chocolate, you name it, but never caramel, until now.

CNN Money said that there were some big chemical and techical issues to resolve, largely due to caramel's meltiness and softness. "[Veep of Mars research and development Hank] Izzo's team worked with engineers and product development scientists to design and develop machinery to fill the M&M's with caramel. The candymaker also invested about $100 million to build a new manufacturing site in Topeka, Kansas." I do not know why caramel was more of a problem than peanut butter, which is also plenty soft, but I'm no food engineer.

Somehow they overcame all these technical problems, and now we can all enjoy the fruits of their labors. Or can we? Maybe they suck! Let's try some! As my pal Stiiv might say:

"LUNCH TIIIIIMMMMMME!!!!!"

The verdict? They're good. Really good.

The lovely and tasteful Mrs. Key said, "They taste like a Rolo had a baby with a Milk Dud." There's definitely something like Hershey's Rolo going on here. I've always enjoyed the Rolo; I even shoplifted some in my misspent youth. M&M's Caramel has that same chocolate/caramel combo along with a candy shell. The caramel is more like the slightly salty Hershey's Milk Duds, but without the pull-your-fillings-out quality that has paid for a lot of dentists' boats. I've done my bit -- and my bite -- for that boat; I love caramel.

Takeaway: These are not the most incredible caramel candies I've ever had, but they're great. Nothing else is quite like an M&M, and no other M&M is quite like these.

We think they are a tasty and delightful treat. May starts Monday; go get some! Give them and try and let me know what you think. But I'm not sharing mine.

A piece of cake.

More strangeness from M&M's.

Birthday cake flavored M&M's candies. 

What in hell is going on at Mars?

The Impulsive Buy site gave these candies a favorable review, unlike some of the other variations of M&M's we've seen lately. ("I was disappointed by Pumpkin Spice, puzzled by Gingerbread, and grossed out by Red Velvet.")

I'm not sure when birthday cake became a flavor, anyway. I first saw it in Birthday Bash, a flavor of Perry's Ice Cream, at the ice cream stand. "Birthday Bash?" I asked the girl, reading from the menu. "What's that taste like?"

"It's SOOOO good!" she said, with a sincerity one usually only finds at football games. 

"But what does it taste like?"

"It's SOOO GOOD!"

I could therefore deduce that the flavor is: A) birthday, and B) good. So it might be like licking high-quality gift wrap? As you can imagine, my curiosity forced me to buy some. 

Well, it was so good. And it tasted like a vanilla cake with icing. Not necessarily birthday cake, but the kind of cake generally served on such occasions. "Wedding Bash" would have been dry cake with blah fondant. 

Even though we know the associations, "birthday" is not a flavor, and things that are not cake ought not to be flavored "cake." And yet, I knew exactly what the Birthday Oreos would taste like before I ate one, so I can't say there's no data connected to the descriptors. But what weird chemicals compose the flavor "cake"?

As for the M&M's, each candy is a larger than normal M&M, and they only come in three bright colors: yellow, blue, and red. I guess the chocolate does have some kind of cakey flavor, and the candy shell is a little more icing-like than normal. But they're not going to make me switch my chocolate habits. They'd be useful as a fast way to decorate a birthday cake or birthday cupcakes,  though.

My prediction for the next variant: Girl Scout Cookie M&M's. They didn't save Crumbs Bake Shop, but they would sure move a lot of M&M's.