I Both Love and Hate the M&M's Stores

 

On a recent trip to London, Allison and I decided to visit the M&M’s store near Piccadilly Circus. I’ve visited a few M&M’s stores in the past, but for some reason this visit made me think a little bit more about these stores. Who came up with the idea of building a store dedicated to one particular candy? Why do they sell more merchandise than candy itself? Are these stores even run by the candy company?

I’ve personally had love/hate relationship with these stores. I’ll be honest, I like M&M’s, but they’re nowhere near my favourite candy. One of the issues is I feel like there’s a great potential to offer a bunch of different versions of this simple treat. While they have a few different varieties, there are many other candies out in the world with many more varieties, like Kit Kat or Pocky. There was a short period where M&M’s did go a little crazy with alternate varieties, but they really only have a handful of standard flavours out there. All of this can also be considered unimportant since when you visit an M&M’s store you’re sure to notice that they don’t actually sell much candy.

This is where things get a little odd for me. I’m a little turned off by the lack of candy at most M&M’s stores. While they do offer some treats for sale, it’s not the main focus of the store. The main focus is candy themed merchandise. Strangely, I would argue that there’s a good percentage of merchandise at these stores that isn’t even really themed to the candy itself. At almost all of the M&M’s stores I’ve visited, I’ve found a lot of merchandise that’s themed to the store itself and its geographic location. I know that places like Hard Rock Cafe have built a brand based on shirts featuring the various locations of their stores, but I feel like there’s something more to them. Most of the tourist themed merchandise at the M&M’s stores just feels really disconnected from the namesake candy.

The part that’s odd for me is the fact that while I don’t like the fact that the M&M’s store sells more merchandise than candy, I personally own several pieces of merchandise. I’ve even been known to purchase some of the more tourist heavy stuff. While I wish there was more candy at these stores, I really like some of the merchandise that they sell. The great thing about M&M’s over other candy companies for merchandise is the fact that one of the key features of the candy is the colours. They’ve managed even to transfer the colours into characters. So this allows for some really fun merchandise.  I’ll also say that all (or at least most) of the merchandise I’ve ever purchased at an M&M’s store has lasted me a pretty long time.

I also don’t mind the decorations at many M&M’s stores. I think it follows the same rules as the merchandise in that the candy offers many colours, so it allows the store designers to be colourful as well. The pallet of colours and design of the candy are simple and kind of beautiful (just look at a bowl of M&M’s and tell me you’re not impressed).  The M&M’s mascots also give the store some appeal, creating fun little scenarios as well as photo opportunities.

I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t mind the M&M’s stores at all, but I wish they sold more candy. It would be great if the stores offered some limited or exclusive flavours of M&M’s. As it stands, many of the stores offer a variety of colours, but very limited flavours.

I also haven’t answered the question about who might actually be running these stores. I assume that it’s Mars (the manufacturers of M&M’s), but I also imagine that this is something that could be licensed to outside retailers. I could dig deeper, but honestly I don’t know if it’s that big a deal. I don’t feel like the people who run these stores are doing a particularly bad job, I just wish they could include a little more room for candy, and maybe work with the candy makers for exclusive products.

Glow In the Dark

 It's funny, I never understood why a candy company would choose to make glow in the dark candy packages, since they don't really improve the candy. Yet, I would love to see more of them.

Trick Or Treat With Mickey Mouse

I'm starting to think I need to trick-or-treat with Mickey Mouse.

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Time To Mix It Up

Over the years I've had a love/hate relationship with candy varieties. In the early creation of this site I was always disappointed when a candy company came out with a different version of a classic candy. Today I'm a little more hopeful and excited. I feel like candy companies have become better at creating different versions of their classic treats. I feel like in the past the variations would always be really simple, like slapping a bit of caramel on it, or making it dark instead of milk chocolate. Today these versions are much more sophisticated, and I give a lot of credit to the Kit Kat bar. Specifically the folks at Kit Kat Japan who broke the mold when it comes to changing up a classic.

Click here to read about the latest M&M's variation.

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Caramel M&Ms

I think the M&Ms characters are some of the longest running candy spokes characters still around. Best of all they seem to re-invent the idea on a regular basis.

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Does This Work?

I've always been skeptical about this trick and I don't think I'll ever try it. My problem is that I can't see myself wasting a bunch of M&Ms.

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Candy in the Media - A Funny Commercial is Good

The folks at Eater have pointed out (check it out here) how nice it is to see that new advertising might not just focus on how we're all miserable.

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First Australian Video - M&Ms in the Outback

Just posted our first video from Australia, I’m eating special edition honeycomb M&Ms in the middle of nowhere.

Click here to check out the video.

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Halloween Candy In The Media - M&Ms Used To Have Glowing Bags?!!

I like the idea of having glow in the dark bags of candy for Halloween, but I'll give huge props to any candy company that can produce glow in the dark candy for Halloween.

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Easter Is Over, And We Have A New Review - M&M's Eggs "Peanut Butter"

As a kid, this was the time of year that I would be in my element. The holiday is over, and I'm left with a basket filled with chocolate goodness. My parents were also somewhat responsible, so I would also get a few small toys as well, most notably either a small Lego kit or an action figure or two.

Click here to read our last Easter candy review this year.

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You can also follow us on Patreon for previews of what we're working on, and an exclusive video every Friday.

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Candy In The Media - There Are So Many Things That Disturbe Me About This Commercial

Don't get me wrong, I think this commercial is funny, and I think it sells M&Ms fairly well. You just can't get around how weird it is. It starts off with a weird premise, I mean who in the world is going to the mall to sit on the Easter Bunny's lap?

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It's Been A Little While, But We're Back With A New M&M's Review

With our trip to Canada over, it's time we collect all the treats we got and start the arduous task of writing the reviews. Most people assume that writing the reviews is the best part of this job, but it's not. Hunting for new treats to review is fun, and even better is tasting the treats. The problem is sitting down after eating a treat and putting into words what I just ate. Sometimes it's not too hard to come up with words to describe how I feel about a particular treat, this new review is just that case. While it's a little more complicated than I expected, there was plenty to talk about.

Click here to find out what we thought of this M&M's variant.

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It's A Spooky New Review (well, not really) and a Frightful New Episode Of Monday Morning Breakfast Thoughts (not really either) - M&M's "White Pumpkin Pie"

I think the only thing about this review that might be even slightly scary is the fact that it's yet another pumpkin spice/pumpkin pie themed treat. Of all the food trends that I know of this one confuses me a lot. In fact the only trend that confuses me more is the crazy flavours of Starbucks frappuccinos.

Click here to read the review and find out why I'm confused about pumpkin spice stuff.


This week's episode of Chris's Monday Morning Breakfast Thoughts is also not really scary, although I do attempt to make a Halloween/creepy breakfast treat, and I''m wearing a costume. So it's kind of creepy and Halloween themed.

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And don't forget to follow us on Instagram to keep up with some Snack Facts and our special tea of the day project.

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This Last Weekend We Ate M&Ms - M&M's "Crispy" and M&M's "Caramel"

Over the weekend we had two kinds of M&Ms, one was crispy (literally that was what they called them) and the other was chewy(not what they called them). It was interesting to have a candy that could have two very different textures yet still represent the original candy so well. Lazy varieties are something I truly hate in the candy world, and it seems that Mars is not being lazy with these M&Ms. They both worked very well, both tasted great, but most importantly both were still M&Ms in spirit.

Click here to read the "Crispy" review, and click here to read our chewy (caramel) review.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and let us know your favourite and least favourite M&M variety.

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Candy In The Media - Watching Them Make M&M's In 360

It's one of the classic candy processes, and it's so fun to watch.

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Candy In The Media - Our Favorite Super Bowl Commercials

I would say that this years super bowl commercials were either a big hit or a big miss. In general I enjoyed all of the snack themed commercials, although there didn't seem to be as many as usual. This is a little odd considering how many people worry about their snacking game before the game.

Here are all of the snacking  commercials we thought were worth watching this year:

Doritos/Mountain Dew

This commercial is a great example of getting popular actors to do things that they wouldn't normally do (or Dew, if you want to be punny). It's obviously a very expensive commercial and I think it works for the football demographic.

M&Ms

I don't think I could think of a better person than Danny Devito to cast as Red (M&M). While I'm not a big fan of Super Bowl commercial sequels, I would be really interested in who they might cast for some of the other M&Ms.

Pepsi

I like how this commercial looks at the history of Pepsi marketing. It's a clever way to look back at how Pepsi has branded itself throughout the years. I particularly like the Back To The Future reference.

Pringles

This commercial is your standard goofy Super Bowl commercial, with all of the characters yelling  for no particular reason at one point and everything. The thing I loved about this commercial is the potential it creates for mixing and matching Pringles flavours, something I'd never thought of before.

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We Just Posted A New Candy Review, And Apparently It's Made (Or Owned) By a Guy Named Roger

I'm always intrigued when I eat a candy that's attached to a name, Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, M&M's (the "M"s stand for the name of the creators) and now Roger's Chocolates.  I wonder who these people really were, and why did they attach their name to their candy. I've never had the foresight to look up these people before I eat their candy, but maybe I should.  Maybe one day I should look up this guy "Reece", while I'm eating a Peanut Butter Cup.

Click here to find out what we thought of Roger's Chocolate.

Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and feel free to suggest candies that we should eat.

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Candy In The Media

The destruction of an M&M is both beautiful and sad.

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Christmas Candy In The Media

I think I post this commercial every year, it's just so simple and very entertaining.

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Best Variety - M&Ms

All this month we're looking at some different treats that offer interesting variations.  Last week we looked at Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, and before that we looked at Pocky and Kit Kats.  Today we're looking at a fairly unique treat, that's been around so long we might forget how unique it is, M&Ms.  Unfortunately M&Ms are a copycat candy, they likely were inspired by the British Smarties.  Smarties are a candy coated chocolate that was created several years before the M&M.  The real difference in the two candies is the choice of colours (although with custom M&Ms this might not be true), thickness of the shell, and in some cases the flavour.  M&Ms have also branched out a lot more than Smarties.

Smarties have really only come out with one variety, and that's putting their popular candy into a chocolate bar.  M&Ms on the other hand have branched out a great deal.  M&M's might also be considered one of the first candy companies to produce a variation.  M&Ms peanut came out in 1954, just under 15 years after the original "plain" M&Ms came out.  This variety proved to be very popular, and today is considered just as original as the milk chocolate filled variety.  While M&Ms diversified fairly early on, they didn't get extremely experimental till much more recently.

In the last 15 or 20 years there has been a renaissance in the M&Ms variety world.  It started with adding a few different nuts to the center, and has expanded ever since. Similar to the Kit Kat, M&Ms have two different kinds of variations, long term and limited edition.  Since starting out with variations M&Ms have introduced a few varieties that have stuck around.  Peanut butter, Almond, and crispy M&Ms are still around, and are likely not going anywhere soon.  There have also been a few varieties that are limited edition, and many that seem to be tied in with movies.  Some of  these movie tie-ins make sense, like Ogre sized M&Ms that tie in with the movie Shrek.  However a few of the limited edition movie tie-ins are not so clear, like Peanut Butter and Jam M&Ms tied in with Transformers, and mint crisp M&Ms tied in with Indian Jones.

So far I've tasted 11 different variety of M&Ms, and the one thing I can say about almost all of them is that they've never really deviated from their original format.  With some of the other treats I've discussed in this series there have been some variety that are almost so different that you might have a hard time saying they're a variant as opposed to being a completely different treat all together.  M&Ms variants seem to stick to the format, a small candy coated candy, often with chocolate involved.  With this limitation, it's surprising not only the number of variations, but in the diversity of each of these variations.  There are different textures and flavours in most of these treats, and you'd likely have no problem telling them apart in a blind taste test.

In fact that would be really fun.  Take a bag of every variety of M&M ever made and put them in one bowl.  Then spend the night randomly picking out M&Ms and guessing what variety they are.

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